M E L I T A
Melita didn’t have the heart to say the monsters never truly left her mind; they came and went as the nightmares did, as the memories screeched and howled, as the cold, lifeless tips of her mother’s once gentle fingers crawled over her neck, as she embodied the very same fiends and heathens.
But not now – today was about becoming better, stronger, mightier; she was conviction, tenacity, and brute, reckless force. Thereafter, she’d be even more, and the world would have to look her way, bow to her prowess, to her dominion, to her perseverance.
So she prepared her mind for the challenge ahead. She might be faster, but that was likely the only advantage she had. Roana was far more experienced, far more dangerous, and likely, far more cunning. But that didn’t mean Melita would be a sitting duck – eager and ready to take a beating. Most of her enemies had been felled by her quick wit and seditious pluck: growling and roaring, shoving anything she could into their eyes, into their hearts, into their lungs, until they bled across apertures and thresholds, and her family was allowed to flee.
Basics; did pretending to be a massive demon in the dark qualify as basics? Her eyes watched Roana’s stance, and she stretched too, arms flinging out to the sides and then across her chest, grabbing hold of each leg behind her back and then placing them down. Then she inhaled, exhaled, and fired rapidly – the only process she could fundamentally understand – with a balled fist intended, aiming, trying for Roana’s stomach. The movement wasn’t boiling or brewing with her innermost brutality or ferocity; there were no enemies in the vicinity, no lives to be saved, no threat for her imminent survival. It was just a touch, a taste, of her ignorance, of her abilities, but Fangorn shifted and bounded out of the way, as if he saw the storm coming well before she did.
