M E L I T A
Melita had been hoping for monsters in stories, the enveloping, clicking of jaws, fangs, and talons, but she’d take anything she could grasp hold of and imagine – the delicacy of snow moss, hanging snakes embedded in branches, camouflaged to match the boughs. She shrugged her shoulders too, the winsome smile curled back into her features as her eyes lifted to the glade’s structure, glancing at the canopy and its bright, serene hues, a blend of sunshine trickling into the greens. Where Vai had shared, the honeybee girl intended to do the same, lacking shades of brutality and behemoth outskirts, diving into the core of her youth, before the days became sinister and Stygian, before she’d been uprooted and sent straight into the slaughter. “My sister, friends, and I once found a tunnel of glass in my old home.” Here, her grin grew Cheshire, conforming to all the suspected arrays of mischief and upheaval settled into her bones, into her veins, into the scorching flames of her ferocity. It’d all started there, but grew and grew into sedition and revolution, a line of irreverence dotting her brow. “It led into the ocean, and we could see everything! There were fish and coral, beautiful, all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes.” Her voice ended somewhat wistful, memories of her face pressed against the glass, leaving her prints and marks before it shuttered and fell into shadow. Would they still be there, she wondered, had the false god not condemned it all to pieces and shards?
Then she listened to Vai’s occupations, the series and cycles of huntress intentions laced with Rathskeller ownership and healing properties. Her eyes segmented solely on the other woman now, fiery, persistent, and determined. “Thank you for opening up the Rathskeller during LongNight,” she said without a moment’s hesitation, extending acknowledgments where they were needed, a benefactor of the woman’s kindness. Then she mulled over the latest inquiry, because there was naught she’d committed to in terms of interests, intrigue, or profession. Curiosity compelled her to every corner and element of the earth, and the past had turned her straight into living and endurance, a fortitude of might nettled in her sides, in her ribs, in her soul. “You’re quite talented!” She meant it with veracity and sincerity, her smile growing softer while her eyes danced elsewhere. “All I’ve done is survive, so far.” It sounded pathetic, in a way, to have only measured her lifetime in a series of disaster and chaos, to simply remain when others had become so much more.
