MELITA
She listened – to the intonation of changes, of how she could allow herself to be altered if, when, she wanted – and Melita wasn’t even sure if that was something she desired. But the youth caught the reverberation of mothers, an invitation to talk, and she chewed her lip in thought, wondering how much should’ve been said, how much should’ve been kept to herself. All she had left of them were memories, moving pictures of shorn plants and singsong bouquets, rivulets of lilies and violets and thistles billowing against her skin, caught in the melancholy sway, in the heart songs. They were parts and pieces of her, somewhat untainted, unchained, precious in their paramounts and paragons. “My mother would always have us help her find herbs.” She shook her head, pretending to be concentrating on folding over reeds, on plaiting a basket that might not have been able to hold dust or air, let alone the bright, beautiful sun. Her locks cascaded in warm pools of fire, wishing she had more of it in her hands. “I was terrible at it.” A laugh, a raw, aching chuckle pulsed from her throat, a smile tucked around the edges of her mouth even when she wanted to quietly mourn. Her gilded eyes turned to Amalia’s onyx ones, the weight of sadness and loss heavy in their burdened, varnished gold, then shifted quickly back, as if she’d burned herself. “I don’t think I was ever meant to be much of a healer.” Too much vitriol and vehemence in her bones. Too many flames coiled around her embers. Too many boisterous, rancorous edges and curves rounding out her form. Too many knives and daggers poised from her fingers.Amalia’s brightness shown through the dim apertures, and she permitted herself to breathe again, for her fingers to stop shaking in the quiet, hushed twilight, in the perpetual glow of starlight and luminary beams. Perhaps the baker sensed her eventual upheaval, because on a note, the girl’s head shot up to regard the basket as a mask – the shock of it all warmed her heart and coated her lungs in a vicious, ridiculous bout of giggles. She did the same to hers then, raising it up past her eyes, so they both looked equally foolish and silly, so that some part of her wasn’t torn away by old vestiges and heartache. Perhaps they looked like monsters, heathens, and fiends, the kind of Fae and spirits lost to the wicked doldrums of the enchanted realm, and she allowed a fiendish growl to unravel from her tones. “Oh, I think we could catch demons in these things!”
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
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
