The Woman Who Cried Crocodile Tears

Once upon a time, in a land that smelled faintly of salt and secrets, there lived a woman who cried crocodile tears.

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They weren’t like ordinary tears - hers were thick and silvery, falling heavily down her cheeks like drops of mercury. Whenever they hit the ground, they hissed softly, as if whispering something no one could quite hear.

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People in her village said she was cursed.
“Beware,” they would whisper. “Her sorrow isn’t real. She weeps to deceive.”
But no one ever asked her why she cried.

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The woman, whose name was Liora, lived in a crooked little house by the marsh where the moonlight wove ribbons through the mist. She had long ago stopped trying to convince people that her tears were not false. Because in truth, she wasn’t sure herself anymore.

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Her tears came at strange times - when she watched a bird take flight, when she felt the sun on her neck, when someone looked at her too kindly. She didn’t feel sad, yet her eyes would flood and her body would shake. The tears seemed to belong to someone else, someone trapped inside her skin.

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One night, a traveler knocked on her door. He was a collector of rare things - odd stones, old stories, broken hearts. He had heard of her tears and wanted to see one for himself.
Liora, weary and half-ashamed, agreed.

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When she wept before him, he caught one tear in a glass vial. The drop shimmered like a living thing. He held it up to the lamplight and gasped.
“There’s something inside,” he whispered.

Through the glass, they saw a shadow shifting - something ancient, scaled not with skin but with memory. It was the shape of all the grief she had swallowed, all the rage she had silenced, moving restlessly beneath the surface. It wasn’t monstrous - it was alive.

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“This is no curse,” said the traveler. “This is a spell of protection. You carry within you the beasts you never let loose.”

And Liora understood.

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All her life, she had swallowed her anger, her hunger, her grief, her wildness - all the parts the world told her to hide. They had grown inside her, scaling and clawed, until they found a way out through her tears.

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That night, when the traveler left, she went to the marsh. Under the full moon, she let herself cry - not the small, silent weeping of shame, but a storm of tears that shimmered and hissed as they fell. From each tear, a dark shape slithered into the water - not beast nor shadow, but the weight of everything she had carried. The marsh accepted it without judgment.

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She watched the ripples spread, feeling something vast and ancient rise within her. For the first time, her face was wet not with tears of sorrow, but with rain - soft, clean, and human.

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The next morning, the marsh was still, and Liora’s eyes were dry. But when she smiled, the corners of her mouth gleamed faintly silver, as if a trace of her old tears still lived there - a reminder that even the fiercest pain, when released, can become its own kind of beauty.

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And from that day on, no one called her cursed again.
They called her the woman, who set her monsters free.