Berehynia's Spirit

by Igor Zenin

A woman peers out from behind a birch trunk, her hair loosening into the same gold leaves and twigs the tree is dropping everywhere else, like she's mid-transformation between person and forest. Berehynia is the old Slavic spirit who guards hearth and home — here she's caught somewhere between goddess and neighbor, amused that you noticed. Mythology works best exactly like this: half-glimpsed, mostly smiling, gone before you're sure what you saw.