A Ghost Story: A Dragon Tale

[aisu]

"Did you see it last night?" one woman whispers to the other, watching the milling people as they rush past-- no one wants to stay in the streets long, these days. Not longer than they need to, and yet two have paused to converse. Quickly. Quietly. A door's frame shields and protects them, the awning that leans over them ruffling to disrupt the words.

"It? You mean her!" cries the other, her face going pale and her hand going to her child's head. The lad continues to tug the splinter that is coming loose from his wooden toy duck. "Bless us all, why must something else appear in these times?"

"I hear that she was a victim-- one of those killed-- her dress is stained in her own blood," the first matron continues, eyes going wide.

"No, that's not right! It's blood from her beloved husband! Killed by those beasts!" the other declares as boldly as her first statement. Their squabble continues, overheard by another passing. Soon, he joins the argument-- and others, as well. It would, of course, eventually disperse with no one feeling any the wiser or more certain of anything except for this: Something stalks the lake shores.

No victims [real victims] have been claimed, though stories have popped up recently of my-neighbor's-cousin's-young-wife's-elder-sister-'s-husband saw her and she stold from him his blood and his soul. Such stories are being used as bedtime stories to scare children, to keep them close to the town and home along with the latest tales of Drow murders and suspicious suicides, but how much truth is there to it?

Is there a ghost walking the shores of the Silver Lake?

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Every night, now, there has been a figure hovering along the shore of the lake. It is of a decidedly femenine cast-- a softly curved form clad in shining white by the stories told. Sometimes, at least. Other tales claim that she walks in all red, her gown turned bloody by some murderous tragedy. But she is there, every night, walking.

One witness claimed to have seen her with a sleek, silver fox that glowed like a lantern. Another claimed that she was the fox, waiting to entrap a victim and steal away their soul. A final version claims the fox to be her silver-haired husband-lover-brother-friend-- trapped by a sorcerer and free only when the moon is freed for the night. All in all, it was such nonsense! Such silliness!

There couldn't be any real merit to the rumors, could there?

At night when she appears, and she always does, there is no melodramatic wailing as with other ghosts, no rattling chains or hell-born screams. Just the quiet of the wind and a red-splashed gown that defies it.

None dare approach her for fear of those stories; even the guard have taken to skirting the lake during the hours in which they say she walks-- always early evening, when the sun has just vanished. Always again as the sun begins to pinken the horizon-- but always gone as if she'd not even been there. Without a word, without a sound, her body merely melts into the air, gone from the bank.

Is there a ghost walking the shores of the Silver Lake?