deep down the hollow

SUNJATA

the flood

all the drinkin' and the druggin' and the black and the red
the achy skin and all the sweat in my bed

She will see what she can do, and isn’t that all Sunjata can ask for? It is, he has nothing else to say or add to it, not until he tells her the reason he’d shied away from her, not until the bright and happy feeling in the room shifts to something of upset. And he understands, somewhere deep inside him that he shouldn’t have said it, but that part of his mind flickers and disappears as he keeps his gaze away from her, flinches from the slamming of a glass on the table.

Much like her, he curls in on himself too, forgoing his own empty glass to run his soot stained hands through his hair, to cover his eyes, to block out any chance of seeing her as someone she’s not. “I know you’re not.” He rumbles, though his voice shakes. “I know.” It’s almost like it’s a mantra to console himself with, feathers flaring along his shoulders and wavering his uncertainty. He reverts, something in him bringing out that apologetic boy of Korofi. “I’m sorry. I didn’t...” mean it, but he had, hadnt he? That was what he saw.

i think i'm losin' too much
but there's just never enough

every time she burns to ashes

She scowled and pouted, understanding he hadn’t meant it, but the words had been there all the same. He could’ve kept the notions to himself, and then she would have never known, and the thoughts wouldn’t be spinning into her now, brutal and barbaric. A seething tempest brewed along her eyes, in between the golden slits, where naught gallant remained, bowing her head upon her knees, trying to stifle the war brewing inside her. “I would never abandon you.” Unless maybe she had; with the way she’d ventured out into the sea – adrift and ready for adventure, believing they’d be fine without her. “I would never deny your existence. That we weren’t family.”

It was the sickness; she knew that, but the words had stung deeply, and despite every ounce of her denial, the tears still began to arrive. Some of them were laden with anger, and had no outlet, no other venue, because this wasn’t the place for violence or vehemence, to prove she wasn’t a part of that wretched bloodline. Some of them were merely bits of laden sorrow, tired and exhausted and worried, all of it conforming to the residual apprehension. Hot and blinding, flowing down her cheeks in the quiet, overwhelmed and burdened and out of her own depths – to be told she was anything like the man who pretended she and her Clementine were nothing, lacerated and stabbed, tore into her ribs, flayed upon her soul. Curled behind her knees, she hid it all from him, listening as Fangorn launched down from his makeshift nest, coming over with outstretched vines, proffering comfort.

she knows how to rise again

Melita

SUNJATA

the flood

all the drinkin' and the druggin' and the black and the red
the achy skin and all the sweat in my bed

Each promise she makes is like a dagger that stabs him. Each confession, each offering, while good intentioned spins on an axis with nothing to pull it back. She would never abandon him. Oh, but she should. She would never deny his existence. She should. It burns along the back of his mind, down his parched throat, down through every vein like lightning as he hides away from her.

He can hear her crying, and it only makes him crumple in on himself more. He shuts her out, closes himself to her, keeps his eyes covered and lets himself burn with the frustration of not being able to see what he knows to be true. There’s a shaky inhale of breath, feeling the sensation of tears well up in his eyes. But he can’t see, he feels like he’s back in Korofi, sat at a regal wooden table with his father there. And if he cries, if he lets a single tear drop, his father will make sure it’s the last in public.

“Maybe… Maybe you should.” He stumbles over the words, feathers flaring and shifting with an invisible wind, trembling almost. “I’m dangerous. You should… Go, before it happens again.” There, not a single tear has fallen, and he thinks he’s sounded proper enough, even as Haai arrives to drop a blanket around him and cover his shoulders.

i think i'm losin' too much
but there's just never enough

every time she burns to ashes

She couldn’t see it, the way her vows and assurances took the opposite route. Melita had already crawled behind her agony and insecurities, pulling Fangorn into her chest by some means of suppressing the void, but it snapped and contorted over her, took root in walls of fire and torment. The words he used fractured against her, and everything was a hissing, snapping, lashing, a feral wound, a savage laceration. The tears didn’t burn as brightly or as warm, the anger consuming her now – vexation for him and all these ridiculous circumstances, frustration because right now there is nothing she can do except be here, listening to the delirium catch at all her faults and flaws, and agony, because the bitterness clawing at her tore at her throat, at her scars, at all the wounds she’d thought long since faded. “Fuck off.” A growl, a warning, a sibilance that he shouldn’t tread any god damned further.

Dangerous – as if she couldn’t take him down. As if she couldn’t bombard him until he ceased and desisted. As if she’d leave him alone, out there on the ridges of nothingness, intertwined with confusion, peril, and torment. But she didn’t deserve this either, and somewhere they were all very lost beings, caught and embroiled in a multitude of factions, figments, and fragments that shouldn’t have stood a chance. Properly emboldened and audacious again, the petulance conformed to her brow, and she sniffed, breaking apart the sobs for her indignancy. “I won’t.”

she knows how to rise again

Melita

SUNJATA

the flood

all the drinkin' and the druggin' and the black and the red
the achy skin and all the sweat in my bed

Like with most things, Sunjata didn’t mean to hurt her. He doesn’t mean to let his words wrap around her in a jacket that doesn’t fit, in a way that has him cowering and huddling in on himself once the error is realized. And so he tries to close it out, tries to pretend that everything is fine, tries to encompass the stone faced version of his father who enjoyed hurting people.

But that’s not him. It never has been.

So he keeps himself hidden away as her curse is heard, eyes squeezing shut behind hands, internally flinching despite the way he knows he shouldn’t be. She says she won’t leave, and for Sunjata it feels like she’s signed up for a death sentence, it feels like she’s following the wrong path, like she’s willingly preparing herself to stumble along his path of destruction and wait for the axe to fall. He doesn’t know if he should be happy or angry, the uncertainty flickering in his veins. He shuts down, closes in on himself, has nothing to say other than to hide away and pretend it'll all go away.

i think i'm losin' too much
but there's just never enough

every time she burns to ashes

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go – and though Melita wasn’t entirely sure where the angles and lines had been meant to glide, despite the sickness, she hadn’t expected a full retreat. With Fangorn’s vines and comfort curled over her, the youth quietly seethed in the rest of her dominion, the silence steady and piercing, haunting and looming. Her eyes shifted back to Sunjata, over the rim of her knees, so she could see, so she could know, so she could figure out what to do next.

Nothing.

Her jaw clenched and she gritted her teeth, wiping away any remnants of salt and tears with a dash of her sleeve, and then moved to put Fangorn back down on the floor, an appreciate pat and scratch for his offers. She stood, and she wasn’t going to flee, wasn’t going to leave, wasn’t going to hasten off for the sunset. Her fingers didn’t coil around one another, but bunched into fists at her sides, and then she slowly released them on long inhales (hadn’t her mother always told her to do that to calm down – and her father had pretended they didn’t exist). “Maybe you should get some rest.” A suggestion, instead of contorting into themselves, where she could plan her next move, and where slumber might offer him some respite from the rest of the world.

she knows how to rise again

Melita

SUNJATA

the flood

all the drinkin' and the druggin' and the black and the red
the achy skin and all the sweat in my bed

He can hear the scraping of her chair as she stands, and he instinctively draws the blankets around tighter, pulling the cloth over his head and face so he can remove his hands from covering his face. It keeps his vision away from her, away from the possible and probable ability to see her as her father – as the person that had shifted the tone of this reunion.

So her comment, a suggestion, is met with a slow and deep inhale, eyes squeezing shut as he considers it, wondering how long she plans on staying, on whether or not she’d be here for the next destruction and the one that comes after that. He says nothing, simply stands, using Haai to guide him toward the bed.

He doesn’t think he’ll sleep, however, lifting the blankets and crawling under them, hiding away – a reflection of a much younger version of himself, to hide away like a wounded dog.

i think i'm losin' too much
but there's just never enough

every time she burns to ashes

To her surprise, he acquiesced without a word, and the hurt, the anguish, while still there, softened a little through her jaw. She knew he hadn’t meant it, but the juncture, the puncture, still wove its way around her heart; as if he’d known exactly where to hit. Not in her other failures, not in the way she couldn’t quite enact vengeance, not in the way she’d been weak, forlorn, or simply stupid, but in the aspects she’d never be able to control. Her father wasn’t an existence she could erase, no matter how much she wanted to; without him she wouldn’t have been there, nor would Clementine have taken any gentle, loving, tender breaths, taught her twin compassion when everything else wanted to shift into cinders and ash. She owed the bestial man absolutely nothing – but he still hung around her like a noose, a reminder of not being wanted.

Of being abandoned.

Of not being enough for someone who didn’t matter at all, and wondering why that still stung.

She made no movement towards him at first, eyes taking in the way he hid, striving to blend into the darkness, shifting into someone she didn’t recognize. “Sorry,” she murmured, eventually following, footsteps light and soft, struggling and striving not to disturb. “But I hate him. And you know that.” Her hands drew a chair, lifting it from the floor and over to sit beside the bed, curling beside him on its wooden surface, the picture of a guardian; an irate, irritated one, but a shelter and sanctuary nonetheless.

she knows how to rise again

Melita

SUNJATA

the flood

all the drinkin' and the druggin' and the black and the red
the achy skin and all the sweat in my bed

He stays hidden, just as he had before. Time and time again, kept to himself, pretended to be nothing until it was opportune. It’s how he tries to hide away now, and if he had more sense without the sickness he might’ve shrunk into his b at shift, small and tiny and lost among the bundle of blankets. But no, he stays as himself, a mixture of feathers and fluff, of all the shifts that edged his prey-mind.

Vulnerable, that’s exactly what he is, what he feels right now.

Her apology is met with silence again. And he knows the fact that she hates her father. He does know, but his mind doesn’t. Not what it makes him see. He’s not even sure how to respond to her, what she wants to hear him say. Does she want an apology when he’s too sick to keep it from happening again? He realizes he’s apologized a lot lately, he wonders if it’s lost his meaning.

“I didn’t mean it.” He says quietly instead, still hidden, kept closed off and drawn, knees brought to his chest.

i think i'm losin' too much
but there's just never enough

every time she burns to ashes

“I know,” she repeated on her tongue and in her skull; he didn’t mean it, he didn’t mean it, but it didn’t mean the echo yielded away. It still burned against her, in the scouring of her blood, in things she couldn’t change or alter about herself. Maybe she was vulnerable too, but without a disease; just everything else clattering, crashing, and combining together into a mass of heartache. She placed her chin on her folded arms, stared at the lump that was her uncle, wondering what mattered, if he’d remember any of this, if it was all for naught. Perhaps it should’ve been.

Her eyes wandered, yielded, from him, staring at open windows, the summer air rushing in, a way to ward off sickness already clustered and coiled around them. The youth didn’t know what else to do for him other than be there, or if that was even what he wanted, what he needed. Maybe she could help him drift off to sleep, a restorative slumber, something calm and easygoing, rather than the wake of all this strife, all the brutal, barbaric unknowns. “Do you want another story?”

she knows how to rise again

Melita

SUNJATA

the flood

all the drinkin' and the druggin' and the black and the red
the achy skin and all the sweat in my bed

She knows he didn’t mean it, but there’s nothing he can do to take it back. That’s what he gets, for being honest again and again. Perhaps he should keep his tongue wrapped up – follow Vai’s advice and now Melita’s – to sleep until something happened. Perhaps, to sleep until Nate’s back and things were right again. But he’s slowly spinning off-kilter, with no end in sight except for him.

And gods how he struggles without his other half. His better half.

But Melita remains, and Sunjata stays hidden, quiet, staring into the dark of the blankets and the brief flickers of light that manage to peek through the thinner bits of fabric. A story, however? He chews on the inside of his lip, trying to remember the last time he’d tried to sleep and been told a story. He must have been five or six, it must have been when his mother had broken the rules when he’d done his swim test and survived it.

His legs curl in more, arms wrapping around them as he nuzzles his head into the pillow, alone and quiet if not for Haai that hops on the bed and presses against his back to give him some semblance of normalcy. “Yes.” It’s a quiet croak from a dry throat.

i think i'm losin' too much
but there's just never enough

every time she burns to ashes

She didn’t know how else to comfort him, and for a few moments she openly stared, watched as he became something she’d never seen. It hurt too, everything burning and twisting within her all at once, and she was helpless to its unraveling proportions. A second later, she wound her way through the room, snagging at a stray cloth, and the soakings of cool, refreshing water, wringing it out as best she could, given their aversion to the element, before returning, and striving to place it on his head, along his brows. Maybe where it could offer relief. Maybe where she could do something other than listlessly wind her emotions into a fist of vices, bare it for the world to see.

Or for the darkness to take, for the light to swallow.

Melita curled again on her chair, pondering over his acceptance, and which one to tell. If it would be safer to make one completely up. “There was once a great sickness that swept through a world, and no one knew what to do – a terrible thing, because it turned friends into foes, and allies into enemies. It came without warning, snatching, biting, and clawing.” And if it was a reflection of a story her mother had once told – about the illness lingering within Helovia – then so be it. Perhaps they could find something buried in its depths. “Most of the kingdoms fled their comrades, because they didn’t know what else to do. They ran and ran and ran until they found a cave.” There she paused, gilded gaze going to him, to see if he was interested or already immersed in slumber.

she knows how to rise again

Melita

SUNJATA

the flood

all the drinkin' and the druggin' and the black and the red
the achy skin and all the sweat in my bed

She moves, and he remains in his hidden place among the blankets. His eyes are shut tight again as she wanders around the room, as he can vaguely hear the hiss of water that has his feathers flexing again in a hidden form of his heartbeat racing, fear taking over again despite how much he tries to swallow it down.

But then she’s back and his eyes are still closed tight, especially when he can spy the light from the blanket being lifted, the cloth pressed to his forehead, something that makes him quiver, the fingers clutching the blanket trembling as the cooling relief shoots through him, meets a brick wall of the fever, and his head begins to throb gain anew. So he grinds his teeth, draws the blanket up and over again to hide away, and listens for the story.

“Like the blight?” He asks quietly from his little cocoon of darkness within the blanket, trying to focus and pay attention, feeling his thundering heartbeat begin to calm, his body beginning to relax.

i think i'm losin' too much
but there's just never enough

every time she burns to ashes

Melita would’ve liked to have curled far away too, off into the midsts of moons and suns, a collective threshold of beautiful, celestial vows; where her gods hadn’t sacrificed themselves, where the world hadn’t been as cruel. Where there’d been bliss and light in spite of all the other hazards; wondering if that was here too, and she was simply consumed, distracted, ignited by all the other trials and tribulations knocking them to their knees. She hated this – being ineffectual, incapable, of doing anything but watching and waiting, the uncertainty bristling against every fiber of her being.

So instead she told stories, like they mattered in the slightest, like her words had meaning beyond tales of spiraling legends and dominions where kingdoms had been built out of rock, crag, and the sea. And her eyes fell when he mentioned the blight, another beat of shame, her teeth going to her lips, raking over their sanction, before sighing, continuing. “Sort of. Except anytime they bit someone, the other person became infected too.” Then it grew and grew and grew, not from blossoms, but decay. Fear - pure, primal fear.

“Some of them found their way into the caves. But others had discovered a spring in the cavern, and when the opportunity was there, they shoved one of the infected in.” Her golden gaze followed lines of softer inhales and exhales, hoping she could amount to something in all of this hell. “They came out cured.”

she knows how to rise again

Melita