[seasonal event] it's an old scar

MELITA

It was something and then nothing, the challenge and resignation in the girl’s eyes gone to ash and embers, not worth the kindling or incitement – Wessex permitted her to continue wandering into her ignorance, and so the girl shifted her eyes back to the sky, to the clouds, to the heavens. While Wessex shrugged and rooted herself into the confines, staying instead of straying, the youth simmered, pondered where to traverse next. Curiosity might have settled into the Ascended too – for she must’ve caught the intonations and declarations Melita had sequestered into the heart and soul of the wood – and so she drifted, back and forth, over memories, distance, and time, gaze pinpointed on everything and nothing all at once. Haunted, poignant, her words were clear, dreams of yesteryear melting and corroded into nightmares, decibels of terror sprung from lips of strangers and beholden, fond friends. “It was a world unlike any they’d ever been immersed in before – hope a blighted, strangled thing, nestled and confined. All they found were demons and monsters, fiends and fickle gods, over and over again.” She paused, brows furrowing, the telltale mark of a scar burning on her back. “Once there were ghosts of those they’d lost – come back again because one had dared to dream in its fruition, and the crooked paragon allowed them to resurface. Then they struck their own family, their own kin, unhappy, restless souls incapable of being freed.” Her hands glided down the arch of her spine, as if scratching an itch, but in reality, it was to feel the weight of the blemish, of the lightning strike, earned because her sister had been unprotected, and Melita had been a shield in the night, incapable of doing anything else.

“So when they survived, the rest of them turned to might, to strength, to uniting. They had to find a way to conquer their adversaries, enemies, and the ancient, duplicitous demon, or escape.” Then there were the intervals in between, some simply unable to continue, broken, beaten, and damned, their mothers clutching over their throats and suffocating them whole, ghosts of their cherished beings sinking them down into the gallows, no spring, no turn, no beatific realm or icon to save them. “A lot were lost along the way.” They had names and faces and blood in her memory, never ash, never embers, but real and tangible, strings of a harp, musical, mellifluous turns. “Instead of vanquishing chaos though, they lived within it – until a portal opened, and they dove. Some ended up here.” She shrugged, a loosened smile entangling itself around her mouth, as she resumed her boldness, her audacity, the wake of her trials and tribulations, but the potential for so much more. “Their stories aren’t over. Not by a longshot.” She shook her head and laughed, mercurial, whimsical, and defiant again. No world could beat her down for long. Not with the fire in her heart. “What’s yours?” She inclined, brow arched.

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