The Amphiwood fell silent.

Her name was Mewra, though the mud-skimmers called her She-Who-Purrs-Below . She arrived not in a clap of lightning, but in a dropped fish bone—a stray cat, half-drowned and utterly unimpressed, paddling onto a lily pad the size of a dinner plate. The bullfrog chieftain, Glot, found her there: a ginger tabby with one torn ear, licking brine from her paw as if the entire swamp owed her a better meal.

But she probably will.

“Nap time,” said Mewra.

“You are not of the wet or the dry,” Glot croaked, his throat sac pulsing like a heart. “You are lost.”