red, light, gold, and dark

MELITA

Of course, it wasn’t the luxere Melita was after. Even in her blight-hazed mind, her senses didn’t think to carve a niche, a blade, a staff, an arrow into the innocent creatures – their light beckoned across channels of heartache and strife, across menace and malice. So she laughed when the stranger waved his hands at her, beckoning and pleading for her not to shoot the glowing beasts – high-pitched, addled, diving further into the grass to untangle the notched arrow from her bow. She slung it over her shoulder at a frenzied, swift pace, whipping along the long blades and the snow as the herd dispersed all around her, joining the cavalcade, the stampede.

Did he plant the flower? Or had it been remiss in all the action? In all the fervor?

She met the closest tree, hands and feet scrambling along the bark, a hiss on her lips as she glanced over shoulder at the other man; utterly wild and savage, as if she’d been born in the woods, never domesticated, never tamed, weapons bounding against her spine. She swung up further into its boughs and canopy, clearly there, no leaves to cover her in winter’s chill, all fallen just like the rest of their souls. But away, away, away from him, her fingers like claws and her manifestation like a blade – nothing coming out of her mouth but the torrent of growls, staring down at the stranger.

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