Kelpie

In the last light of dusk, the loch turns to glass. The wind drops. The reeds stop whispering. The air tastes of peat and cold stone.

The Kelpie

Heather darkens on the bank, and the water holds every reflection too perfectly.

• It waits where rivers deepen and lochs grow quiet.
• It invites you to climb on.
• Then it will not let you climb off.
• It offers stillness, and stillness can be its sharpest bait.

It stands at the waterline like a gift from the dark, ink black and flawlessly formed. Its coat gleams as if polished by the loch itself. Its mane hangs in wet strands like riverweed, heavy with droplets that catch the last amber rim light. One eye holds a hard glint, like moonlight trapped in glass, and it watches with the patience of deep water.

It chooses crossings and fords, the places where you decide whether you are turning back or stepping through. It does not chase. It offers stillness, and stillness can be its sharpest bait.

The rule is simple. If the water is too still and the silence feels too tidy, do not accept what is offered without asking why.

Wyrd Archive

The trap begins with a touch. Your hand meets a slick hide, cold and smooth. Then the surface changes. It clings, like wet leather that grips your palm and will not release. Your certainty narrows to one thought: get away. But the more you pull, the more the loch seems to pull with it, as if the water has learned your name.

The other face

• It can wear another face too, a traveller on the path.
• Handsome and strangely damp, hair dark with riverwater.
• The shape changes. The invitation stays the same.

The Kelpie moves without panic, straight toward depth. It goes as if simply returning home, carrying you with it, and the mirror of the loch closes over the choice you made at the bank.

Because the Kelpie is not only a monster in a loch. It is the moment temptation feels clean. The deal that looks perfect. The thrill that arrives with no cost attached, right when your caution starts to feel like a burden.

Here is the question.

Where in your life are you being offered something flawless that asks you to step past your own boundary?

Keep your lantern low. Still water remembers.