[Training] [se] drank every sky that I could

Melita

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

It might’ve been the giving season and all, but something underlying in its midst gave the honeybee’s skin an uncomfortable feeling – an itch she couldn’t scratch, a crawling phantom, beneath surface layers and reeling irritations. She would’ve much preferred granting gifts to those she cherished – though, she supposed, nothing was limiting her there but time and opportunity – not this bizarre binding of giving to someone she didn’t like.

Once, that list had been overwhelming; a sizable modicum of affronts ranging from harmless and embittered to downright devastation. Nowadays, either she’d toned down the maliciousness, or there were simply less and less of those that irritated her. Surprising, really.

She’d narrowed the semblances down to two anyway, and with Loren having disappeared, it really only left…Kiada.

Strolling along the edges of the canals, continuing in her escalation of a balancing act, Sila flapped her wings alongside, practice strokes in the easy wind, and Fangorn bounding behind her, Melita only continued in her grumbling. “What do you even get someone you hate?” A big sign that said I-hope-you-die-again (and by her hand this time)? With the markets in sight, she figured she’d have to find some semblance of rancor and abhorrence, wrapped in a pretty little box.

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