M E L I T A
It was all a childish manifesto, and for Melita, born to peace and grown in artifices, warfare, treachery, and deception, these hours were for the quiet, silly moments. She’d forgotten them once, standing amidst tombs, catacombs, and sepulchers, scarred and beaten, but never broken, chin angled defiantly against the rest of the tyrannical monsters and ghosts. The girl relished in it now, coaxed mercurial whims and tempestuous eaves, because it was better than mourning, than brooding, than suffering, than remembering those barbaric beacons, those brutal sirens, those zealous, nefarious instances catching, snaring, and threatening to consume her. She’d take the mischievous threads and wind them all into beautiful tapestries, had she ever managed to utilize the skill: her fingers had been splayed over swords and shields, between blood, bone, and embers.
She wasn’t the least offended by his discourse; it made her laugh, quirk her brow, as he curled straight into hypocrisy. The youth wouldn’t call him out on it, simply watched with her delightful ebullience and her impish grin as he hurled a gourd towards his intended target. “Of course,” she hummed, though it didn’t carry the tone of heralded belief – tunes of devilry and amusement.
The challenge was on when he hit the stick – she witnessed it splatter against the wood, gave some boisterous applause in return, and with a single nod, approached the designated area, the line drawn across the plain. The provocation was all she needed; enemies would probably comprehend her vices long before she ever registered their double-edged tendencies. Melita fully understood that she likely wouldn’t even come close – her power was sometimes too much, too little, everywhere in between, nettled and crossed in a bed, a crown, of thorns, impetuous and savage, wild, untamed, never given a proper lesson. Her tactics had come from survival, persistence, and perseverance; if she hadn’t learned to be swift, to be quick, to be hasty, then she wouldn’t have been there, in the flesh, in the tangible streaks of fairy and devil. The girl would’ve been just as dead as the rest of her world: blackened, shadowed, and forgotten.
The pumpkin deciding to nibble on her toes was the next victim. She grabbed hold of its stem, leaned back into her throw, attempted to time the release so it would fly through the air, land directly on the stake, be caught in the throes of agony and woe on its descent. Instead, however, it launched off the side and barreled midway down into the field, to which she snorted. “What’s your secret?” She half-joked, half-intending to find the answer: it would likely be practice and precision, but in her lack and absence of meticulous study, the notes might’ve been a lost cause.
