The Bog Witch lived in a house made of a million twisted mangrove roots, floating from place to place on a sea of grass and water that stretched from sea to inland jungle. Her hands were leathery, made dry and tough by the acidic waters until they seemed more like gloved bones than flesh. Her face was never seen, hidden behind a wooden mask that portrayed a different animal every day, but her eyes glowed green like twin will-o-wisps on a foggy night. When she spoke, her words oozed with the layers of the swamp: earth and water mixing together into something thick and dark and exquisitely smooth. Her clothes, woven of thick sphagnum moss and poisonous flowers, never seemed to rot. They gave her the smell of living, growing things.

No ordinary town could be built on the marsh without sinking, no mortal even entered the reeds and grasses without fear of insect-borne death, but the Bog Witch was not alone. She had two familiars who kept her company as her home drifted: an alligator and a crocodile. The crocodile, a scaly brute called Glaive, had a brain approximately the size of a mosquito. The alligator, known affectionately as Kelly, was a menace. She loved to tease and bite him, then swim away before he could catch her. This made him terribly angry, but because he couldn't do anything about it, he had to live with the constant annoyance. The Witch tolerated their antics because they kept the other beasts of the swamp away.

One day, she brewed a new potion. She started by drawing muck from the bottom of the marsh and filtering it through the leaves of a thirteen-foot coconut palm, letting it drip into her cauldron carved from the shell of a giant snapping turtle. She fueled the fire with dry grass and dung, adding a bit of pepper in hopes it would give the potion a spicy kick. Then she mixed in wasp eyes and spider legs, chanting in the old language of the whispering waters as she stirred.

Outside, in the water, Kelly bit Glaive in the tail and swam quickly away, her green scales blending into the algae as she made her escape. The crocodile thrashed his powerful claws around, trying to catch her, and the Witch ran outside to see what the commotion was about. Seeing it was nothing but the usual, she turned back to her work a moment later.

But a moment was all it took for Kelly to jump into the mangrove hut. She smelled the spicy pepper in the brew and wanted to try some. The alligator waddled up to the turtle-shell cauldron and dipped her pointed snout in the potion, lapping it up.

The Bog Witch gasped. "What have you done, my darling?" With a flash of green light, Kelly's body convulsed and twitched, then began to shrink. The alligator roared in shock, but the mighty bellow came out as only a squeak. She didn't stop shrinking until she was only twelve inches long, the size of a green lizard!

Glaive roared with delight that his rival, held much in contempt, had become small enough to swallow in one bite. Kelly yelped and leaped into the water as he lurched towards her. Legend has it that the tiny alligator was never seen again.