M E L I T A
Melita has always been one to play dangerous games – reckless and hasty, the creature that would look before they leaped. She’d dance on flames if someone told her not to, she’d curl and coil and unleash havoc and hell to protect those closest to her, and her ambitions, her aspirations, were mercurial coals. Opening a door was temptation, even though she’d heard the stories, the myths, the legends, and then the realities floating to the surface, healing in the infirmary. How many had ventured out, never to return? How many screamed beyond those wooden frames, lost and forlorn, begging for absolution, for deliverance, from the monsters outside?
She could hear the chaos building; her body, her mind, was used to the frenetic pace, to the vast unknown, to the sharpened, heightened sensation of bedlam coursing through veins and bones. The yell was a combination of keen notes and blunt force, commands and demands; one she didn’t recognize. So there was the tribulation and trial: to let them in, or keep them out? Was it a deceitful act, carried on by demons and infidels yearning to gain access? Longing to cut them open? Wanting to bleed them dry?
Another unknown figure approached warily, and Melita’s eyes, Fangorn’s eerie stare, narrowed. What were they supposed to do in this situation? How many times had it occurred, and folly was met? How many had disappeared into the murky night, doomed and consigned by their own brethren? She clenched her jaw and curled her fingers back into her palms; the apprehension ghosting away, giving in to the petulant boldness rolling its form through her limbs.
Her gourd companion bounded out of the way as she advanced, her features a crisp, gilded tempest, reaching for the door because she couldn’t stand it; the nuances of danger, the signs of treachery, the unfortunate beings locked and trapped outside. She couldn’t remain idly by, she’d never been able to. It was a flaw and a virtue, depending on the potential, ominous outcome. The youth nodded towards the stranger, wild and savage, inveigled by the anguishing possibilities, looked him in the eye briefly, noting the whispers conjured, spoken, twisting and turning the vindication, the convictions, in her skull. “If you know her, we should let her in.” Her hand reached for the locks, fingers swift and quick, pulling and pushing at them one-by-one, brows furrowed in a determined fissure.
If they were wrong, and they’d waltzed into a trap, she’d take the fall.
