MELITA
At her core, the girl had always been nestled and contorted in some form of ebullience, in enthusiasm, in wreckage, in demolition. It was a part of the rapacity, the unrelenting, ferocious entanglements, the way she bounded and leapt at every opportunity, the way she hastened and hustled, the way she strived to do good, to do well, even when the world closed itself in on her. Because there’d been days where she’d been worthless and awful, and there’d been days where strangers picked her up and gave her new life, allowed for her to become parts of families and units of friends she wouldn’t have otherwise known or had. Because she was fire and vitriol, and someone had to be a beating, bleeding lifeforce, grinding their teeth into the nettles and thorns, waiting for others to come along to the other side. Had she of known, she would’ve kept lending Nathaniel more and more and more light, a constant, unending flame, burning, burning, burning, until there were no shadows pressing or spurning, until long, knife edges were only in her grasp.Melita measured, content with the hum under her breath, might’ve been one of her mother’s, one of her sister’s, or the other layered inhabitants in between, ensuring their legacies lived on in the shape and orchestration of a simple tune. Her eyes didn’t go immediately to his, catching and snagging along bits and pieces of yarn, eyeballing ratios and the ball of curtailed fabric, slipping down to snag at the ones already mishandled. She raised her head to stare when he noted his lack of chickens, and a contortion of her face muddled its way into a semblance of sorrow, for him, for pieces that were gone, even if there only seemed to be nonchalance behind it. If he mentioned it at all, it must mark and chisel somewhere, in his bones, in his soul, lost feathers and beings, things that were kept in his grasp, gone and fleeting – clicking her teeth together when the agonizing feeling shoved its way into her chest. She knew those nuances. “I’m sorry,” she gathered her wits and prospered, because she was, and it sucked to lose creatures and individuals one held dear.
His humor only caused her to shake her head, a toss of her wild locks, while she stepped away, gave him his space back, the measurements taken, yarn reapplied to the needles. “Then we would all be out of our troubles,” the youth laughed, a light chuckle as her brows furrowed, sitting back along the stone wall. “Will you get any more?”
She's so hard to please
But she's a forest fire
But she's a forest fire
