Bearclaw Valley god, oh my god, exactly how you've been?

delirium crept over caiaphas, spreading through every channel of her mind like the blight of some alien hive. her mind was afire, her focus smoldering in and out. her vision seemed overcome with patchwork blackness that eddied and swirled like a memory -- a memory of a circular pool glowing iridescent blue in inevitable darkness (where??).

her thoughts were fragile as thin little strings; any thread of cognizance she examined seemed to wither the moment her attention focused upon it. it was as if mustering thought was enough to break the thin spider-webbings of clarity in her mind. she was left holding these tenebrous filaments as they fled, where her thoughts became scattered as buckshot -- a constant whirling constellation of confusion and interminable space. nothing stirring, and no life breaking from the vast emptiness.

had she been thinking, when she came to? it seemed fire was belching from her ears, her brain bleeding hot and profusely from every orifice. a magnificent vision of a blackened specter rose to her sights -- the looming, rotted shape of  --

her eyes widened in horror, the hoarfrost film encapsulating her gaze briefly lifting as if her sight was restored  --

"kevlyn," caiaphas croaked, her rheumy eyes filled by unseeing light. she staggered, her atrophied hind end falling to the snow.  her son, her boy -- the only child of hers to never betray her -- stood before her like a sentinel to the gateways of hell, where she was surely going.

he looked as she remembered him, both in life and death. around his neck like a blackened tourniquet hung the choking scar that had bled him of his life. the scar looked blistering and raw and alive, with scarlet effusion dribbling from the slash's gape.

and yet he stood with turquoise eyes blazing, blood dried to his chest. caiaphas' eyes widened, pulling apart the sickly crust that flecked her lids. there was one feature -- one glaring minutiae that disconnected the mirage's veracity as her son truly reawoken.

his silvered fur was in rotted disarray.

she knew it must not be true, and yet, it must be. her son, returned from the grave at the time she needed him most. all lost could be forgiven, his death could be forgotten -- "k-kevlyn," she stuttered again, crawling now towards the apparition, her hind end dragging in deranged angulation behind her. a sob of something - overwhelming grief, possibly - clogged her throat as she neared her felled boy, her only boy that had never left her side --

he had been here all along, caiaphas was sure of it. his form wavered, but in her delirium caiaphas hardly noticed. at his feet, the crone wept until the vessels within her silver-yellow gaze cracked. she wept until saliva poured profusely from her gibbering tongue, and her skin jerked and rolled and her eyes quivered in sightless bloodshot fury.

and it was then that crone's last vestige of self-control slipped, and she was made apparent for what she truly was;
a dead wolf walking.