Of Ash & Bloom
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A History Of Violence
Hish-Ha-Shwa was born when the bayou was still young, before maps knew its shape and before the word “Louisiana” had ever been spoken. In her earliest centuries, she was more shadow than flesh, an immense swamp dragon with scales the color of teal and stormwater, her wings carrying the scent of magnolia and decay. Her human kin, the Chitimacha people, knew her and her people as protectors. She guarded their fishing grounds and rice fields, driving away predators both natural and supernatural. To them, she was not just a guardian, but a bridge between the mortal world and the deep, breathing magic of the swamp.
When the first European ships came crawling into the Gulf, bringing guns, greed, and strange gods, she saw them long before they saw her. She watched as their settlements spread like oil on water, choking the wild. Shaw stayed hidden at first, shifting between dragon and woman, learning their languages, their politics, and their weaknesses. But as they pressed deeper into the bayou, cutting down cypress groves and draining wetlands, she took a stand. The swamps became her fortress, thick with fog, illusions, and spells that would send trespassers walking in circles until the sun rose. The Chitimacha fought fiercely to keep their homeland, but disease and war tore at them. Shaw could not save every life, human or dragon, and the losses marked her heart as deeply as her scales.
She adapted. She learned the ways of voodoo and hoodoo from freed Africans and Creole mystics, weaving those powers with her dragon magic until she became something feared in every whispered story. By the 18th century, when New Orleans was growing fat on the slave trade, its cobblestone streets slick with blood and gold, and the French Quarter pulsed with decadence. Shaw walked among it all in human guise, a silent queen pulling threads in the shadows. Sometimes she protected, spiriting the lost and the desperate into the swamps where no hunter would follow. Other times, she punished by dragging the cruel and the careless beneath the black water, their screams swallowed by the reeds.
But she never forgot the faces of the men who came with ships, muskets, and foreign flags. One by one, they carved away her people, Chitimacha and dragon kin alike, until only a few embers of her bloodline remained. She learned to smile in the streets while her heart grew hard as river stone, her trust worn thin by centuries of betrayal. Outsiders were always dangerous, but the pale-skinned men who brought empire and greed had proven, again and again, that they saw her people as nothing more than obstacles to be conquered or curiosities to be exploited. That wound never healed, and it shapes her still.
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Modern
Shaw walks the modern world the way she once ruled the ancient one. Quietly, but with the weight of centuries in her shadow. Known publicly as a haunted history and voodoo historian, she guides ghost tours through Louisiana’s narrow streets, consults on old graveyard restorations, and lectures at historical societies about the state’s deep, tangled past. Privately, she still guards the remnants of her dragon tribe and the magic that runs like veins through the land.
Her main residence still lies hidden deep within the Atchafalaya Basin, an old stilted Creole home ringed by black water. Lanterns hang from its porches, their glow softened by veils of Spanish moss swaying in the breeze. Inside, the walls are lined with relics: Chitimacha beadwork, weathered maps, bone-carved charms, and preserved flowers that never rot. Few ever cross its threshold; those who do are family, debtors, or fools.
In the city, she keeps a narrow, dim shop in the French Quarter that is half museum, half curiosity cabinet. The air is thick with incense, dried herbs, and candle smoke. Locals whisper about the artifacts she refuses to display, the ones swaddled in silk and locked away in cabinets that only she can open.
Her style is a seamless fusion of ancestral tradition and swamp-born practicality. Day to day, she favors long skirts or slit dresses in rich earth tones, layered shawls and scarves, beaded belts, and boots sturdy enough for mud. On evenings out, anything does go. Her jewelry is heavy with meaning: bone charms, carved stone pendants, dragon-shaped clasps, and floral motifs that speak to her deathbloom heritage. Her hair often falls loose and wild, threaded with beads, feathers, or fresh flowers that never wilt. For ceremony, she wears blended Chitimacha-inspired regalia touched with her dragon past, scaled embroidery, horned headpieces, and shimmering fabrics that shift like dragon hide.
In the modern day, Shaw is an observer, a storyteller, and a keeper of secrets. She moves through the Quarter like smoke, present yet untouchable. Her words carry both history and warning, layered in ways only the patient can unravel. Those who dismiss her as a performer often find themselves on the wrong side of her patience. Those who listen walk away changed. Her habits are as deliberate as her presence. She drinks her coffee black, chicory-strong, from a battered enamel pot. She writes all her research by hand before typing it, claiming the process “traps the story” in the ink. And she never travels without a small leather pouch filled with charms, dried petals, and scales. These are tokens of power, protection, and memory.