[Training] break your own bones

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

With the new house instilled and installed, the youth had maneuvered her training targets as well, somewhere along the sides, overlooking the coast, listening to the thunderous, tempestuous waves. No longer the misshapened, hastily put together tower of haphazardly-laden rocks, sticks, stacked on top of one another, the honeybee had taken some time to establish adequate provisions. Most were rounded onslaughts, hay and stray tucked behind them to stop a rampaging arrow (she just made sure not to use the fire ones there), painted bullseyes with their varying hues and colorations. Some others were clear renderings and effigies of people, a few rearranged on days of spite and vitriol (if one looked like Sunjata at the moment, perhaps others wouldn’t be brazen or bold enough to ask why). Another had an obvious depiction of a ghost whale – as if the spitting and splitting of her bow might compound and muster into enough rage to take down the deadly beasts.

Layering them out in separated, different distances, and Fangorn off to the side, an eager overseer, Melita grabbed her quiver, taking steps and paces back. It’d been a long while since she’d embraced her bow, felt the string in her hands, the pulse and pull of its taut constrictions, the power behind the muscles in her arm, the scrape of the enamel of her skin, and she craved it now, raising her arm as if pulling the strand – watching as it ever-faithfully unfurled before her.

Then, the training arrows, notched along her back, taken from their quiver and placed upon the armament, cherishing the moment, the sweep and flow of her breath as she took practiced, perfected movements. A tug, a draw, and aim in her sights, pinpointed for the one farthest away – and then released, watching, waiting, for the fervent resounding, reverberating sound of its merciless onslaught.

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life