a lion-hearted girl
Melita began on the rags now, after she’d completed and knotted along the limbs, after the contortions seemed finished, and not leaking sand. They were billows upon billows of bright, lively proportions, not the usual onyx, sable adornments; pink and gold, inlaid with pockets of flowers, warm sprigs and tender blooms, petals of blossoms and figments of tender things, rather than the dusky hollows of death. She expected the inquiry, and didn’t cease in her ministrations when he asked, prepared in her regard for the Voice. “She caused the blight a few years ago.” The youth made no notion or hint of her own suffering in the affliction, how warped, how devastating, how treacherous, how awful she’d become, eternally wondering if it had been her actions had been the product of the sickness, or merely a catalyst for everything lodged within her figure, her soul. “And did nothing to stop it. But Vi did.” The god of life, cutting through the dominion of damnation.
Going in another direction, stepping along a different tact and track, she folded the proportions over the doll, and sought to cut off the remaining cloth. “Safrin likes gifts that honor her beauty.” A hint, and she finally tilted her head to survey him again, a whim coming over her as she noted the subtle tension. “I can go with you, if you want.”
ready for a fight
MELITA
