Big Salmon Lake i've been catching all your ghosts for every season

set midweek. vaguey-vague on other things. body found with permission.  

all of it, was no go.

every attempt to return home was rewarded by some knife-like twist of fate. the valley road caved in, the maplewood reduced to rubble. the road she had taken many times, from the tiaga coast-ward, was belching malevolent choking ash and wildfire.

still caiaphas attempted, plotting now a route entirely eastward. a route that would have in past years, been nonsensically long -- but with the terrace come to ruins and the moraine splintered by impassible pines, it seemed her only option.

she followed a river, which then bled in an inlet. coursing its length and supping from the crystalline waters, caiaphas detected once more the troubling scent of death. all around her, it seemed -- no matter where she went, decay seemed to follow.

the wind swerved, and another ripe gust billowed over her.

caiaphas found the river feeding tribute to a rocky lake's shore. here the scent seemed thickest -- after a moment's pause caiaphas spied among the rocks a dark and sodden form still save for the lap of water which serenely spilled over it.

her singular ear swept forward as she prowled around the toothy pit of stones, where the water was shallow and fouled. the form gradually lent itself clarity -- there, lurking in the byzantine glitter of shallow water, lurked the contorted muzzle of a face caiaphas well knew.

"vercingetorix."

her voice hissed into the quiet air -- somewhere above, a flutter of duck taking wing.

caiaphas stole a look around her -- a dismal place to die, if any. the shores were battered and cold, and mist crept in like loneliness on all fronts. no other scent did she detect, save putrid water and rotted flesh. he was not freshly killed, yet his recent demise was absolute -- a blackened gout of oily blood and viscera matted still to his gouged stomach.

this was not the end caiaphas had hoped for vercingetorix, though a smile graced her savage jaws to learn someone else had finished what she had never possessed the good fortune to finish. one down, how many enemies to go?  caiaphas only wished she could learn of the beast that sundered her enemy -- either to deliver that creature gilded thanks, or kill it.

whatever end vercingetorix had been given, caiaphas thought he fully deserved it -- had she a cock she would have lifted her leg, and pissed on his watery parade. she probably could have managed without, but she didn't want to get her feet wet.

"i'm always disappointed when i find out there's a party and no one invited me." the crone mocked into the grey morning, a ghostly laugh passing silvery through her parted lips. oh, vercingetorix -- mouthed your way into an ugly end, didn't you?

she stared at the fallen man's frame a moment longer, mourning her loss of vengeance and yet, exalted. she didn't care to keep company with the dead, but as the hours pressed on caiaphas found herself lingering along the southern banks where the water was yet uncontaminated, and fish eyed her warily from the shallows.