She Who Carries / She Who Leaves Something Behind
Filed under: Mirecourt Entities | Sentient Emotive Parasites | Ritual-Class Spirits
Taxonomic Reference: Sentioform Apparitionis
Alias: Mire Saint, The Marsh Bride, The Weight-Taker
Contributor: FDG Field Archivist No. 5
Last updated: May 2025
Overview
To some, she appears as a blessing. To others, a thief in veils.
The Grief-Eater is a semi-corporeal, emotion-reactive entity known to haunt the border between death and memory. Always half-seen, always wet, she offers relief to the bereaved—not through healing, but through removal.
What she takes is sorrow.
What she leaves is absence—and something else.
Appearance
- Form: A tall, shrouded feminine figure, often half-submerged in marsh water, mire-ice, or flooded graves.
- Veils: Trails of liquid funeral gauze, constantly weeping downward like veils made of black water. May ripple in unseen tides.
- Eye: Only one eye is ever visible—luminous, pale-gold, like a sun glimpsed under ice. Stares without blinking.
- Hands: Long, tapering fingers woven from reeds, nettle-vein, and cattail-thread, often stained with algae or sorrow residue.
- Voice: Rarely speaks aloud. When it does, it sounds like breath across wet stone, or a choir remembering something unsung.
She never moves quickly. She simply arrives—at the edge of fields, in misted graveyards, behind curtains when no one is looking.
Behaviour and Predation
- Drawn to Grief:
The Grief-Eater is a grief-symbiote. It is attracted to fresh, unresolved sorrow—especially following:- sudden death
- unspoken final words
- children lost or unnamed
- water-related burial or drowning
- The Offer:
She speaks only one phrase: “Shall I carry the weight for a while?”
If accepted, the bereaved immediately forgets the deceased—often with no memory that the person ever existed.
However, the grief is not destroyed. It is simply relocated:- into another person nearby, sometimes a child or stranger
- into a place—a room, a pond, a church, a keepsake
The emotional pressure eventually manifests through: - haunting
- compulsive weeping
- intrusive memories of strangers
- emotional collapse with no known cause
- Refusal Consequence:
Those who refuse the offer may still be marked—reporting dreams of being weighed down, or losing reflections near water.
Documented Earth Interactions
Cooling Church Case (1999–2005):
A grief-seed was believed to be left in the chancel of Cooling Church following a confirmed manifestation.
Reported symptoms among visitors included:
- spontaneous weeping
- recovered memories of estranged relatives
- feeling they were “attending a funeral that hadn’t happened yet”
A containment attempt in 1999 failed when the binding circle drawn in salt and iron was eroded by rising tidewater. The Grief-Eater vanished before second containment could be established. Residual effects continued until the floor was relaid in 2006.
Folklore and Signs
- Mire Saint Offerings:
Some marsh dwellers leave offerings (bells, torn veils, child’s shoes) at drowned crossroads, hoping she will take their sorrow.
It is unclear whether she ever returns it. - Window Wail:
Her silhouette may appear behind windows during rain. If you speak to her, you may forget who the room belonged to. - Flooded Ring Ritual:
Legends describe a practice of standing in a ring of floodwater with a personal item from the deceased. If she arrives, you must ask nothing, say nothing, and look only at her hands. If she reaches out, you must not take it.
Summary for Field Operatives
| Trait | Detail |
|---|---|
| Threat Level | Moderate. Non-lethal but emotionally destabilizing. Capable of displacing grief in destructive ways. |
| Signs of Presence | Persistent damp in dry spaces, sudden forgetting, appearance of a single golden eye in reflections |
| Containment Risk | High. Entity is water-mobile and resists binding by traditional means. |
| Engagement Advice | Do not accept the offer. Anchor your identity with a grief journal. If a grief-seed is suspected, isolate the item or location and record all emotional anomalies within 24 hours. Whispered permission rituals may inadvertently re-invite her—use extreme caution.** |
Quote from Field Report #245 (Cooling):
“She was there in the mist just beyond the churchyard wall. I couldn’t see her face, just the veils dripping into the earth. She didn’t walk—she leaned forward like the weight of something she wasn’t carrying anymore.
When she asked if I wanted her to take it, I said yes. I slept like I hadn’t in years.
But I found my son crying the next morning.
He didn’t know why.”
—Anonymous witness, Cooling Marsh
Faylinn Defence Group 