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.

sneaks in here. also staying vague!

He follows Caiaphas's scent on a whim, curious about the aging woman and somewhat tired of dealing with his husband's temper. The opportunity for a moment away is simply too tempting to resist, no matter how reluctant he is to leave his ward behind. So he trails after her, his own pace leisurely, knowing he will eventually catch up to her; in her state, it's unlikely he'd simply lose her trail.
The last thing he expects is to find her in the company of a corpse, though. A familiar corpse. His stomach twists slightly as he draws up alongside the woman, chuffing well before he nears her to announce his presence. His gaze remains trained on the body of the man he'd briefly known as Vercingetorix, expression unreadable. What was he to you? He asks after several long moments, gaze flitting to Caiaphas. It is only the first of many questions, but it is a start.

gasps YAAAS

before long she is joined by the slender man that wryly, might very well have been her savior. caiaphas' gaze flitted to the stormclouded male, seeking brief eye-contact with his unclouded eye before she doled out a rough shrug. "an enemy." caiaphas said pointedly, though disappointment rubbed crudely in her tone. she had not seen him to his end -- and how she had looked forward, many nights, to being there.

"and now he's dead." the statement was delivered with such a sudden turn of noncommittal energy that caiaphas might have given alarian whiplash. she turned her gnarled muzzle sideways, studying the form and its grotesque gash along the underflank. it looked as if she was to comment on vercingetorix further, but once again caiaphas abruptly switched fuses: "where did you go, when you left rusalka?"

Her answer is rather dissatisfying to him, but he decides not to question her further for now. Something about the woman makes him think he ought to tread with caution if he wants to gain her favor, and while he isn't certain why he wants it, he knows he does. So he bites his tongue, instead focusing on the question presented to him. Something like disdain flashes across his features as he considers it, though it is not directed at Caiaphas.
A pack called The Melonii, He answers after a moment, gaze drifting back to the corpse. My pigheaded husband's family. I didn't want to leave, but he was adamant. A pause, barely a breath. It was a load of shit, though. The leaders uprooted the pack to claim some forest already inhabited by another pack — Blackfeather Woods, if it matters — and failed, right at the tail end of the matriarch's pregnancy. The pack crumbled after a few months in a 'temporary' home. He lets out a breath, feeling a little lighter for finally having expressed his discontent. The situation had thrown him into such a deep depression he'd almost lost himself, and now all he can feel is resentment.
I don't let my husband make the decisions anymore, He adds after a few moments, joking but serious all the same, and glances back to Caiaphas. His tone loses the note of humor with his next words, taking on a tentatively hopeful note: Is Rusalka still around?

cameo! she's just making tiny cow noises @ the water's edge a while away

(first time ever writing @ character death who's been involved w mine, sorry for any clunkiness)

Quiet.

Stars, eyeless; moon, mouthless;
through the gloaming did the stricken step, hushed and heavy-lashed; haunted this eve, as the ghost watch had hailed. 

What was this? This
treading
down shorn cheeks? The
salt
at the seam of lips? This
quivering
in half-misted mind? The
hollowed
hallowing of refracted heart?

what have the waters taken from me?

And so Aurëwen-nevermore stood;
a doe unguarded; never to understand what these tears are for;
yet, come to mourn; 
and this duet of crone, of company went unseen, unheard.

Low was the private, sonorous lament;
heart-keening for once-lover, never-lover
t h e y    h a t e    y o u
( never-mother, neverloveher )
&    s o    d o    i
as the unFaded shreds of her olden soul savaged.

g i v e     u p    o n    m e
Andraste, possessed;
( Hosh daun, bounkola ... )
heeding; wilting.

Quiet.

as it turned out, alarian had far more to share than caiaphas. she listened with a quirked ear -- a singular ear -- to all he expounded upon, taking particular interest in the affairs of blackfeather. she had never forgotten their failure to uphold their end of the vow -- and if she ever came across a melonii cub...

well...

"you should never let men make the decisions for you, dear." intoned the siren queen gravely; once matriarch, always man-hating matriarch. her gaze had slid down the bank, where a diluted form of white appeared. the warbling noise that sounded from her mouth seemed akin to a mourner's keen -- caiaphas recognized aurewen with a faint quirk of her lips. "rusalka is alive -- and drageda.." caiaphas glanced to vercingetorix, gored and bled dry among the embankment. "dead."

there was not much more to say; caiaphas' gaze cut hard to andraste, the ghost that had lingered many times now nearby. had she the energy she might have put the dove out of her misery then -- but she supposed in the end, seeing those you love dissolve into death was a grander kind of suffering than being killed.