What really matters

It had been hunger first to rouse her -- demanding and insistent in her aching belly. The Sound's cache was fortified well, but it did not reflect upon her haggard frame -- as of late, she had felt a near neurotic compulsion to scavenge, to pilfer, to squirrel away any scrap or sustenance she came across.

And so, their cache grew -- it swelled in the manner of a bloated corpse, for it was composed of many. The brine did well to mask the scent of rot, and the cold kept the skin from turning -- and so Caiaphas, riddled by some sort of obsessive nature, replenished and replenished and replenished.

She was not far in the heart of Kinta Flatlands, though she knew not the name of it -- and with a feral intensity lacing her steps she had been stalking a pale ermine when nearby she heard the tread of another. The ermine, no less of a listener than her, was quick to tunnel in the snow -- leaving Caiaphas to search for the unwitting transgressor that had cost her another meal.