MELITA
Bumblebee; a word to describe or impart upon her from a tender young age, designated by a complete stranger – uncertain of how apt or true the title transcribed over her entity. A stinging nettle, barbed and thorned, but compassionate too, springing, bounding, striving to spread beneficence where it was warranted, needed, before raising her hackles, crimson wolf beneath locks and scorn. Her eyes caught the way his narrowed, the dangerous levels and lacquer she seemed to tread upon, dancing on daggers and knives, and the whirlwind crescendo of her simply not caring, indifferent to the potential savagery, not immune to the splinters and shards of it within her own sanction. But why upon her - when she’d only pondered a few inquiries, when she’d only proffered a minute amount of intonations. Unless there was something else she couldn’t see, pervading below the surface, knotted and gnarled, and she was ignorant to all the yesteryears, the clusters of history, where vultures were more than just scavengers.
He moved toward the water again, and she lingered further in, pressing her toes into its depths, staying afloat, embarking over the veneer, feet embedded into the current, but not sinking, not falling.
An escape route, if she needed one.
He offered his name instead of omens though, and she traced over the syllables within her mind – but they weren’t clear either, no familiarity lacquered between their vowels and consonants. At his focus, at his scrutiny, she raised her chin, defiance for the sake of defiance. Why was she recognizable to him then, when she had naught to recollection? Should she have known him? Was it something else she’d missed in her misspent youth? In her wild excursions? In her fight to survive? “Very strange,” she murmured in return, not fire, not vitriol; a state of curiosity and reverberations, Fangorn growling from the shore, staff still flexing in her hand, tracing the outline of the water beneath her feet. “I’m from Helovia. I lived in the Dragon’s Throat, with my mother and sister.” With my family and friends, before everything sputtered and fell apart. Maybe he was one of the many who’d been immersed there too, stuck and strangled and tossed when monsters too big to conquer haunted the eaves? Or was it another portal – a hollowed void, with claws and talons, with demons and ogres? “Then we were in the Rift, for a time.” Perhaps they could serve as sparks of recognition, or nothing at all – and the enigmas, the mysteries would remain.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Give the bruises out like gifts
