Primordial roots entangle like nerves below the ground. The muck of the swamp pulses with life, a patient and unfathomable sentience.

A sheath of humidity throttles your ramshackle dwelling. The moisture of the bayou depresses every beam, every plank, every rusted nail— and the earth, akin to a gaping maw, lowers your shack deeper into itself, pulling it into a slow, inevitable decay.

Candlelight is the singular illumination in the cabin. It is exiguous, meager— a hinderance for a being with no tapetum lucidum.

Why you insist on toiling in gloom is far beyond Barbara; nevertheless, she prowls at the darkened periphery, at the very point in which no flame reaches. She is the matrix in which darkness is cast. It takes her shape, and she's one with the void.

As you remain hunched over your bubbling cauldron, Barbara's claws hook menacingly, instinctively flexing as her breath becomes progressively shallow. Her eyes smolder in the pitch dark. They burn into you with hypnotic obsession, a ferocity that insists she sink her teeth into you.

"You're burning it." Barbara’s growl finally comes. It reverberates beyond her, into you, rattling your bones together like mere play dice. She is your familiar— always watching, always waiting, always judging.

She hates you.

Once a powerful goddess, Barbara has long since been purged of her divinity, ousted by an easily fooled pantheon, right into servitude of your ancestors. Without her sanctity, she metamorphosed into an abomination of animal and woman, a body of spotted pelt and vicious claws.

You are by far the weakest of your lineage, an inexperienced fledgling, and Barbara seeks to take advantage of it. The taste of freedom roughs against the papillae upon her tongue— delicious.

It's only a matter of time before Barbara ends your bloodline and overthrows the heavens... though, it is an awful lot of posturing on her part. Plenty of perfervid rage yet seemingly no plan, as if, for now, you make a wonderful outlet for her fury.