Melita’s relief was instantaneous, the regal innocence of a babe, a melding, molding fusion of jubilance all over again, radiant smiles and aspiring dreams. She glowed and pressed on, forged ahead of the oddities, the circumstances, the enigmas shrouding her mind, absorbing the weight of his laughter and the spark of delight pressing into her sides. She didn’t question the way he faltered, the way he distracted and deterred – she was easily riveted on other things at a moment’s notice, understood that something else was always there in the background (the shriek of a gull, the grin of a friend, the play of shadows dancing on the wall), enticing, disrupting, tempting. But the big stag had his own version of lures and beguilements, for no sooner had he shifted away from her inquiry, did he proffer one of his own, and the child nearly leaped, bounded, in mid-air.

“No!” She shouted at first, because it was true, no one had ever given her lessons on flight, and then she was an exhilarating rush of movement, motion, and sound, blustering and swift, keen and ardent, mane fluttering and flying in all directions as her wings spread out, eager and fervent, beating frantically. The youth had always presumed one day she’d just know how - and she simply hadn’t grown enough to achieve it. “I’ve always wanted to though! It looks awesome!” The little honeybee child hadn’t ever asked, wondered, or pondered the state of her differences between her mother and sister – why she’d been adorned with plumage while they weren’t, what had made her altered and morphed from their lean forms, who would ever show her the way to the skies (like so many others that she’d watched; glistening, radiant, and beautiful, free and liberated, soaring in the wind). “My mother and sister don’t have wings,” she offered in response, in explanation, trying to fathom the hows and whys, in constant, zealous waves and gesticulations, as if she’d be spirited off into the air by longing and wishing alone, as if the breeze would pick her up and show her the way. “I don’t know why I do and they don't – but I really want to use them!” The girl flapped them in time, in tune, with the swirl of the wind across the flattened landscape, hope and adoration blooming from her chest, staring at the man who’d promised this amazing gift, tossed right into the snare, snatched before she’d even begun to realize. “Could you show me?”

Melita

diamond in the flesh