SwingLith
Name: Rù (Jiaru Li)
Loric Site
Sacred Tree Debris, Beddington Park, Sutton
Lore specs.
SwingLith is an amphibian loric being, bearing the skin and webbed paws of a frog and the long tail of a monkey.
It shapeshifts overnight from a dead alder root, its life extinguished by waterlogged, oxygen-poor soil.
Its translucent membrane renders it invisible beneath the water. A nocturnal aquatic herbivore, SwingLith hides among reed beds, carrying seeds between them as it passes.
It cares for patches of water crowfoot and watercress along the chalk-stream bed, keeping their stems from twisting into one another.
As temperatures rise over the decades,
SwingLith begins leaping from the water to hang by its tail from the branches above.
Swinging through the warm air,
it evaporates water from its membrane to cool itself and the stream below.
When the air dries,
it dives back into the water,
carrying oxygen gathered from the air and releasing it into the stream.
SwingLith returns oxygen to the gravel beds where trout lay their eggs.
In groups, they swim in steady patterns through the stream, stirring the water and helping to restore oxygen where the flow has weakened.
Born from an alder root, SwingLith returns to wood debris in death.
Through rapid dehydration, its body shrinks and hardens, slowly taking back the shape of the root from which it first emerged.
The accumulation of wood debris marks a sacred site along the chalk stream, where living spirits are believed to dwell within dead wood.
Here, the debris is left undisturbed, awaiting decomposition and its return to the soil.
[RISING STREAM TEMPERATURES]
[The Wandle rises from chalk springs at around 11°C, but its water warms as it flows downstream.
At Beddington Park, Environment Agency monitoring recorded an average water temperature of 11.7°C and a maximum of 18.3°C between 1998 and 2009.
Looking ahead, the Environment Agency projects that the warmest-month temperature of English chalk streams could rise by around 0.6°C per decade under a high-emissions scenario, with the Wandle among the chalk streams around London projected to experience the highest increases.]
[low summer flows]
[heatwaves]
[sewage discharge]
[NO FLOW, NO OXYGEN]
[When river flow is reduced or becomes stagnant, less oxygen is replenished in the water.
Warmer water also holds less dissolved oxygen, intensifying the stress on aquatic life. The Environment Agency identifies low dissolved oxygen as a major cause of fish mortality, while its observations of chalk streams during drought have recorded fish at risk where low flows coincide with depleted oxygen levels.]
[abstraction]
[engineered flow]
[drought]
[Alive Riverbed]
[Trout depend on flowing water and clean gravel beds throughout their early life.
Eggs are laid between gravel stones, where continuous flow carries oxygen-rich water through the gaps. When flow weakens, sediment can settle into the gravel, reducing oxygen exchange and threatening the developing eggs.]
[WOOD DEBRIS AS HABITAT AND FLOOD REGULATOR]
[Woody debris is part of a healthy chalk stream.
Fallen branches and roots create shelter for fish and aquatic invertebrates, while changing the local flow and forming small variations in depth and habitat.
Woody debris can help manage floods by slowing high flows and holding water within the river and floodplain, allowing water to move through the landscape more gradually.]
[flood management]
[habitat]
[life cycle]
© LORE 2026