melita
Enjoying something simply for that sake hadn’t been on Melita’s mind in years. It hadn’t been easy to do in childhood, much less in years before now, when war was imminent over and over again. Maybe in between she’d been able to find some version of her own kind of peace, but even then, it’d been edged and lined with her favorite sort of ridiculous bedlam. Relishing the beauty of the area, rather than pondering how to ambush someone from the nearest tree, was a difficult notion initially, but she grinned back at him along the statement, let her eyes filter and flicker over the world with a more profound sentiment. To see what serenity was like. To not have to wonder over the annals of tranquility; stored and settled in remote regions and greenery and indulgence and him.
But then there were things and she scurried over alongside, curiosity maintained in the widened set of her eyes and the jubilant grin. “Not for the first one,” she hummed, wrinkling her nose and winking; figuring there’d be more and more sets of the mysterious and enigmatic quandaries to explore. As the bountiful, flaming orb of a bird hovered and granted light, she laughed at the books – hardly what either of them had likely been hoping for. “Mm. Don’t they always say knowledge is a gift?” She wouldn’t say it was better than shiny things or gold though, but she grabbed hold of one of them anyway, inspecting the spine. When it didn’t disperse or fall apart in her hands, she turned it over.
It didn’t look ancient or new; slightly weathered, a little yellowed along the paper’s edges. The title made her snort, Stormbreak’s Slums: Your Guide to Squalor, passing the tome over to Iskra should he want to keep it, before peeling over to the next one. Travel Digest: Discover the Grounds, and so forth. “I don’t know about these though.”
salvation doesn't look like light
