M E L I T A
It was only easy because she’d done it a hundred times before. It was by rote, completed without a second thought, like the spears she’d tossed, like the knives she’d thrown, like the swords and shields she’d carried. It’d been kill or be killed in that savage, nefarious land, and in part she’d had to grow, had to morph, had to change along with it, craft the ruthless iniquities through her blood, through her mind, through her soul. It had taken begging, pleading, and sobbing before she finally embarked down those lines and conquered instead of curling into a ball, instead of hiding. “Oh, no.” Here she grinned, but it lacked the great, ebullient luster from before, and her eyes ghosted back towards the waterline, the woods, the snow capturing the rest of the scenery. Her mind rambled to her sister, gone in her gentle haze, when she’d searched and searched and searched for her, her mother’s soft traces and scents of concoctions and herbs, her last glimpses of the woman shoving them forward, away, to safety. But it hadn’t been. It’d been the devil’s haven, and they’d all been the false gods’ play toys, until sedition and revolution spread, until they’d had enough.
“Survival required I learn how to hunt.” And how to destroy, how to maul, how to become something barbarous instead of innocent and ignorant. “I live in the settlement.” She tilted her head back to Samuel, watched as he picked at the fish. “It tastes much better when it’s cooked.” The smell would still be potent, but such was the way of sea life. “Do you need anymore?”
