Sedge

Sedge

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Sedge is a wetlands ecologist, who has devoted her life to studying swamp plants. The kinds of plants that grow in and around swamp water, that’s what Sedge is interested in — the muddier and slimier, the better. She never minds getting wet, and in fact loves getting wet and muddy, especially for the sake of her research.

But if Sedge loves the swamps so much, what is she doing in the desert? Well, Sedge has a problem, a very serious problem for any sort of ecologist. Sedge is terrified of small creatures. Frogs, snakes, bugs, salamanders, voles, fish — things that she’ll find no end of in the swamps. Anything around that size that squirms and wiggles and crawls and hops; all of it makes her gag. Frogs are the worst, but nothing else is much better.

So Sedge stays in the Shifting Expanse to stay as far away from the swamps as she can. She’s not a very good ecologist, overall, since she refuses to go out into the field, and in fact chooses to actively avoid it. She wishes she could go into the field, and daydreams about rolling in the mud and gathering slimy cattails and lilypads, but her fear gets the better of her, and she stubbornly stays where she is.

Mostly, all Sedge does is gather and regurgitate information from what other wetlands ecologists have published. The most innovate thing she’s done is interview Bogwash about his experiences living in the swamp, and even so, Bogwash is such a unique character that she can’t really use his stories anyway. She also tends to the swamp plants she has gathered — by purchasing them off of other ecologists — in the tiny pots and terrariums she has built and carefully curates for them.

Setham and Areta seem to have picked up on Sedge’s fears, and actively use them against her. To them, it’s nothing more than lighthearted and fun teasing, but to Sedge, waking up in the middle of the night to find a frog next to her on her pillow is the most harrowing experience of her life.