Melita
they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive
of the women they burned alive
The silence permeated, pervaded, surrounded, so much that even Melita was numbed into its cycle. The war behind her eyes blasted and billowed, but all she could do was glance down, perched along angles and doorframes, like a bird, striving to take flight somewhere. Preferably with talons outstretched, to claw and grasp and tear. All her hands did for the moment was clutch over cloths and all her mind did for an instant was reel. Her gaze went to the ceiling, to the beams of wooden frames, swallowing down a layer of defiant quiet that seethed into her bones, pulsed amongst the mettle.
Was this always going to happen? Misfortune after misfortune?
The rumbling echo from her uncle finally funneled its way through the walls, and with her back turned, she listened – a winged man, with feathers rising, clinging, until they were pushed, driven, and nailed into a surface. It sounded like madness, like something out of a horrifying, terrifying abyss. But Melita had lived in those tempests and eaves in her youth, knew exactly what the world, what humans (and weren’t they just monsters too?) were capable of. Her jaw clenched and her stare fell again.
The body being taken care of. Disposed? Hidden? Locked away? Investigated? Her heart that hammered for justice and vengeance bound along its intervals, chambers clicking one by one by one, and she could feel the dimensions of determination slinking, slithering in. “Do you know who it was?” The wounded, beaten, battered beast, made to become a reflection, a warning, of Sunjata himself? “Or who did it?” And what could be done about the circumstances?
Was this always going to happen? Misfortune after misfortune?
The rumbling echo from her uncle finally funneled its way through the walls, and with her back turned, she listened – a winged man, with feathers rising, clinging, until they were pushed, driven, and nailed into a surface. It sounded like madness, like something out of a horrifying, terrifying abyss. But Melita had lived in those tempests and eaves in her youth, knew exactly what the world, what humans (and weren’t they just monsters too?) were capable of. Her jaw clenched and her stare fell again.
The body being taken care of. Disposed? Hidden? Locked away? Investigated? Her heart that hammered for justice and vengeance bound along its intervals, chambers clicking one by one by one, and she could feel the dimensions of determination slinking, slithering in. “Do you know who it was?” The wounded, beaten, battered beast, made to become a reflection, a warning, of Sunjata himself? “Or who did it?” And what could be done about the circumstances?
because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life
to bring a whole wildfire to life
