it comes with a price

MELITA

What she believed she’d willingly gave up, simply returned.

As if years hadn’t taken place between childhood horrors and youthful bounding, away, away, away from the clarity of torture, it returned with full vitriol in the wake of her slumber. There was nothing to be done except to suffer in its torturous depths: waves of ghostly plumes and ethers, her mother’s hands clasped over her throat, the gasping, breathless wanton sear and surge of her lungs, her own nails clawing into naught, naught, naught, staring into empty eyes –

And when the honeybee girl awakened in a great rush of air and sobs, her hands balled into fists, sweat layered and drenched across her nightgown. “I thought-” she murmured, quietly, to herself, despite Fangorn nestled at her side, overwrought with gentle hisses and concern.

Then, try as she might to return to the abyss of gentle lulls and the roll of waves outside her window, it came again and again, a great, grand surge of horror meant to bury her beneath the sanctity of treacheries, of a woman who’d been gentle and kind and good, that the Rift ruined in her memories.

Eventually, she ceased entirely, rising and changing, then charging out into the depths of barely-morning, the dawn curling over currents, the sand soft beneath her bare feet. Fangorn could barely keep up with her motions, as fervent as they were. She was desperate for a weapon in her hands as she stalked across the grounds, as she pierced over the quiet interludes with her ferocity, with her agony, expecting bruises to be laced around her neck, brushing over skin. Except the quiver usually accompanying her back was gone, and she could only gnash her teeth, tighten her jaw, and grab a rock and hurl it into the sea.

You're all gonna watch me
Disappear into the sun