Melita
Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down
to swallow the flame down
Melita had strived not to live in the past, to not be shackled by her ghosts, by her wraiths, but gods some days were harder than others, especially when they whispered in her ear, when they spoke hushed lullabies from rote, from memory, from leagues of heavens and havens. They were only figments, only fractions of what she’d once had, and never would touch again. And maybe that was the harsher, blunter line of it - everything was a tease, a torment, ethers and vestiges of worlds she couldn’t return to.
They rounded another corner and Fangorn tucked himself into the crook of her shoulder, vines enveloping along the bristling muscles and the carefully arched mask. Her strides continued their brisk pace, and she didn’t glance behind to see if Aurelia was keeping up – expecting it, because she was doing all she could to evade the proposition, the notion, of completely falling apart in the middle of these damned caverns. The subject matter coinciding, gliding along, was easier than the previous ones, and she warred herself in their climate, stealing over the multitudes, the menace, the melancholy, fueled by the destruction, by the liberation, they’d liberated in these hollowed halls. She made no mention of the team immediately leaving three of them behind – tilting her head vaguely to indicate she was listening as Aurelia told a tale instead.
“You lived underground?” Her inquiry echoed off the stone, brow arching, not being able to process the notion of existing below everything else – but if the world had been as bad as the other woman said, it didn’t sound like there were many options. She didn’t want to give Aurelia false hope either though – while Torchline was better than most, there were plenty of other horrors. “There’s always something. But we don’t have monsters during LongNight. We don’t have cultists.” That she was aware of – she doubted the citizens here would take too kindly. “You take what you can get here.” Anywhere.
The honeybee didn’t expect the next round of words to hasten towards her; and instinct nearly honed in on her to bristle, to argue, to bluntly stride away, but she’d already said her piece. It was already left in the fringes, caught aloft and waved around. Melita had busted her ass at every opportunity. She trained. She grew. She challenged. She emerged.
And still, sometimes it wasn’t enough.
Then she’d rear her impudent, seditious little face towards the sun and dare it to try again.
So, she managed to twist her head over her shoulder, the slightest of smirks registering there. “We’ll see.”
They rounded another corner and Fangorn tucked himself into the crook of her shoulder, vines enveloping along the bristling muscles and the carefully arched mask. Her strides continued their brisk pace, and she didn’t glance behind to see if Aurelia was keeping up – expecting it, because she was doing all she could to evade the proposition, the notion, of completely falling apart in the middle of these damned caverns. The subject matter coinciding, gliding along, was easier than the previous ones, and she warred herself in their climate, stealing over the multitudes, the menace, the melancholy, fueled by the destruction, by the liberation, they’d liberated in these hollowed halls. She made no mention of the team immediately leaving three of them behind – tilting her head vaguely to indicate she was listening as Aurelia told a tale instead.
“You lived underground?” Her inquiry echoed off the stone, brow arching, not being able to process the notion of existing below everything else – but if the world had been as bad as the other woman said, it didn’t sound like there were many options. She didn’t want to give Aurelia false hope either though – while Torchline was better than most, there were plenty of other horrors. “There’s always something. But we don’t have monsters during LongNight. We don’t have cultists.” That she was aware of – she doubted the citizens here would take too kindly. “You take what you can get here.” Anywhere.
The honeybee didn’t expect the next round of words to hasten towards her; and instinct nearly honed in on her to bristle, to argue, to bluntly stride away, but she’d already said her piece. It was already left in the fringes, caught aloft and waved around. Melita had busted her ass at every opportunity. She trained. She grew. She challenged. She emerged.
And still, sometimes it wasn’t enough.
Then she’d rear her impudent, seditious little face towards the sun and dare it to try again.
So, she managed to twist her head over her shoulder, the slightest of smirks registering there. “We’ll see.”
to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun
to be the sun
