M E L I T A
The transgressions, the sins, piled up and seethed beneath the waves of her scorn, disdain, and derision, but they’re only met with apologies and regrets. Melita didn’t want those particles, those little ivory droplets where everything was suddenly fine, flowers bloomed, daisies lifted up to the sky, and naught mattered anymore, gone, worthless and forgotten. While it may have happened for some, those capable of moving past the horrors, the tortures, the treacheries, she couldn’t; and there was nothing else for her to grab ahold of. They were the last memories of her mother, shattering when the world cracked beneath their feet, they were last moments of Clementine, nose between petals and blossoms, they were the last cascaded footfalls of demons at their doors. It was pain and agony and torture and sorrow; misery collected in her heart, lungs, and soul, until every essence was just their final whispers and goodbyes. She couldn’t get them back – words of rue and repenting weren’t going to bring them to this threshold, a pardon from her bones wasn’t going to send them into sunlight and rain – and while she knew her anger wouldn’t either, her hot-blooded bellowing, the long-since buried howls and roars stirring in her chest, she couldn’t let it go.
Because that would mean they’d always be gone.
Vengeance and justice could sweep across the grounds, bloody and unrelenting from her fists, but her mother wouldn’t linger there. Revenge could soak its way into the floors, but Clementine wouldn’t whisper in her ear any longer.
So that was all she’d receive – regrets Kiada had likely said a thousand times over.
Her eyes narrowed, hands balled at her sides, Fangorn glancing from one girl to the other. Kiada seemed eager to fade away, to disappear from the seething, emblazoned fury of Melita’s wrath, and she let her, without a word, without a complaint, without a stirring more. What else was there to say? What else was there to do? Retreat, she nearly hissed. You do that, she nearly growled. Good, go, she nearly whispered, stark and cold and chilling.
She didn’t do any of it; just watched her leave, flowers still left where they’d been settling in the soil, ready to bloom with a touch of sun or rain. On an inhale, she sank back down onto the cobblestones and curled into a ball, forehead touching her knees as the vampire gourd bounded to her side. She shook, but she didn’t cry, a trembling mass and mess of anger, unsettled, desperate for the things she couldn’t have all over again.
