M E L I T A
Wessex presented a reality Melita had already experienced – she just never had the time to fine tune her talents, her strengths, while they all scrambled and howled throughout adversity. She wished it was more about weapons – weapons she could understand - things she could wield, things she could stab with, things she could slash and burn and rip and tear. But it always seemed to come back to her and what she lacked, what she craved, all those empty facets on her longing, clambering way to strength and dominion. She already knew what happened when something was bigger, something was faster, something was more than herself. When all else failed she simply guarded, became a damned human shield, had the scars and the screams to prove it.
Gods, she was so tired of not being enough.
But that was why she was here, awaiting hardships and pain and agony, so she could become more than the feral little child whisking her way through battle after battle, fumbling and careening, diving and toiling, until something measured up or ignited her circumstances. She permitted Wessex to raise her arm, shake it, like it was nothing, and the girl stared at the scrawny, scraggy limb, eyes drawn to her hands and palms, calloused and rough from holding onto makeshift munitions she should’ve never had to embrace. “I know pain,” she uttered, quiet and soft, but nodding her head in agreement, in assent, in the tumbling acceptance of the upcoming ordeal. But it’d be worth it in the end, because she’d put the world to shame with her fire, with her persistence, with every ounce of dominion and might driven into their hearts, minds, and souls. This was survival and fortitude, this was how she’d endured everything thrown her way, this was suffering for the greater good; so no one she cherished was ever harmed again. So no one looked down their noses and scoffed at the savage girl, so she’d be the hunter, the wolf, the inferno, chasing down the bitter, scalding fiends, a seditious knife, a revolutionary blade.
Teach me, her raised chin and head proffered and defied, the steely glint to her gilded eyes reaching across the void.
Her gaze followed
