MELITA
In the haze of her addled, entangled mind, within webs of anger, hostility, and acrimony, she remembered a promise she’d made.Days ago – between infirmary disciples and sickened chambers, trembling hands that hadn’t yet become claws, quivering, shaking multitudes that had yet to spring true talons – to make her way down to the Spire’s basement, along rocks and crag, to snag whatever strange substances were left, to assist in whatever research could remain from poking and plucking at sludge.
She’d awakened to onyx blood on her pillow, funneling down from her nose, stinging the inside of her eyelids; had screamed into her blankets and furs, had cried ink-black tears, had alarmed Fangorn until he was just one more restless, fervent wake in her presence.
Then she lifted her gilded gaze out through the windows, towards the sun, and there was no thought, no processing, no reasoning for the madness creeping, crawling through her movements – limbs working like pistons, all on their own, rampaging out the door with only a bag on her arm. She was still in her nightgown, without shoes, tramping down the lanes towards the blackened monolith as if it were a beacon. Fangorn was at her heels, growling and hissing, and she couldn’t hear his warnings, his beckoning calls, spiraling in her insistence, a promise, a promise, a promise her heart sang while her skull revolted.
And when she came to its ire, to its presence, her feet already raw and red, she must’ve looked no more than a disturbed child, crimson locks like fire, blistering around her shoulders, no fear, no trepidation, nothing, nothing, nothing at all in her being but a slow, simmering, bestial inferno.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Give the bruises out like gifts
