M E L I T A
The youth didn’t expect anyone to approach. The rest of the world maneuvered around her, typical nuances, while she became immersed in her work, hands sifting through the soil. They were all trying to move on, finding rituals and routines in common factions again, returning back to errand running and hunting, wandering and gathering, cleaning out the rust, the dust, the ashes, and the soot. She wondered if with each passing LongNight, they mourned those who didn’t make it out, who meandered into clearings, into forests, into streets and never returned, lost amongst the brambles, thorns, fiends, and demons. She wondered if they ever went and searched for them, and found something or nothing at all; if the stories and myths surrounding the ominous evenings simply grew and grew, or if the reality was brutal enough. She wondered why everywhere seemed to hold some threshold of despair; if there was ever a world that didn’t feel crushing blows, if repose was a feasible enterprise, or an intangible fragment.
The girl swallowed down the enigmas, the twist and turns, and dug a hole with nails and fingers, humming under her breath while Fangorn hovered nearby. The gourd shot off a series of alarming hisses though, rough sibilations rumbling through her soul, and the youth followed his gaze as a familiar, young Luxere came charging towards them. “You remember, don’t you?” She arched her brow at the foolish, but clearly protective gourd, and he responded with a grunt and a narrowing of his eerie stare, otherworldly and implemented by eldritch incantations. The honeybee child maneuvered back towards the impending fawn, made to extend her hand to the approaching creature, but her eyes noted the owner coming near too, and thought better of it.
She didn’t know where they stood, after all.
LongNight had been rough, but Melita’s experiences had been naught in comparison to the woman before her. Death had been hanging around the doors, the thresholds, the awnings, collected and segmented, sending inhabitants scurrying into the infirmary, or bowing their heads over the decrepit, decayed forms. She’d offered her assistance, but it hadn’t mattered – nothing could be done for those who’d already perished, and the other woman had been far gone in her grief.
Melita had been like that once too, but flanked in fury and ferocity, bursting at the seams, eager to destroy, to devastate, to ruin anything and everything in her path. Had she been capable of breathing fire, it would’ve sprung past her lips in vitriol and acrimony, tarnishing everything that had ever touched one little hair on her beloveds’ heads.
The sadness, the sorrow, and the anguish came later, when they didn’t come back.
She stood up, brushing soil off her palms, onto her long, already blemished skirt, and some managed to crawl and insert itself along her nose and forehead as she brushed aside a few stray locks. It didn’t matter; appearances had never been her strong suit. Besides, she was busy alternating how to respond, because there were hundreds of things and subjects blazing through her mind, a blistering faction striving to come up with something reasonable and not impetuous, not impulsive. “Yes. Kiada?” She smiled then, friendly and amiable, not a bright, winsome grin, for those were reserved for pinnacles of joy and ebullience – she doubted Kiada considered those appropriate after all the turmoil and trauma. “How are you feeling?” Her voice was gentle, embodying Clementine again, like the coming of a spring shower, airy and ethereal, meant to be soothing instead of her usual loud, raucous mannerisms.
