Heartlights

I am my mother's child, I'll love you till my breathing stops
I'll love you till you call the cops on me

It sounded strange, to hear another call out their names – not nefarious, not treacherous, but there all the same, calm and soft. The following words though made her flinch, because wouldn’t they have been happier alive? Wouldn’t they have preferred to spend their days not in a tomb or a sepulcher, some ancient ruined thing, some blade of grass? They always been more than life itself, bigger, better, pieces of her essence, her core, that she couldn’t possibly replicate or renew on her own. She wasn’t a healer like her mother, and had hardly paid attention to the herbs she’d gathered until it was too late. She wasn’t graceful, poised, or gentle like Clementine, who turned her sun to the face and saw everything as wonderful, beautiful, and incandescent. Melita was sharper edges and torn apart dreams, ash and embers, coiled, serpentine insistence, vitriol and venom. Sometimes she was keen like her arrows, undaunted and unkind, intending to maul into flesh and scatter adversaries from her sights. Sometimes she was vengeful and broken, spreading her hate, distaste, and contempt for life’s circumstances with undulations of destruction. Sometimes she was weak and forlorn and could barely raise her head; starved and strangled in these moments, bringing her arms around her to soften the blows she waged upon herself. Melita shook her head as Jigano spoke, willing denial into her blood, spattering it against her senses. “I don’t.” They’d be ashamed of me she wanted to say, but couldn’t voice it without her throat quaking or discarding what little poise she’d managed to obtain. She’d done all the things the bard had uttered, but had they been in the name of compassion? Or just in experience, in brutality, in amusement, in decadence, in the calm before a storm? “I also sought revenge upon another girl. I blamed her for our world being destroyed. I attacked her multiple times.” I would do it again, right here, right now. Her voice was void of feeling, cold and stark, barren, allowing Jigano to see the wilted, decaying parts of her being, so he could take back what he’d said, so he could deny her the right to even believe she was half of what her family had been. Fangorn nestled and brushed against her ankles, and the honeybee swallowed down the rush of tears threatening, clawing, scratching at her madness; because even after these nuances and notions, she refused to fall apart. She could feel her mother’s frown. She could feel her sister’s disappointment. And her father didn’t really matter. He hadn’t even wanted her. She didn’t even deserve this aura of kindness from the Sage, and she knew it, she knew it, she knew it. And a part of her didn’t think she ever would; intending to continue her monstrous spread of munitions and terror upon Kiada, or on anyone who dared to cross her. “There isn’t much to be proud of.” M e l i t a But in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power I'll find a way to be without you, babe