MELITA
Amalia’s weaponry compromised and composed the broadest smile Melita could maintain, as if lingering from the heavens, ambrosial and vivid. “A staff?! Me too!” Her excitement pulsed and pervaded, louder and louder, forgetting she should be hushed amidst the clamor of these woods, when anything and everything could be watching. “I have a bow. And sometimes I just use whatever’s at my disposal, like rocks and things.” The staff had always been her favorite because she’d been able to whittle one from broken tree limbs and crashed boughs, always available, within her hands, driving straight into jaws and skulls with maddening ease, a long extension of her rage and voracity. She’d never been able to get her hands on a sword: but the notion was a compassionate thing, yearning to grab hold of whatever she could, learning, contemplating, experimenting with what she could utilize to become more powerful, what she could apply and wield to better protect her brethren. “We should train sometime!” She winked, glowing and barbaric, twisting and turning the plait-work in her hands with a renewed vigor. Even as Amalia’s soft, dulcet apologies came across, they couldn’t polish away Melita’s resurgence. “It’s all right,” she murmured back, fingers quicker now, on the edge, on the fringe, of something better and brighter. “It’s not your fault.” A sudden boldness ran over her, chiseled, refined, torched, and she might’ve been a flame along that threshold, jaw clenched and then loosened, the smile disappearing, then re-emerging, eyes staring into the space of stardust and vampire gourd hisses, then settling back on her basket, becoming something other than molded catastrophe in her wake. Just like everything else: eventually, she’d become something too. “I wasn’t strong enough. Or fast enough.” It was a constant shade over her stare, but not now, not when it was scathing and coiling, deep in the denizens of her heart. “But I will be.” Her gaze settled on Amalia’s with that same illustrious grin, not wicked or callous, not regretful or mournful, something between heavenly and unholy, corded and wrapped in the middle, waiting for the right time to strike.
Perhaps that will make her a demon queen, lush and in the wood with her monstrous sister Amalia, and they’ll share the broken paths together, sculpting and carving new emblems and memories in the dust. Her laughter rang, high and lilting, a bewitching, alluring sort of craft, missing the way the baker flinched at her words: maybe they were too haunting, too desperate, or already too forsaken. “They’ll tell legends of us: the great beasts of the trees!”
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight
