When immersed into a favourable solvent, many bres, in particular vegetable, wood or animal bres, will absorb liquid and swell. When a single drop of solvent is deposited, the bre rst locally swells at the drop position, then the liquid slowly di uses within the bre. We study the absorption dynamics of several drops placed on a bre o xed length. We show that during absorption, there is a swellinginduced global change in the tension of the bre. If the drops are close enough to one another, this change induces the release o uid out of the bre (i.e. deswelling) in previously uid-saturated regions. We identify the mechanisms underlying this transient localized uid release, and identify the conditions for which it occurs in order to build a phase diagram as a function of the drops volume and distance, both experimentally and numerically using a linear poroelastic model.