back to basics

MELITA

I’m going to hunt monsters nearly caused her to drop her brush, head shifting sharply to stare at him. She’d hunted monsters, feral, foul, little damned demons aiming to strike their talons and claws into her family, into her friends. She’d rebelled against their howls and bellows, tried so desperately to convey everything she felt into the heart of her assaults, sedition in the decadent halls, revolution in the dismal, gloaming sky, until the end, until the portal, until she’d fallen again. The girl wanted to convey her interest, but it stuttered in her chest, in the outline of the word he painted. Was she ready? Was she even that same child, fervent, eager, reckless, and stupid? Does she want to chase the ghouls, the specters, the memories, down again?

At least Ronin had found something to satisfy him – family, stalking, assisting – and she lowered her eyes back to the faded remnants of paint chipping away, elongating subtle strokes of paint back over their foundation lines. What had she made of this world? It was different and bewildering – she didn’t have to watch her back every day, every night, every second, or keep one step ahead of fiends snatching and deceiving, she didn’t have to suffer beneath the weight of false gods. But she understood the reaches of its hold too, the cumbersome load of LongNight and its vicious current, the Spire crackling and cracking, the riotous outbreak of Naturals against Outlanders. Something’s never changed – not with people, not with individuals, not with ideas and notions and opinions. So instead of dipping into the machinations of the void, of the dawn, she reverted to what always held her together. “It’s interesting,” she smiled back up at him. “It inspires me to get stronger.” To be mighty, to be forceful, to be vigilant, to be everything.

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight