throwing rocks at a glass house

MELITA

She didn’t want the cloak removed; the youth begged for the mantle to cover her form for eternity, to hide, to shirk, to conceal, to lock her away in the dead of night and throw away the key. On instinct and some amount of self-preservation still remaining in her frame, the youth curled into a ball, dragging her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around herself, desperate to evade Wessex’s eyes. It was shame pressing into them now, embarrassed, humiliated, that she’d fallen apart, that she’d lost control, that even amidst impetuous and impulsive natures, she’d truly sacrificed every notion of command and authority over her own soul. It’d been blackened and tarnished by beatific, tempting, enticing lines of dreaded shadows; something she’d once openly embraced, tucking herself into their boundaries to draw weapons, to scale heights. Perhaps that was how she’d been savored by the blight, so easily, so pathetically, inveigled and strangled by its teeth, by its fangs, by its entity until she was just as much a part of it as the rest of the pestilence-ridden, rattled and conformed, nothing left of Melita but the emboldened audacity to break things apart.

Defiance chiseled its way in her blood as she nodded her head, but didn’t want Wessex to take hold of her chin, to wipe away any signs of blackness; wearing it like a brand, like a distinction, dangerous and feral, stupid and inept. Emblems and banners of weakness; fumbling semblances of a girl who had only ever wanted for the world to see her as strong, as tenacious, as obstinate –

She shrugged at the insinuation, too irritated, too burdened, too saddened to do anything in response, opening her arms up to Fangorn as the poor vampire gourd ambled over, tucking him against her chest.

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