MELITA
She spent the first layers of fall stoking the finery of her precision, lacquering her steps in a careful toe-heel step, quiet and dulcet, hushed and vacant, as if she were never there, a wisp of smoke, the curl of a leaf, down into the press of shadows. Perhaps this was one of her more difficult tasks, because she preferred everything down loudly, with feeling, with fervency, with the right amount of ruckus and havoc, upheaval in the finest of moments. But the youth inhaled sharply, taut and rigid, could feel the gentle slide of her bones and limbs across the gravel roads and the darkened ground. She slid her staff carefully, despite its crack and bruised contortions, over the top of her head, attempting a soundless, muted motion, pretending the enemy was crouched in front of her, unaware of her presence. Then, on a restless endeavor, she leapt, crashing back into the ground as she drove her staff downward, as if to bombard her adversary’s skull with a barrage of pain.Then she stepped back, flickering her gaze to her companion, waiting in the wings. “What do you think? I thought that exceeded last time.”
The vampire gourd gave as best a shrug he could entail, with no shoulders or limbs to speak of. The youth tilted her mouth into a slight frown, crossing her arms, staff sticking out of their formation. “Could you do any better?” The youth arched her brow, watched as the pumpkin narrowed his eerie eyes into an indifferent expression. Apparently, he could, though Fangorn’s experiences before meeting the honeybee youth had been one of complete, utter survival, not unlike herself, except his had been about hiding, not casting themselves out into the world with disastrous grins and chasing down monsters.
But she took his hint - again - taking a different path, intertwining the staff as an extension of her arm, and whipping it out to the side as fast as she could; then, like Wessex had shown her, in a circle, rotating it from hand to hand, not as quickly, but perhaps much more efficiently than her last practice.
See I've come to burn your kingdom down
