burn the house down

MELITA

There was an implicit vagueness to her inquiries – just enough to answer, but nothing more, proffered perhaps by way of politeness, to the girl born from enemies and the unknown. Maybe it didn’t matter anyway – those notions were gone, those moments were fleeting, and no one was here to say otherwise. So she nodded, undertones and underpinnings of the tethers she’d dragged along behind her, unware, picked up and tossed with a hapless shrug. He didn’t remain to see if rebellions mattered, if seditions spread, if anything came from barbaric values; and she could understand it, in a way, much like days in the Rift, where she’d skirted along edges and fringes to survive another interval, another evening, another dawn, not thinking about the next day, not contemplating when or where everything would fall, flicker apart, again. A part of the youth craved to fathom what the rebellion was about, where lines had been drawn or calculated, if they’d been worn away by false paragons or pariahs too, or if it had been staunchly political in nature, diplomacies fading into the abyss, the void, the veil, the shroud.

He trailed off, and Melita didn’t ask anymore.

Under his foreign praise though, she brightened once more, returning briefly to a faction of ebullience and exuberance, beneath the mercurial whims of the illness consuming her. Her head lifted and tilted slightly, regarding him with impish endeavors and devilish exploits, never too far away from the denizens of miscreant regards; dancing on the drifts, seething on the sands. “Most of my hate has been reserved for her,” she shrugged too, on the torrent of currents and brewing, brooding storms; she’d been a master of seas and fire given half the chance, bellowing into Stygian rivers and Styx multitudes, forming flame in her palms, in the outstretch of her alms. “But I’ll keep it in mind.” She paused, hands drifting back to the water, permitting it to surge and sink over her fingers, run its rapid course, chilling and intoxicating in the same semblance. “Is there anything else I should know?”

help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts