i was just about to explain how all of my characters were immortal and then i fucking realized that i have a whole bunch of them that are ghosts so FUCKIGN DUH jfc okay i wrote a thing. Vali, Nari, the Niobids, and Itylus are all pre-existing characters in mythology with basically existing written deaths so here’s a thing about Melissa the First!! i don’t use her a lot but she’s there uwu.
i tried to keep this brief as possible so there’s a lot missing from what happened but the gist is there. tw for death and murder and blood and violence and all that stuff
It was dark, but Melinoe could see that the child had honey colored hair.
She watched the girl and her mother in the dark, touching the long, dirty strands of her own black and white hair hanging into her face. The child was happy and carefree even in the night, bouncing along with endless energy. Was that fury she felt? Maybe. There was something twisting in the eight year old godling’s chest— maybe rage, maybe jealousy. Something, a burrowing worm that made her itch. The child could not be older than Melinoe herself, was probably only about five or six years old.
But she, being mortal, would grow older.
Of course, gods grew as well. They grew until they were done, and then they stopped. Forever.
But they grew to reasonable ages; young adults, adults. Rarely, a god would be trapped as a teenager. Teenage gods were naturally immature anyway, and so it suited them— Macaria, her awful half-sister, for example, had no qualms about being a 17 year old for the rest of eternity.
Melinoe…
No. It made her sick. She had not yet come to terms with it.
Melinoe would…
No. Ugh.
Melinoe would be eight forever.
It filled her with venom, and she felt sick, and cheated, and felt a level of… anger, yes, it was anger, a level of anger that she had never felt. Something had gone wrong. She was already too high functioning to be eight forever. She was too small. She was too incapable, of doing… doing anything. She needed— she needed blood. She needed chaos, she needed revenge. There was too much hate in the godling’s mind, and she needed to let it out. Melinoe had always planned on being able to do so… But when she got older. She had been born a being of evil. She could wait. She needed to be a damned adult to do anything at all, didn’t she?
And yet…
And yet.
It wasn’t fair.
Melinoe watched the girl and her mother. It was dark, and they were making their way home, she assumed; the mother held a basket of goods in one hand, and the girl’s tiny palm in the other. The honey haired child tagged close behind her parent, holding up the hem of her skirts so she wouldn’t trip on the cobblestone. She watched them, in the darkness, with dull feeling clouding her mind, and wanted suddenly to destroy something.
It was then the mother put her basket down.
The woman knelt on the ground, releasing her child’s hand as she dug through the basket, rearranging its contents. The girl, too small to think for herself, (mortals were so funny that way, Melinoe thought bitterly) stood dumbly in place, sticking her fingers into her mouth.
In a small cloud of foggy mist, Melinoe’s form dissipated, and reappeared, invisible, with a slight “hiss” into the alleyway directly adjacent. She waited until the girl’s eyes wandered from her mother’s back, and made sure then to make herself seen, appearing so suddenly that the girl jumped a little bit, making instant eye contact. Her fingers fell from her mouth.
“Come here,” whispered Melinoe. She painted a smile onto her black and white face.
The girl was curious, and wandered easily to her. Melinoe whisked her deeper into the alley. They were being quiet, enough so that the girl’s mother had not yet noticed she was gone. Still, children could be noisy.
“Let’s play a game, okay?” Melinoe whispered to her, friendly, one child to another. She took the girl’s hands in hers. They were warm, her skin tan and contrasting as a medium between Melinoe’s two-toned stark white and deep ebony.
“I like games,” the child replied eagerly.
Her mother called for her in the darkness. “Melissa?” she yelled, searching. “Melissa, where have you gone?”
Melinoe left her body in the alley way, distorted, mutilated, bloodstained, but not before first stripping it of its soul. She would keep that for herself; she was in charge of ghosts, after all. And she would be a child forever— it would be good to have a playmate her own age. One that she could keep.
Perhaps I could start a collection, Melinoe giggled, a child’s laugh coming from a blood soaked body, and whisked her Melissa’s shade away with her as she disappeared, her mother’s increasingly desperate calls echoing in her ears.
