The Lover's Coin

Witches hold my attention. I find the archetype fascinating. Good witches. Bad witches. Hurt witches. Bog witches? I love bogs too.

It started with a few lines of folklore about bog witches: women who live where the ground turns to water, speak with the dead, help lost travelers, and guard what's buried. One line stayed with me. Bogs preserve bodies. The peat doesn't let things rot. It tans skin to leather and keeps a face, and the hands folded on a chest, for two thousand years.

So what kind of woman chooses to live beside water that keeps everything? A witch who can't let go.

The coin comes from the ferryman. The Greeks sent their dead off with a coin for Charon, who rowed them across to the other side. My witch is a ferryman at heart. Her work was moving the dead along, until it required one thing she refused to do.

A heartbroken Traveler finds his way into the bog. He comes with the opposite wish. To release his love and heartbreak.

Two opposing desires. The coin as payment holds a different meaning for each of them. Their shared grief compels her empathy, but to help him she must acknowledge suffering beyond her own and surrender something she has refused to lose.

The Lover's Coin is an animated folk tale, set in an October bog as the last light goes. Trailer below.