Nihilist

"We are the fireflies within the jars. We hold the purity of this world in a greater form, yes? We've been given these powers to cure the earth from sin," Libra explains, letting the blue glow peer out of the edges and into the soft wind once more. With every little insect we catch in our palms, that reminder always seeps out of our fingers. We are guardians to all life that lives beyond this field at the cost of our innocence so they can keep theirs.

We catch twelve. Following the names of signs that come from the stars, we watch over the earth while rotating with a sparkle of hope. We shine only when the darkness arrives, and during the day, we blend with the others, looking to be nothing more than ordinary civilians.

We place the twelve gathered insects into a single sphere, one at a time, together. The glow shines brighter than it did before, becoming an orb of light that gleams through the glass.

We are what lies under the snow.

We're the center of humanity.

The psychologically divine.

Our orbits on the earth leave more than a tattered footprint and a trail from frozen soil, but instead the hints of prophecy and revelation. She places the orb back inside the backpack sitting just a few feet from us, but doesn't cease her dėsɨrė to catch more.

We run through the field, wanting to be the fireflies, without care of what lies beyond our warmth. We swirl and dance, happy to exist rather than to know when we won't. We laugh and cheer, the clouded skies above beginning to crack and show the light of the sun once again.

And then she finds a crack.

Another fracture in the earth,

Frozen in place,

Hidden under a blanket of snow.

She falls and falls, slipping down to the bottom like the world went hollow. A small stream of red blends with the blue, and she screams in pain. I run to follow her and pause at the edge, finding her again as her bruised body crumbles to the enclosed darkness at the end of the fall. The imperfections in the ice caused her to be cut up in several places, but the vapor from her heavy breaths still rose to my gentle reaches below.

She calls out my name, scratched and anxious, and I fear my small body isn't able to grasp her. Her blood sinks into the ice, getting darker and darker as it swarms into crimson and maroon.

"Libra, use your shifting!" I call out.

In an instant, she remembered she wasn't an ordinary being without the ability to change physically into anything she wanted. Libra's ability was used to manipulate physicality as mine was for time, and we both grew a love for each other past the relationships of the other ten celestial users that roamed.

She grew large wings that held the color of the ice when it shadowed at night, a collection of glossed, dark blue feathers that outstretched and helped her soar her way back up after a set of winces.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," she grins. She stands after a few moments, eager to forget she fell and continue pursuing careless happiness. This is the world telling me that happiness comes at a cost. It is never truly gifted without the wrapping of sadness, and we are the balance between the two. We are the shelter that upholds the divine scale of existence. We are the weapon against nihility.