Watson
My mother was beautiful. Hair the color of an oil spill. Eyes like a storm sky, clouds twisting funneled fingers toward the earth. Voice hushed and husky, coming over you cold, like what it must feel like in the Abyssal Zone. The black bottom layer of the ocean. No light, but still full of life. Snails and blind fish. Eels and eight-armed octopi, reaching. That was my mother. Deep, full of secrets.
I only beheld her true form once. She had taken me to where her own mother had birthed her, when she came across the water in the shape of a colt, coat hung with chains of green weeds. She told me it was important, to remember what you rose from. If I lived a thousand years, I’d never forget the sight of her, slipping into the dark.
Where the swamp touched her, she changed. Skin blacke
