Melita
Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down
to swallow the flame down
No returning to the past – they couldn’t, were incapable, no escape, no means of evasion from where the Voice had brought them. Picked away from homelands, from destitute regions, or from utopian villas hadn’t really mattered. To find others of their ilk, of their family ties and tethers, was a monumental treasure itself; though sometimes Melita found herself not regarding it as warmly as she should’ve. They rounded more corners, more edges, while they conversed, while she stepped longer, while her limbs gained quick divisions. “I wouldn’t want to go back to mine either – one no longer exists, and the other was torture.” The Rift had been an actual hell – where she’d lost far more than she could have ever have imagined, too young, too weak, too fragile, the scars lining her back only some of the trauma inflicted.
But there she’d learned to persevere, to endure, to fortify, and perhaps that counted for something, in the end.
The glint of the light shown, and soon they were there, at the entrance, a sweeping gesture of familiarity and closure. She twisted her head back over her shoulder, past Fangorn, past the ramparts, and back to Aurelia’s features, noting the placating gesture. The other woman’s experiences sounded similar to a lot of other Outlanders – intriguing notions, when she’d known the walk and weight of cosmic beings since she’d been born, stretching her bones and limbs beneath clouds and light. “I have seen gods all my life. We had a deity of the Sun, and I would’ve followed him anywhere, had I been given the chance.” Had Helovia not been obliterated by a false paragon. Had they not all been so readily, damned lost.
So the semblances of Aurelia’s curiosity were understandable, and the youth didn’t provide judgment into those waltzes of perplexities either, hands going to her hips, weaponry still held in between grasps of flesh and wood. “Good, most of the time. But the gods are flawed, just like us.” A reminder, maybe to herself, maybe to anyone listening, that none of them were guiltless or infallible. There were always choices to be made, to be had. “Ludo once asked another to murder an Ascended.” And the Old Gods would always sneer, always bristle, always hate those from the other, newer goddess.
But there she’d learned to persevere, to endure, to fortify, and perhaps that counted for something, in the end.
The glint of the light shown, and soon they were there, at the entrance, a sweeping gesture of familiarity and closure. She twisted her head back over her shoulder, past Fangorn, past the ramparts, and back to Aurelia’s features, noting the placating gesture. The other woman’s experiences sounded similar to a lot of other Outlanders – intriguing notions, when she’d known the walk and weight of cosmic beings since she’d been born, stretching her bones and limbs beneath clouds and light. “I have seen gods all my life. We had a deity of the Sun, and I would’ve followed him anywhere, had I been given the chance.” Had Helovia not been obliterated by a false paragon. Had they not all been so readily, damned lost.
So the semblances of Aurelia’s curiosity were understandable, and the youth didn’t provide judgment into those waltzes of perplexities either, hands going to her hips, weaponry still held in between grasps of flesh and wood. “Good, most of the time. But the gods are flawed, just like us.” A reminder, maybe to herself, maybe to anyone listening, that none of them were guiltless or infallible. There were always choices to be made, to be had. “Ludo once asked another to murder an Ascended.” And the Old Gods would always sneer, always bristle, always hate those from the other, newer goddess.
to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun
to be the sun
