MELITA
The lantern light cast its way along the floor, but her eyes didn’t follow, wandering over shadow-induced spines, jaw clenched, listening, listening, listening, striving to explain, to compel, to settle into what the world had requested, hastened, and bristled amongst those temple corridors, and her feelings, her matters, into the designation. She understood they hadn’t been the only ones, but she could only relate her experiences, and no one else’s, which was why her gilded eyes seared back over to the Ascended woman’s on the final statement about opened doors. “Would you rather Rexanna, Samuel, or anyone else who was out there die? The Monster Hunter’s Guild chose life this year.” And she didn’t care – she’d help and assist and do something all over again. She’d stand right behind Remi, or amongst the others who opened the door constantly. Always the betwixt and between, the warnings and ultimatums; a weight of quandaries and aspirations – the fire and loss of a building worth the weight of others still alive, still beating, still remaining. As far as Delah and the concerns around the Greatwood, Melita had little diplomatic strengths or fortitudes, politics never a thing to come up in the Rift, when everyone was striving to make it to the next day, the next hour, the next minute. In all likelihood, the Chieftess had likely spiraled her control as far as she could, preventing them from accessing the beautiful wood, but couldn’t have dictated or conspired in their midst of the grounds, fair enough concession to the Wraith with her nod. “No. You shouldn’t have.”
Zariah’s forum had been a mess – a dramatic upheaval where she gave and took away, where she exhibited her power with dominion and tyranny, and sewed further seeds of rebellion into the soil of those she considered her people. Melita had no doubt that it would’ve fallen apart the moment anyone besides Wessex had spoken, had asked, had inquired, but without that magnitude, without that spark, without those nuances of abhorrence, wrath, and contempt, it’d just been idle frustration around the room the instant the Wraith had poofed. They’d also put together some semblance of a solution too, going forward, maneuvering onward, what they all appeared to do no matter what crisis bubbled and frothed.
Everything else echoed in ricocheting balms, causing her to pause, the vitriol sunken, the grip on her lantern tightening once more, more out of frustration than anything else. Because she didn’t know anything about crossroads, about parallel lines and where they never met again, about the quandaries hastening forth, over and over and over again, made to be bent and broken. Never try to hurt you bounded within too, and the youth wanted to believe it. Perhaps what she truly detested in these waking, witching hours was the notion of change, and how rapidly it spread to and through hearts, no remorse, no regret, leaving naught but barbed, jagged edges in its hollowed ethers. Finally her eyes went back to the bookshelf, to the Wraith herself. “I felt safe with you in power. I thought we would be fine against the likes of Zariah, or anyone else, because of your strength and abilities.” No defiant fringes, no seditious boundaries, just the veracity braced into her feet, into her stillness, along her mouth, pressing into the bridges. “Then the blight happened.” She gave no word about the lack of trust, about the confusion, about the terrors locked and loaded in her heart, just as nefarious, just as horrific, as the monster she’d dealt with long ago; within a void, a shell, of simple, predatory means, slashing and lacerating and ripping worlds apart. “What changed? Would you do it all again?” If she could reverse time – would she have assaulted the Fae? Would she take an oath of crowns and titles? Would she wear the mantle? Would she try and lead them all? Had it ever been worth it, in the end?
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Give the bruises out like gifts
