Cold was the wind that flew down those frosted peaks.

Bright was our future, ‘til stormy eyes saw death do us part.

Bound were our fates, ‘til threads unwound and became weak.

We tumbled through the wind like petals as the skies turned bleak.

Two halves grasping for their counterpart.

Towards the dark horizon you flew.

To a place, I only wish I knew.

I sigh, putting down my pen as I think of her. “Escyra where could you have gone…”

It’s been about 3 weeks since an errant hurricane destroyed our boat and separated me—Abraham Penrose—from my fiancé Escyra. I don’t know her fate, but the miracle that I survived has given me enough hope that she did too. If anything, last I saw of her she was knocked down on our boat while I was flung away with the ship’s mast. All I remember was clinging onto driftwood for dear life in frigid waters until I washed up on land. If I could do it, she could too. Escyra was always better than me at most things anyway. If she avoided any icebergs, she should be fine. If…

“Aaaah!” I slam my small wooden table in frustration. “That ocean was supposed to be cold. Why was there a hurricane!”

I recall our plans that day. It was supposed to have been a quick expedition in the north. Escyra always had a fascination with nature, so we made plans to see the large horned whales in the morning and magic lights at night. We’d even spent a month learning nautical magic so we would be ready for anything. Or so we thought. I bury my face in my hands in frustration and give an exasperated sigh, “No, there’s nothing that could have been done. That was fate.”

I think to myself, how could any of the sailors have known about a hurricane? They were all amicable and welcoming to the both of us. What happened was out of our control. I slump over and stare at the white flame my candle emits.

“Magic,” the word slips out of my mouth. I think of everything I learned in my academy days and come to that conclusion. That hurricane can’t have been anything short of magic. Whether it was created or some odd natural phenomena, it’s the only explanation my mind comes to given the cold and clear skies before the squall.

“But I’ve never heard of anything that large scale. It would require~…” As I lay over the desk muttering, I vaguely hear the door to my hut push open. Suddenly something pink and slimy suctions against my cheek. “Ugh!?”

A frog man stands at the doorway retracting his long tongue. More accurately a Grouak the Karo tribe. Beady orange eyes with horizontal pupils observe me at odd angles. A large mouth croaks, “Mago has come to get Abra for the tribe’s feeding hour.”

I wipe the slime off my face, “Mago you could have knocked you know? And I told you my name was Abraham. AY-BRA-HAM. Not Abra.”

“Too long. Make’s Grouak tongue choke,” he shakes his head, brushing me off. “Besides Abra, this is Mago’s hut. You are a hatched egg here. Abra cannot give orders until Abra is able to swim in the swamp on Abra’s own.”

I am painfully reminded of my situation. I, Abraham Penrose, have been flung to an unknown corner of the world with nary but a bottle of ink and a quill to my name while my fiancé is probably drifting on a boat in freezing weather. In contrast I sit in a humid stick and mud hut provided to me by my savior Mago. I owe this frog my life as he was the one that found me floating on the verge of death and ferried me up the river delta to his tribe.

“Yes, I know…sorry for snapping at you. I was just deep in thought.”

Mago lets out his token deep laugh, “GRO-RO-RO. It’s okay Abra. You are a welcome guest. You even teach magic. Very useful for our tribe to know.”

“And I am indebted to your tribe for taking me in and helping find a way out of the swamp.” I try to speak simply but still struggle. Anything more than two syllables practically doesn’t exist in their simplified language because of how long Grouak tongues are. They supplement a large amount of communication by inflating the sacks under their chins and creating various intonations, but it’s been completely lost to me.

Mago gives me a big froggy smile and says, “Hm, good. Helping those that help you by helping them is how you make friends. Your main food today is snake. Gebo my son and Kigo his son hunted it for you.” Mago crosses his arms looking pensive and mutters, “Snake is not as good as roach but what is Mago to do when Abra’s belly act like baby.”

In response my stomach goes queasy. I remember one of my earliest memories of the village and they tried feeding me a buffet of insects. Giant tarantula, bowls of flies, giant cockroach, and most terrifying of all was the giant mosquito and its rapier length proboscis. I tried imagining the bugs as odd crabs because of the exoskeletons but it was to no avail. Sometimes the parts still moved after being cooked which caused what little I ate to come straight back up. I am nothing but thankful that Mago understood my aversion and ordered the hunters to find more “human friendly” foods.

Stepping out of Mago’s hut I’m immediately hit by the musky rot of the swamp. Beyond the small dock where we stand is nothing but brown water and buoyant plants. I reach in my pocket for a stick and press it against my nose. The mana flows through my hand to the crude wand, and finally to my nostrils until I can smell nothing but mint and flowers. Mago’s face only has a long grin from eye to eye. “Mmm, nothing like swamp water Abra. Keeps skin nice and healthy.”

“Right, and maybe if I eat enough of the bugs my tongue will get longer too,” I reply rolling my eyes.

Mago lets out a series of elated croaks, “GEH-RO-RO-RO, how human gets by with that small thing Mago will never know.” The Grouak’s beady eyes scan the water until he spots a large lily pad about twice my size in length. “There! Bleuuugh,” he shouts as his tongue shoots out about two yards in front of him. It sticks to the floating leaf and pulls it towards his house’s platform.

I grab the edge with my hand and crawl with my hands and legs spread to distribute my weight. When I first rode on these massive swamp lilies I fell straight through and Mago did nothing but laugh as he pulled me from the water. After weeks of practice, I can now get on them with almost no water soaking through my rags. I settle onto its center and position myself upright with crossed legs. Mago is already in the water with his eyes breaking the surface. He waits for my signal. “Pull away Mago I’m good.”

I hear a croak of acknowledgement and he begins swimming a breaststroke while holding the lily pad’s severed stem in his mouth. As I’m tugged forward, I can’t help but stare at the nearby huts. They’re spaced about forty feet apart and each is home to Grouak’s like Mago himself. Several frog men, women, and children emerge from them and leap onto lily pads of their own. It’s the patriarch’s job to find or make the path, and the rest follow. The frog convoys almost appear to produce afterimages in slow motion due to how clean and successive their jumps are. All around me is a melodic rhythm of leaps and splashes. Unlike me, Grouak’s are built to spread their weight, even after landing jumps as far as twelve feet apart. Several whooshes go above my head as a family of three leaps over my pad.

“Whoops, sorry Abra. We did not hit you, correct?” the youngest of that family says after landing nearby. It’s a large lime green female I recognize as one of my magic students.

I smile, “No Haro you did not.” Haro croaks what I can only guess is relief and hops away to catch up with her parents. Among the village, a select few come to me for magic lessons. It was part of the agreement Mago helped me negotiate. Besides supersized bugs, this swamp also has a fair share of territorial water predators. In exchange for finding a human-friendly route through the swamp I was to impart upon the tribe “human witchcraft”. Leaving wasn’t as simple as stringing together leaves and pushing off.

The elders deemed magic invaluable, and it was rare that humans ever even came this way. Based on what I’ve seen, this was a near impassible bog noted for its giant insects and lack of solid ground. According to Mago, mud mounds appeared in the dryer summer months, but this was the middle of winter despite the humidity. He was allegedly an ex-adventurer that left on a journey long ago,

All that considered, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my sudden arrival caused the Grouaks to harm me, a stranger, on sight. The swamp was just that hostile. It was all thanks to Mago who, on speaking to the village elders on my behalf, convinced them of the benevolence a human could bring. I only have small fragments from whenever he shared his tales, but apparently Mago had been an adventurer back in his heyday and made good relations with all kinds of different races. He knows the swamp and the grasslands beyond better than anyone here, but erosion and animal territories change the terrain dramatically even in one year.

I stare at my froggy guide swim as I get lost in thought. Mago’s frog legs send small waves rippling across the water that crash against the lily pad. “Hey Mago, I don’t think I’ve ever asked, but back when you were out there exploring the world, did you ever feel lonely? I mean, there’s a lot of different places out there but I’ve only read about your people in books. How did you deal with being so far away from home?”

“Rrribit,” he raises his head from the water to speak. “It was hard. The year Mago left was the year Papa and Mama got swallowed by a big croc. In a fit of rage, Mago shamed myself so the elders exiled Mago until Mago could come back with honor,” there’s a brief pause as he vaguely summarizes that part of his past. There’s a hint of bittersweet melancholy in his voice. “So Mago did just that. Best advice Mago have is to look at what in front of you then you forget how long or far your journey is.”

As he says that we veer slightly to the left. I begin to speak, “How could that possibly~…” CRACK. Pain flashes against my forehead as a floating log’s branch smacks me straight in the forehead.

“GROOOUK, like Mago said, look at what’s in front of you and you forget being lonely. Journey becomes easier when you worry about what happens next instead of what happens later.”

I rub my forehead, “Ow, very funny Mago. But I get it lesson learned.” The branch striking me was likely intentional. From my brief time with him, Mago means well but is very blunt and literal with his advice. Taking it, I look ahead, and our destination comes into view.

A relatively large patch of land creeps ever closer. By this point the lily pads have becomes sparse and most of the frogs are left with nowhere to jump and begin to swim. Those that find large lily pads in their vicinity create rafts akin to mine. A quick glance reveals the land to have several dark lines tracing an elevated shore. As we get closer, the ‘land’ is not ‘land’ at all, but a large patch of mangrove trees bundled so tightly they effectively make a solid surface. There’s also mud packed tightly between the gaps of the roots giving the trees the facsimile of land. They’ve aptly named the location the Mangrove Mound—their feeding area.

From the middle rises a large billowing pyre of smoke and the orange light of a fire. When I first came to the Grouak’s communal feeding ground, I’d thought the trees themselves had been set on fire. To my surprise, they had chopped away at the center to create an inner clearing. The all the wooden debris was tossed out into the water to make the area very annoying for large predators to approach. The branch that so graciously aided Mago’s words of wisdom was one of many dotted around the island. From pure conjecture, I’d say the Mangrove Mound was about 90 feet in diameter—about the size of a small market square—with about 50 feet of misshapen driftwood in any direction.

Mago ducks and weaves through the debris all the while avoiding getting my raft stuck or tearing. The two dozen or so Grouak’s in my vicinity swim as nimbly. I could only imagine what other obstacles—wood, rocks, or otherwise—one could run into below the surface. If I was to swim down there, I would likely cut and bruise myself a hundred times over.

The Mangrove Mound approaches, and the scent of roasting meat overpowers the magic around my nostrils. I end the magic and smell only cooking herbs in the area. For some reason, the area lacks the thick musk that normally permeates the swamp. Ahead, I see a small orange Grouak shouting while waving a spear at us.