deep down the hollow

every time she burns to ashes

She was not her father’s daughter. She wasn’t raised by him. She was barely acknowledged by him, and from all of Sunjata’s stories, she blatantly strived to create a path not aligned by his measures and machinations. She’d fight anyone who said otherwise – who’d ever thought she was Gaal’s flesh and blood beyond the crimson hair and the interwoven tempers. Perhaps it was better off that she had no knowledge of her uncle’s sights – of how she might’ve blended into the manifestation of that wicked, belligerent, useless man.

Instead, she watched as he seemingly cowered, and she became her mother, calm and composed, airy and light, and she whittled into her sister, ethereal and compassionate, coming to kneel before him, her hands eager to reach, to hold, to comfort. “Yes,” she whispered, tilting her head in some ebullient, mischievous grace, the only elegance she’d ever embody except in onslaughts and chaos. “I’m here.” Softer and then still, Fangorn coming to join at her knee, she smiled, hoping to catch his eye. “How are you?” Which might’ve been a silly question, considering how she’d heard he and Nate had burned their house down; and she didn’t dare ask about her possessions, if they were lost too, those mere remnants of anything else in her life. It didn’t matter for the moment anyway.

she knows how to rise again

Melita