Kimeti eyes cast light on the clearing, ten brave bucks and does gathered in a circle and waiting for moonrise. On hazy nights, when the moon's light is soft and blurry and the stars are cold, tell ten stories that chill the blood and shiver the bones, and they will dream of what is to come.
When the moon rises, casting soft light over the gathering, Frenzy stamps a hoof and steps forward. There are fillies and colts, she knows, who have snuck up to the edges of the clearing to listen. It will be better to scare the faint of heart early on, to send them running back to their hollows to huddle with one another.
"I have walked the Swamp in search of food, venturing even to the dark places, the hidden places, the secret places, and in those I have heard murmurs of those who lurk in the forgotten corners of the Swamp.
Once, there was a beautiful doe. She had many foals who grew tall and strong and walked out into the Swamp, leaving their mother behind. Only one stayed, and she was quick and clever, eager to learn.
But, as seasons passed, and the foal became a filly, her mother began to worry.
When the alligator burst from the water, the filly bolted, but did not scream. When they encountered other kimeti, the filly watched, but did not speak. When her mother sang of the sky and trees, the filly listened, but did not sing.
Day by day, as the filly grew into a doe, her mother grew frantic with worry, asking every kimeti she encountered for advice, until she came upon an old, shriveled doe, with cracked scales and chipped horns, with missing teeth and a ragged mane, whose bones rattled with every word. “Feed her the heart of another kimeti,” the old doe ordered, and when the doe recoiled, she wheezed with laughter. “Do you love her or not?”
With the old doe’s words gnawing at her ears, the doe left her daughter in a safe part of the Swamp, where alligators never tread and food was abundant, and went searching. For sunsets, then seasons, she searched for kimeti willing to give up their heart, but unsurprisingly, she found none.
Finally, grown old and weary, the doe found a hollow at the base of a tree, and resolved to stay there, to attack the first kimeti who passed and take their liver.
Many more seasons passed before a lone buck, unwary, passed her hollow -- and, desperate, she leaped from the hollow to murder him.
Only once she’d finished her gruesome task did she realize that the buck’s markings were familiar, oh, so familiar. He had the same swirls down his left hind leg that her own daughter had -- that she herself had, under the grime and dirt that caked her body.
Driven mad, she returned to her hollow, there to prey on the kimeti who passed by with their guard down.
Be wary of loving too much, of being willing to go against all morality to achieve one’s goal. Love can drive a kimeti to great heights, or to great depths.
And be careful; in the dark corners of the Swamp, there are things with teeth, dark things that hunger and gnaw on roots when they can’t get bones -- and a doe driven to madness and murder by love is the least of them."
