playing with a stick of dynamite

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

Fangorn gave an appreciate grumble as his vines tangled into the reformed puddle, and Melita didn’t know what to offer. The meat sizzled and she rotated the skewer again, letting her calloused fingers slide over the metal, something grounding, something real, while the rest of the turmoil flickered to life (or death). She wasn’t even certain what to make of the situation through the shock and clarity, as it slowly edged, ebbed, and flowed around her. Nate gone. Stormbreak mauled. What it could mean for echoing eternities and the present dice cast along the world.

That hate and malice and something else she probably had yet to fathom urged Nate onward – even with family to be left behind.

How far did loyalties stretch? Where did it all begin and end?

Her features were downcast, the murmur quiet again, staring out over the lava plumes, the incendiary pieces and devices existing on earth. They didn’t need anyone or anything to light them into a fuse. “What do you think Frey wants you to do?” Because she didn’t understand it – none of it at all.

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

With Fangorn occupied by the puddle Sunjata’s created, he turns back to Melita with a small frown, swallowing hard against the silence, the crackle of the fire that cooks the meat she’s working on for some reason in this warm, godforsaken place. He has to imagine it’s for a quest, why else travel all this way just to cook something? But he doesn’t ask about it, instead, he lets his steel gaze linger on her fiery hair, pushing away thoughts of her father and the quick temper that was often shared between them.

“A mediator, I think.” Though they hadn’t talked about it at all. The last he’d heard of what the deity wanted him to do was to make stands, make decisions and not apologize for them, not to go back and regret the past because it couldn’t be changed. “They want me to make sure life still goes on in the face of war and everything else.” A shoulder rises and falls in a shrug, because that’s a vague answer to the question she’s given, yet it’s the only answer he’s gotten from his deity.

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu

Melita

they should have checked the ashes
of the women they burned alive

A mediator. How was that going for him now?

She had some opinions about his other statement (maybe he was just going to have multiple children again and fan the flames of chaos) – but she pulsed it all into a quick little sigh. Turning the meat over so that the metal portions merely twirled in her hands, because the food was probably done by now, her thoughts did the same. “Well, good luck with that,” she shrugged, because the war brewed and brimmed and had only gotten closer with the latest issues and sagas.

And she wasn’t sure what she could do. Time was limited and vast and every other juxtaposition in between. So she steeled her resolve and lowered her breath to a long, slow cataclysm, before rising from her rock. Let me know if you need anything for Nate sat on the tip of her tongue as she turned towards him, but it didn’t make it out into the void. There were other arrangements, and she wasn’t certain how deeply she should be getting involved. How far the groundwork of bedlam and mayhem went. “I have to get back home,” and she shrugged her bag back on her shoulders, eyed Fangorn in the warning of their impending departure. “Thank you for letting me know.”

because it takes a single wild ember
to bring a whole wildfire to life

We're riding 'round this carousel, getting dizzy 'til we're sick

Not well, truthfully, and not likely to get much better given the circumstances of everything. But he remains silent, letting her take what she wants out of his words, waiting for some fiery reprimand or cutting comment that she was so good at giving him. But when she doesn’t, when those words don’t come, and it’s entirely her offering some amount of good luck with that even if the shrug accompanies it, he takes it at face value. He nods, shoves his hands deep into his pockets and takes a deep breath of the warm, humid air.

But she says she needs to leave, and he nods again stepping back to get out of her way and space. “Of course.” He supplies instantly, working his jaw a few moments longer before he looks back to the way he’s come. “I’ll send a letter once I know more.” And after that, well, she’d know where to find them. He’d told her where they would be if she ever wanted to visit.

And with that, he lets her take her leave and he spends a few moments longer in the heat and lava absorbed land, before shifting to the sleek black dragon and departing back toward home as well.

- FIN <333

the flood

Love is like a circle, there's no easy way to end

totally sniped from odd ilu