it comes with a price

MELITA

His words echoed and reverberated under her skin, and she nodded swiftly, quickly, to undermine the brimming of tears again. She wasn’t certain what could’ve sparked them this time; but it’d been a long while, before Sunjata, where anyone had ever really thought to take care, to bother with her. Wessex had in her own way, but they hadn’t been family, and the mentorship broke apart when the blight rippled and scarred her heart. “Right,” she bristled and hastened back, and maybe that was enough of a promise, a formidable smile there, a strength in the planted fists, and then the subsequent rampage to the ocean.

Melita could hear his inquiry, but always preferred a show, rather than just tell, contortion to her antics. Poor Fangorn eventually caught up to both in their swift proportions, gasping, wheezing, and growling in the dunes, and she laughed, laughed, laughed, expressed more joy than she’d awakened with. As Nate rambled into the surf, she pressed one foot along the surface, not sinking, not delving, not diving into the veneer, but above, walking upon the reel of surf, shoal, and tempestuous waves, at home in its essence, in gliding along its boundaries, in beholding its power. The smirk, the impish platitudes returned, an arch to her brow as if to say see?, not indicating the mark of her enchantments wrapped around her ankle, in beaded and bountiful charms of the Naiad.

Then she ran; an exuberant exultation; all at once a wild, vicious, savage thing racing across edges and might, always skimming over its predilections, its might, its menace, intending to embark her way towards the rose-hued dolphins.

You're all gonna watch me
Disappear into the sun