[SE] the family business

Melita

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles

Her eyes widened significantly at the mention of seeing who was infected – like somehow he’d had his own detector mechanisms built in. “Is it – like, what do you see?” She tried to make her voice a whisper, but she was leaning her frame so far forward in the chair that the thing had begun to creak under her movements, threatening to fly out from underneath her. What was more horrifying than being under the Family’s thumb? "Can you tell if someone is from the Family or not too?"

If he couldn’t sleep…couldn’t stand to be around them…now his skulking appearance around the Festival of Lights made sense. There’d been someone there, in the midst, struck with the sickness.

and shards of glass
I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me