M E L I T A
Melita had been late, lost in the withering columns of daylight and patterns of snow, tracing over what remained of ambient hours, skipping, hopping, and leaping between frozen banks and specious rime. So she came into the threshold, winding along the aperture, like a wild fury of tangled, savage curls and harpsichord wishes, emboldened whimsy and gnarled, knotted thorns, a blissful effervescence stoked upon her features, her face, blissfully unaware of the shattering knowledge dragging its onslaught towards her.
She should’ve expected it, in a way. She’d lived through two other iterations of malice and menace, of murder and mayhem, shoved headlong into vices and venom at a tender age, had grown alongside barbs and swords, talons and claws, wept with loneliness, collided with despair. Determination and valor had blossomed out of her every effort, the seething, treacherous torment, the war-torn movements, desperate to prosper beneath a brutal thumb, a nefarious hand, a tenacious, binding grasp. Why wouldn’t it be here, amidst the fronds and feathers, alongside the beatific pinnacles, the rasping, grinding unknown?
Death. Monsters. They were always within her reach, but the name it felled shocked her, made her gasp, a quiet, nearly inaudible thing, caused her eyes to turn down, away, across the ancient, arcane floor, so the rest of the world, the crowd, couldn’t see the comprehension persecute her again.
Wessex was gone? How was it even possible? She’d barely known the woman, but had seen enough, witnessed enough, to believe in the layers of strength, of fortitude, mired in these hills and woods. She’d been firm, inflexible, unyielding – the honeybee child couldn’t even fathom how another soul had ripped and torn her apart. But then she remembered her thoughts as they began to part - I’ve known monsters bigger than you, and the weight made her swallow hard, throat suddenly coated with bile, with shame.
The warrior had been more than a speck of dust, more than a canvas of ash and soot. They all were. They were lines in the sand and movements across the sun – buildings carved from the wake of their hands, from the fury of their might, battles and crusades forged from the keen edge of their determination. They were beautiful and blistering, caught in a mortal ring, and it irked her, irritated her, that it’d all been cast aside so quickly, so readily. The notion hammered down, deep in her heart, in her soul, over and over again. Do something had been her anthem in the Rift, for years as she crawled amidst the shadows and ruins, as she scaled wall after wall, conquered sorrow after sorrow. Her voice was suddenly an echo, a boundless, intrepid thing, too daring, too bold, too feverish, but fervently laced with the ferocity of her intentions, yearning for them to hear her. “I would like to help,” was an audacious, burning thing. She half-expected them to ignore her; too young, too inept, too ignorant, but damn, she could fight, she could scheme, she could buy time when there were others better than she.
