red, light, gold, and dark

MELITA

Ordinarily, Melita would’ve been drawn with delight towards the gathering of luxere – inspired by light, exuberant and wild for the insinuations of grandeur and opulence, scratching behind their ears, humming a song beneath her breath. It would’ve been grand, to experience their gentle natures all over again.

Except that wasn’t who she was now – bestial and barbaric, twisted and turned, a sizzling, smoldering little blade with fire in her heart and madness in her mind; an onyx, Stygian, sable contortion of pestilence and disease curling its way through her frame. She hunted instead of rejoiced. She craved instead of danced. She growled instead of humming. It was bestial and wild, things she’d dreamed of since she was little, pretending to be a monster in the sea, but now it wasn’t of her own volition, now she couldn’t experience the menace and malice of power – it was just frenzied stirring, multitudes of mayhem brushing and smoldering her in waves. Clarity, understanding, and comprehension was gone – all the sweetened, jovial bliss captured, cloistered, locked away; an acrimonious shell, sizzling from the inside out.

She followed the luxere though, making her pathways in more silence than she’d ever executed in normal, everyday things; not raucous, not howling in a clambering din, slithering, slithering, slithering, a snake in the snow, in the grass, haunting and fervent for the fray. Her staff was in her grasp, fingers tight and taut over its rim, bow bracelet armed along her wrist, fiery quiver on her back, feet still void of shoes, as if she couldn’t feel the cold beneath them. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe there was nothing left in her for senses, for schemes, for anything other than a malicious spin and spill – her eyes following and tracking the man with the enlightened deer, crouching nearby, beneath waves of grass and snow, as he kneeled.

The girl made a drawing formation; muscle memory at its finest, Arduinna’s gift not used for good now, and the bow appeared in her hands, the string taut as she grabbed hold of an arrow embellished in flames, notched its pinnacle, and waited.

She's so hard to please
But she's a forest fire