to be lit up from within
vein by vein
She wasn’t going to begrudge or mourn the way she’d been changed and altered; only perhaps the events that had led up to it. Some beneficence lingered and honey remained, but the stillness in her from betrayed all the sedition spread from fire to flame to blood and back; strength rendered because she’d had no other choice. Melita couldn’t be the saccharine laden babe who’d once skipped from flower to flower any longer; stopping to smell the blossoms had died with the sound of her sister’s laughter fading into nothing but her memories, or her mother’s sacrificial motions. She wouldn’t expect it of him either – to be the joyful lad who’d smiled and protected and shielded without so much as a blink of an eye. Because people changed – even if one had believed them simply gone.
His answer wasn’t something she would’ve ever concocted; Iskra’s mother had been formidable in so many ways – and her gilded gaze watched as he slumped and explanations were made clear, swift, and harsh. “Sorry,” she apologized, uncertain what for – the question, the action, the events that had led to here…Given the opportunity, she would’ve bared her teeth for him too – against the world, lands, scorn, and derision. But he’d ran instead, fleeing to winter worlds, telling not a soul, and she couldn’t help the feeling of betrayal pumping through her veins, even if it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not really. He was allowed to be angry and spiteful, afraid of what was to come next.
Sighing, unfurling the way her breaths had built up in her chest, the Honeybee reached across to his fist, tapping lightly on it, some little signal to let her in. “And now what are you doing?” Existing? Living? Roaming?
to be the sun
MELITA
