Five years.

Sevdia swam along the bottom of her swamp, letting her smooth lower-half drag along the cool muck. The texture was comforting, and she usually did it unconsciously. She did most things without thinking.

The water she was in was not actually a swamp, from what she knew of such terms, but more just a series of ponds. During the dry season she was forced to keep to the largest pool, but on days like today the water all joined together to form a single large pool. She liked it that way, and could almost go so far as to say it made her happy.

The first major storm of the season happened yesterday, and her little lake was so back. The water was too dark for most creatures to see through, and she made it even better by kicking up as much muck as she could.

The murky water wasn't pleasant to breathe, and it wasn't particularly pleasant to swim through, but it hid her well. She liked hiding—needed to hide, more than any other need. Not from predators necessarily, as there were few. Not from her prey either, though it certainly made hunting easier when she had the inkling to do that. There'd been an uptick in both kinds of creatures lately for some reason, but no, what she needed to hide from was her greatest, and perhaps only fear.

Other people.

Nevermind that she hadn't encountered one in five years. That only meant the odds of someone finally wandering near her little encampment were higher than ever, and she should keep being careful because any day now someone would show up and then she would have a problem.

That paranoia ruled most of her thoughts because she...she definitely wouldn't go the rest of her life without talking to someone again, right? Any day now, someone would show up against her will and she'd—she'd panic.

Sevdia's mind had been taken over by that primary concern. Stay hidden, avoid being discovered, avoid cruel civilizations full of cruel people. Avoid them at all costs. She was unlike them, did not belong with them.

She'd done so well at following her own directive, that she'd gone five years without seeing a single person. It had been great at first, finally free to live without judgement or pain, the cruel stares, laughter, looks of disgust...

Disgust that she herself had felt each time she'd passed the mirror in the living room of her father's home—and it'd been five years without a mirror, too—disgust that she still felt about herself now if she let her mind wander. She knew what a person should look like, knew the assortment of creatures a decent person could be mixed with. Not her.

She felt disgust every time she caught a glimpse of her grotesque-half, or felt the rows of teeth inside her mouth, each time she gorged herself on blood after starving herself for days, and—

Swimming along the bottom of her swamp like this had been fun when she'd first got there. Now it just made her mind wander. She could hardly remember what had been fun about it in the first place, with nobody to experience it with.

Nobody like her to experience it with.

Sevdia was the only one of her kind, as far as she knew; her father had merely found her. He'd taken care of and loved her too, but she was observant and even his body language had revealed the innate disgust normal pepole felt around her.

He'd been ashamed of her, and had refused to tell her the name of the creature she was mixed with. Until one day while playing in the river one had latched onto her. A creature like her, that drank blood and had a ring of teeth in its mouth. She'd laughed and excitedly showed it to her father.

He'd ripped it off with a scowl and sat her down for a talk. That was the day she learned she was part leech, and the day she learned that everyone hated leeches. The neighbors weren't just a mean exception, but the norm. Everyone would be repulsed by her.

She didn't blame or hate her father for any of that, rather she still felt grateful that he'd taken care of her for so long despite what she was. She couldn't hate the other people who had been vocal about their distaste for her either. She was a disgusting monster. A parasite. Irrefutable fact. The gods must have hated her.

She'd ran away upon reaching an age, knowing she would never find anywhere that tolerated her existence within the city. She hadn't wanted to burden her father any longer, nor be a financial parasite.

She'd left Syber with no plans, goals, or anything, except to survive until things became too painful to continue. She hadn't expected it to last five years. She should have been dead by now, or—

Something.

Sevdia leapt out of the water, deciding a warm meal would stop her mind from wandering so much. Droplets rolled down her nude body. She had one good set of clothing left, but never wore it just in case she did one day need to visit the city again. Her other clothing had holes, and she saved them for winter. During the warmer months she usually just stayed nude.

Her home was nothing like the one her father had raised her in, but it blended in with the environment and hid her. It was a mass of dead trees, branches, and grass piled together in the vague shape of a dome. The entrance, a hole near the base of it that she wriggled through.

There was no signs at all of it being a home, were anyone to wander by. There was no sensation of it being a home either, in all of Sevdia's five years there. She kept her few belongings inside, was all.

A short walk away from it, Sevdia had made a fence out of gathered wood. It wasn't particularly sturdy. She had no class that made her very competent or self-sufficient. She survived despite herself.

Within the bounds of the fence were Bo and Ann; the wild bull and cow she'd managed to befriend a few years back. Or domesticate. They were some kind of grass variety, both very docile and with vines and leaves constantly growing out of them. She'd nearly passed them by when she first found them, they were so good at hiding. Like her.

Their leaves were edible, and Ann produced a sweet milk. Tasty things, but not sustenance for Sevdia. The fence wasn't enough to stop them from leaving, in truth, but for some reason they rarely wandered off anymore. Even when she...

"Hey Bo, Ann. Just going to take a tiny bit from you today, okay?"

Sevdia gently pet the back of Bo's head. The two never struggled or made a sound whenever she did this, and she didn't think it hurt as her many teeth sank in. She'd read about leeches before leaving the city, and learned their saliva had numbing properties.

The blood went straight to her lower-half. Her slug-like body, if she were being nice to herself; much crueler was to be honest and call it a leech's body. The blood felt warm inside of her, made her want to gorge herself until she was bloated.

She hated that instinct, and usually managed to resist.

A weird sound made her roll her eyes up. It sounded like...hail? A flurry of small objects hitting earth and plants. Some deeper sounds too. The sounds were getting closer—

Sevdia wasted precious time sealing off the wound—Bo would continue to bleed if she didn't. Her mind was a whirl. Was it an army? Bandits? Normal people who had somehow spotted her, tracked her over the course of weeks and finally decided to rid the world of her wretched existence?

She got paranoid sometimes.

"Rocks?"

Rocks. They were upon her when she finally unlatched from Bo. Everything from pebbles, stones, to small boulders—rolling, bouncing, hopping along through the wilderness. Like a herd of animals, and she was directly in the path of their...migration.

The commotion startled Bo and Ann, and both took off running with a cry.

"No, wait—"

Sevdia twisted her head at the incoming rocks. A few smaller ones pelted her and she rubbed at her skin. She could likely find the animals again later, but right now she needed to get inside.

The leech girl covered her head and headed toward her shelter. She was slow, slithering backwards and trying to dodge the ones that looked like they'd hurt.

"Why is this happening?"

Even the rocks hated her.

One rock, twice the size of her head made a loud thud. It snapped twigs with every bounce—and was rapidly approaching. Sevdia shrieked and dodged behind the trunk of a tree.

It passed a few feet away from her, and Sevdia poked her head out to check for more—

Thud.