a lion-hearted girl
Gnashing away her rampant irritation, the youth had taken to snagging bundles of cloth, fabric, and sticks, meandering and threading her way down to beaches and dunes, until the warmth blended into her toes, and the familiarity gave her some peace. She’d taken to wandering lately, further and further out so the world couldn’t brand, couldn’t scorch, couldn’t ravage and savage her so easily, so the incandescent, emboldened fringes of her soul weren’t brought down into annals and canals of darkness. Fangorn followed along, bounding or elongating vines until they wrapped into the rocks and crevasses, until girl and gourd were merely blips on the horizon, chasing down nothingness.Eventually, she settled, as much as she could, with feverish tints to her blood and impulsive reaches in her wake. Melita dropped to the sand, indifferent to the way it billowed or sank into her clothing, once a child of the desert and oasis, and now a belligerent piece of ash and soot and flames on the sea. The bundle of small twigs and twine in her hands was placed before her, completely unremarkable, and her fingers wove along the boundaries of one, encountering bumps and gnarls, and picking a darker hued branch and bramble, beginning the base of her creation.
ready for a fight
MELITA
