M E L I T A
It didn’t take long – hunters were perpetually alike; eager to exploit, to savage, to coil mercilessly against another. The youth wasn’t even remotely surprised to see Wessex’s form come out of the shadows; her head tipped out of respect, the slightest smile managing to coil its way across her lips. Fangorn, at the very least, had the wherewithal to look abashed and ashamed, hissing but puttering behind Melita’s skinny legs, awaiting the inevitable. The youth though, for she was a savage, ridiculous little thing, had spent too many nights, too many days, wandering and surviving, and didn’t play directly into the scolding, lecturing tones. They passed by and sailed through her brain; eventually, one day, one hour, one minute, they would scald and simmer, blister and break, and she’d see the error of her ways too late. The impulsive, impetuous arts were too vastly coiled around her soul – and an impish declaration of defiance lifted her chin, and told her to never back down. She used the same argument and rebuttals as she’d tried with her mother, repeated measures, an echo of the poor, trying patience of a gentle woman struggling to raise whimsical, mercurial children (you could’ve died, her beautiful mother’s catch phrase for when the girl had sunk beneath ocean waves or gallivanted off of high-rise cliffs, and the open, beckoning smile of her daughter’s that instinctively told her she’d do it all over again). “But you didn’t.” She shrugged, as if the whole event had been for naught, meaningless and dramatic nothings. If Wessex intended to slit her throat, she would’ve done it a lot sooner, a lot quieter, straight for the jugular, done away with in the blink of an eye. Melita would never have known or realized it; she’d seen it before, in the twisting, infernal way of shadows’ motions, had tried to mimic it when selecting her own prey, had embodied enough demons and infidels, sinners and saints, down the lengthy, cumbersome road of her existence.
Unruffled, unfazed, she bent down to look through her sack, ruffling a few items before remembering she’d put the artifact in her quiver. That unfolded before her too, while Fangorn looked on, and she smirked when her hands found the chosen arrow. She raised it, and it glinted in the dark, in the patches and thatches of moonlight. Her golden eyes flicked over to Wessex, a picture of innocence when she was anything but. “This is yours?”
