Morph

There are ten animations total around the tree stump of a table, each holding onto a different thing. Libra holds onto his leaf with a scowl. Its bright green, the stunning color I saw in his eyes only a week ago, but he knows not of that.

Its a game, I only know how to play it from a very detailed description Warner gave me, he is quite the nerd. The objective of the game is to make your partner smile, a real, genuine smile, using only our words and the object in which you both picked from the forest. Once they crack a smile, they lose and the game continues. So on and so forth until the last person is left.

Technically, I picked our object, Libra only stood there scowling the entire time. The game starts and I look at Libra, snatching the leaf from his hands. It sparkles, unlike any leaf I’ve ever seen but it looks exactly like the sliver of his eye color that I’m sure I saw. I know exactly how to get a smile out of Libra, anything that’s not nice.

Anything that’s vile, harsh, or disgusting will make him smile. So first, I smack him across his face with a smirk, the others look at me in shock for a split second before focusing on their partners. He snarls, obviously trying to hide a smirk. But I don’t need a smirk, I need a smile, full on teeth showing smile before he gets me first.

I rub his face instead, run my hand across the stubble of his jaw, seeing that my other approach will only get a smirk from him. But I get lost in the details of his face, the small ones I didn’t notice before.

There’s a small scar under his chin, I run my finger over it and he visibly shudders. Another scar is just above his perfect eyebrow, its small and one wouldn’t see it off hand. He grabs my wrist abruptly just before I can trace over it.

He slams my hand down, looking dead in my eyes, the glint comes again. Its a luscious green and I stare into it, mesmerized. Even when I feel the cool skim of Libra’s fingers on my face do I snap back into reality. I can see his eye color, it flickers off and on, only showing for split seconds at a time but I see it and my heart swells from my chest at the sight of it.

“Your beautiful your highness.” He says softly, dropping his hand from my face. I wasn’t aware that I was smiling until the bell rung signaling that I’d lost.

I stand, shaking my head as if to clear it and Libra does the same. “We should leave.” He says harshly. Walking away, I call goodbye to the animations before following behind him.

“Out.” I mumble, watching the forest turn back into the yard of the mansion. There are ant like creatures swarming it, of course they can’t get in without the doors permission, but they can block us.

I’m on alert immediately, prepared to hit, to flip and to do anything in my power to fix this. Libra grabs me, pulling me to him. I ignore the coldness of his body as he grips me tightly. “Never act on impulse.” He snaps. “These are ants, as you can see, but not the ants you see in the human world.” His voice is stone cold. “They can’t be squashed with your shoe.”

“I have this, let me go.”

“To morph something you have to know exactly what to take off or add to it in order to beat it. What will you do with over fifty ant men? Its too much for you Serenity.” His voice leaves no room for arguments, but I don’t need his permission.

I examine the creatures as they crawl and creep over the mansion. The door commands they leave, and some of them laugh in her face. “We have come for the morpher.” What seems to be the leader says in a smooth voice. “Simply hand her over and we shall depart.”

They have thin legs, and thin arms, the bodies of ants but the voices and sizes of men. Their legs, without those, they can’t creep and crawl. “Take me.” I say, pushing Libra off me.

He stands in front of me and the ruler smirks. “Dark lord.” He says, his tone sending chills through me. “It has been so, so, long, old friend.”

“Stay away from the girl.” Libra says. I push him from in front of me.

“Come at me if you think its good for you.” I threaten.

“Ah, a snazzy queen I see. Don’t worry you won’t be queen for long.” he shoots a threat back at me, I don’t like threats. Men gather on the sides of me, probably thinking I’m not paying attention, but I am. And all there legs and arms are gone within a minute.

“I’ll be queen until I die of natural causes, my rein won’t end just because some ant man ended it.” I snap, twisting my hand, causing his legs to twist as well. He cries out in pain, falling to the ground, with another swift movement of my hand, his arms twist as well. Then he crushes up like a soda can as I make a down movement with my hand.

The other ants roll around, trying desperately to leave, the anger that has been building courses through me, it feels as if its burning my veins. And when all the limbless ants began to burn to a crisp around me, I see why.

Libra stares wide eyed as each and every ant burns, I stare at them, feeling so much better as I watch them die a slow and painful death. Sick pleasure, settles within me, it feels so good to watch them burn, but when Libra calls my name I snap out of a daze. I swoosh my hands, putting out the fires on an instant.

“Oh my god.” I say, looking at their half conscious bodies, almost burned to ash. They groan around me and Libra demands I get inside, I listen. As soon as we’re inside, Gemini is their and Libra is yelling in his face frantically. “Burned, they burned. Look out now and you’ll see it if the Hawken hasn’t made its round yet. She just stood there, and each one of them went up in flames!” Gemini’s eyes widens.

“No, that has never happened in history. Morphers add things, morphers take things away, they don’t have fire power.” Gemini shakes his head, pacing the floor.

“After I shook her from lala land, with a swoosh of her hand, she put every fire out.” Gemini looks over to me, I shudder under his intense gaze, not knowing what all this is about. “Even Aunnis, and you know, rulers can’t be morphed. But she crushed his entire body like a sheet of paper, just by doing this,” he reacts the downward movement I made with my hand earlier.

“Serenity, you need to come with me.” Gemini says. I don’t question, though I have no trust for him, I follow him to his study where he paces back and forth. “This is something we don’t know how to handle, which means you need to tame it. This has never happened.” His voice trembles.

“Rulers do no morph, never in history have they been tampered with, and Aunnis was ruler of the Antems, you not only morphed him but you set him on fire. Morphers have never had powers like this.” He shakes his head. “Have you felt, different lately?”

“I’ve been angry, all week I’ve been angry.” I say truthfully, trying to make sense of it all. “And I felt a burn in my veins, an actual burning, right before they all caught afire. It felt amazing, all my anger burned with them. But when Libra yelled at me it was like I snapped from a trance.. and I just knew that I could put it out, so I did.”

Gemini runs his fingers through his hair. “We don’t know what this is, the prophecy spoke of something this world has never seen, maybe this is it.”

This isn’t it, I feel it in my gut that this unknown thing is much, much deeper than this. “I know Libra’s eye color.” I blurt, thinking maybe, that that is a piece of the unknown puzzle. I didn’t read anything about their eye color showing before they get life.

“What?” He gasps. “How do you know this?”

“I’ve saw it, twice. I’ve saw his eyes glimmer bright green.”

“When?”

“Don’t tell him this, please.” I start. “But I first saw before he jumped on me that day, I thought I was crazy until I saw it again when I brought him to the animation forest today.”

“That has never happened, specks of our eye color don’t just show. He must have felt some sense of emotion, light must have broken through.” He explains what I already suspected.

Gemini looks at me, he takes a breath. “Libra isn’t who you think, you don’t know it yet but you’ll me more than just this world’s salvation.” He says, nodding, signaling my dismissal.

I turn on my heel to leave, but stop at the door at the sound of Gemini’s voice. “Serenity?”

“Yes?”

“I lied to you to protect you, and for that I’m sorry. But my brother’s past is filled with darkness.” He says. “I speak truth when I say, there’s light in him.” His voice is serious. I nod, and make my way out, make my way to Libra, as his brothers words play heavily in my mind.

On my way to his study, where he spends most of his time, I run into Aisha. Literally bump into her, I scowl as she mutters sorry, and began walking again. “Wait, I’m sorry.” She calls behind me, no longer speaking of bumping into me.

“Aren’t we all?” I shrug, forgiving her silently. Forgiveness comes easy, its trust that she’s lost before she even fully acquired it. Gemini lying didn’t hit home for me, but Aisha? I thought she was my friend, and for her to betray me in the wake of our ‘friendship’, that hit third base. That showed me that no one in this world can be trusted, that hey may not be a threat, but they may not be who they seem either.

Libra’s study comes into view, he’s not there. I turn to search for his room, he’s not there.

Not knowing where he could be, and not having anything else to do, I scurry to the library. it’s became my safe haven. As soon as I step into it I see Libra. His reading glasses are on, the dim light making his eyes sparkle. His nose s stuck in a book- Oliver Twist. He reads it in silence, not noticing I’m here until my feet pat softly against the floor.

Again he grabs the glasses off his face, a low laugh escapes me. “Glasses look good on you.” He throws a scowl at me, slamming the book shut as well. I wince, as if it hurt me to have him hurt the book. “Its okay to read you know, I do it. Even though people find it.. weird.”

I cringe at how people think its weird and boring to read. Its not at all, before a movie became a movie it was a script, and what is a script? Writing, plenty pages of writing which makes it a book. So if its weird to read, when books are written to be read, how is it perfectly normal to watch a movie when a movie is simply a book acted out on camera?

I don’t realize I’m was rambling aloud until Libra’s head throws back in laughter. A blush of embarrassment creeps up my beck but he ignores it, trying to breath in between his laughter and failing miserably. “Your such a brain love.” He says, breathing hard, clutching his side.

“Books don’t look good on me.” He says seriously before breaking into a smirk. “Well, everything looks good on me.”

“Idiot.” I laugh. “You seem embarrassed by it, you shouldn’t be.”

He shrugs, pushing Oliver Twist aside. “Embarrassment?” He smirks. “It was embarrassing to play with dwarfs. Since you made me-”

“Animations.” I scowl.

“Dwarfs.” He rolls his eyes. “I have some little buddies of my own for you to play with.” His smirk makes me uneasy, but I get up and follow him despite it.

He brings me to a dark part of the mansion, a part where no one is. He laughs when I ask him if this is how I die, but a part of me is very serious.