preview

The Flame - Original Writing

Better Essays

In the still, smoke-filled air of the family shrine the oil lamp that sat at the base of the terracotta statue of Demeter, flickered. The flame sputtered on the wick, threatening to go out. The white robed figure kneeling in the center of the room, as still as the statue, broke her vigil and lifted her head at the change in light. Sad, dark eyes fixated on the sputtering light and then lifted up to the shadow wreathed face of the goddess who lost her daughter annually before returning to look at the flame with a tense air of expectancy. Was it an omen, this light that would sputter and go out? Or was it simply the fact that the family fortunes had dipped so low that not only could they not afford the bribes that would save their only …show more content…

Two-headed, scaled, the head of a bull, the body of an alligator, metal limbs that worked with the alchemical machinery that had allowed Nikostratos to conquer the whole world. No one agreed on what it looked like and there wasn’t even a consensus on whether it was real or not. So many in the city, Melantha included, who believed the monster was nothing more than myth and that the true monster resided half a world away in his luxurious palace which was stained with the blood of the conquered world.

She supposed, wryly, that she would soon know for certain if she was right.

Beyond the door of the family shrine she could hear the household waking up. Her mother’s strident voice, tinged with tears, barking orders to the servants woke everyone who had not yet risen. It was not the morning song she would wish to be her last in the house that had seen her birth, but little had gone the way that Melantha had wanted. She stood and blew out the guttering lamp, mercy for the wick.

An all-night vigil had given her no insight into her fate, the gods had not spoken though she had not expected them too. The vigil had been at her mother’s insistence. She wanted her daughter purified enough so that when she died in the black depths of the labyrinth, she would find her way more easily to the Elysian Fields where a draught from the river Lethe enough to wash away memories her horrible death. Melantha had no such intentions. There was no

Get Access