MELITA
She watched as a massive beast of a man intentionally collided with Jigano, bounding off before there was any form of reprimand or retort, allowing her a chance to breathe, to intertwine her fingers back over the lantern’s craftmanship, hands gliding along metal. When the bard spoke to her again, it was gentle, and she lifted her head to eagerly await his reaction to her once-buried rocks, ores, and shells. A great portion of her expected curiosity, but then a frown, a pout, when it wasn’t good enough, when it wasn’t as well thought out, prepared, as his artifact, as anyone else’s presents. But the honeybee girl had dived beneath the crimson waves and the ichor’s ripples, uniting fire and water as her palms grabbed hold of the most intriguing things, stuffing them into her basket upon her return to the shore. When he called them enchanting, her ebullient, ardent smile reappeared, bright like the stars, like the sun, like the beneficent skies, sufficiently satisfied as he combed over them, gave them names, inclined some sort of story in the sprite’s mind of how they’d come to be, how they existed beneath the roar of ruby falls; dreaming of phoenixes (thunderbirds clung to her mind, incapable of erasing, an uproar, a caw, plunged into lightning and storms; turbulence in the heart of the desert), sphinx eyes and their riddles in amber, mermaid’s bracelets, woven tenderly and intricately, and water sprite’s even needing hats at all. “You’re very welcome,” she nodded, attempting a curtsy, but failing to execute it properly; fanciful arts not in her whimsical design.
Melita followed Jigano’s line of sight as he became distracted, to a stranger lingering and crawling amidst the shadows, unknown, foreign, and unfamiliar. Perhaps it was another who’d dropped from portals? Or someone else who’d been here all along, but only just now thought to come out? Jigano didn’t intend to leave them alone, and so the air shifted, her dancing partner gone. “Not at all,” the youth uttered, but the back of her spine had straightened, taut, rigid, pondering if her staff was necessary, left at home. As her stare swept along the grounds, she caught sight of
Cheery and exuberant, already clearly wild from her latest dances, she doubled the efforts as she approached Wessex’s stern features. She waved at first, content to swing her basket hand to hand, then along the length of her arm, shifting all of its containments back and forth with aplomb. “Hello!” She called, and then finally arrived before her, laying her basket on the ground and entangling the remnants of her presents away from one another, and a few flinthopper carcasses. “I have a gift for you!” Digging through the vessel, her hands flew over a few deeper red-hued stones (the first beat of blood from an assault, a laceration, something she presumed the warrior woman would appreciate), and sharper shells (weapons in another time, another place), layering them in her arms amidst the vermilion, scarlet lichen. Then she held them aloft, right below Wessex’s nose, bestowing her beneficence and affection.
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
