[DROP] perchance, to dream

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Suddenly there were so many others, and almost not at all; Melita could feel herself swallow down multitudes but it left her with naught but the epitome of confusion and drowning. But there was no surface and no end, especially when she found herself caught in the creature’s gaze – and she froze, wide-eyed and bewildered, lured by the sanctity of its strange likeness.

Because there was desert and gold, ancient lands that pressed back into her, as foreign and familiar as the day she’d been born in its threshold, and she would’ve reached out for the metallic reaches and the promises of dragons against throats, had it not been split apart altogether. She thought about screaming, but the sound wouldn’t escape from her lungs, uncertain if it was fear or nostalgia or combinations she couldn’t discern, couldn’t shake, friend and foe features pressing together. She couldn’t tell who was who or what was what, and as it rushed at her she made to duck – though it didn’t matter.

An explosion of sand swallowed it whole, and like she’d been torn apart too, she awakened with a partial outcry and a harsh gasp, hand clutching a pouch, eyes darting back and forth, hearing her name. “Sorry, sorry,” she apologized for succumbing to something she couldn’t describe, glancing around her uncle’s dome and taking a deep breath. “Could you see that shit?”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun