Melita
they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive
of the women they burned alive
Simple thoughts made for simple walks, reaching across familiar boundaries and lines, joining the sand and dunes before the sun truly traced and touched and glorified; bare feet gliding over its wake – but nothing was really ever as it seemed.
She heard light laughter at first – soft, genuine, warm. It wove around her ears and perfected the art of intangibility, racing into the skyline, across the sunrise, along the horizon, until she thought she might’ve been able to reach out and touch it. For once, the youth stilled entirely – a predator on guard, every muscle in her body honed for motion, but frozen in its elements, startled, bewildered, taken in by the mellifluous noise. Her gilded gaze took in the pool, the barely rippling depths, the familiar outline of the rocks and embankment. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Except then she could hear it again, the chimes well and alive and a real as the days spent in childhood, chasing down bees and butterflies, laughing into the wind, wild, free, chaotic, and her sister, her sister, wonderful, dignified, and poised in the wildflowers.
“Clem?” Melita whispered into the ether, dared it to be true, dared it to be false. Her twin was a soul long since lost, and she knew it, she had carved it on the inside of her ribs over and over again: failure. But hope was a mighty, stupefying thing, when reality seemed too vast and too broad, and she stepped closer to the reflecting water, ignoring Fangorn’s grumbles and rumbles. “Clem?” She tried once more, on her knees before the edges, head peeking over the fringes, to gaze down into fathoms and depths, to wonder if her sibling’s soul had been immersed there too.
She heard light laughter at first – soft, genuine, warm. It wove around her ears and perfected the art of intangibility, racing into the skyline, across the sunrise, along the horizon, until she thought she might’ve been able to reach out and touch it. For once, the youth stilled entirely – a predator on guard, every muscle in her body honed for motion, but frozen in its elements, startled, bewildered, taken in by the mellifluous noise. Her gilded gaze took in the pool, the barely rippling depths, the familiar outline of the rocks and embankment. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Except then she could hear it again, the chimes well and alive and a real as the days spent in childhood, chasing down bees and butterflies, laughing into the wind, wild, free, chaotic, and her sister, her sister, wonderful, dignified, and poised in the wildflowers.
“Clem?” Melita whispered into the ether, dared it to be true, dared it to be false. Her twin was a soul long since lost, and she knew it, she had carved it on the inside of her ribs over and over again: failure. But hope was a mighty, stupefying thing, when reality seemed too vast and too broad, and she stepped closer to the reflecting water, ignoring Fangorn’s grumbles and rumbles. “Clem?” She tried once more, on her knees before the edges, head peeking over the fringes, to gaze down into fathoms and depths, to wonder if her sibling’s soul had been immersed there too.
because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life
to bring a whole wildfire to life
