Four

"Father," she walked down the large hallway shrouded by the stars of her father's universe. "Father," she cried louder as she searched the rooms of the celestial palace. She began to grow frantic. Her long blond hair flowed behind her as she raced down the star lit corridor. Her once serene face was tensed, her white complexion glowed with the frustration of her missing paternal figure.  "Father," her voice grew with fear as she stoped at the last opening in the hall way and let out a long sigh. She clutched onto the asteroid studded door frame and looked in on her once vibrant father sitting defeatedly in the dark solar system, looking down on the Earth. She regulated her breathing and straightened herself to look composed. She patted her hair into the perfect part she once had and brushed dust off her white gown. She looked back to her father and walked with silent steps, but her father knew her foot steps. Just like her sister's, her foot steps were unique. Concienciously quiet could only be the footsteps of Libra.

 

"Libra," he called to her in a hoarse voice. She stopped in her tracks and looked up at his unmoved stature.

 

"Yes, father?" she replied to him. Libra stood up as her father tapped the seat next to him. She pulled her hair to one side and picked up the train of her dress as she walked to sit next to him. His white hair flowed in the breeze of the milky way as he moved his gazed from the abyss of the space he created to his daughter. Her flawless complexion glowed like the stars he used to pin her hair away from her face. Her crystal eyes shined in anticipation of her father's next sentiments as her smile graced his vision.

 

"You see that?" he pointed into the stars at a bright blue orb. She looked in the direction of her father's finger.

 

"I think I do. Are you pointing to that rock?" she looked at him with a confused expression. He chuckled a bit at one of his oldest children's juvenile answer.

 

"Yes. Where are your sisters?" he turned to Libra and stroked the shoulder where her long hair, similar to his, laid idly.

 

"In their respective quarters, father." She wasn't sure where this was going. She eyed him, noticing the large, beaten book on his lap. "Father, what is troubling you?"

 

He pressed her hair into her shoulder and smiled at her, finally realizing it was time. "Call them," he spoke in whispers. Libra smiled knowing something good was to come of this and ran back into the star studded hall.

 

She ran through the hall screaming at the top of her lungs. "Leona! Cancix! Taura! Father wants us!" The girls poked their heads out of their room to hear their father's order. A smile graced each girl's face to know that their father was alright and rushed out to follow their sister to him. Racing behind Libra, the girls asked no questions until they apprached where he sat, serene, calm and unmoved.

 

"Libra, are you sure he wanted us?" Taura looked up from hier father's silouette.

 

"He told me to call you all," Libra replied. The girls hinged themselves like a door on the open frame and watched as the man who gave them existance sat there like stone.

 

"Why don't you go and check?" Leona looked up at the sister who hoovered above her. The ends of her short black hair fell into her face, leaving tiny charcoal burns over her soft, tan skin. The burns faded in little time and her face became as perfect as before i moments of impact.

 

"I don't know, maybe father only wants to talk to one of us at a time." Cancix said staring at her sisters and sending quick glances at her father. Her fingertips began to drizzle along the frame of the room as she hung there, waiting.

 

"No, he asked for us all," Libra replied firmly.

 

"Girls," their father called from where he sat. Each of the four looked up in shock. It never ceased to amaze them how he knew which one was coming and how each one was, even though he was their creator. Each slowly tore themselves from their spot on the door frame and inched toward him, scared of what he was going to say or do.

 

Libra, as the oldest started their line, Taura ending it. They approached him in thi sfashion them broke off to their respctive spots around him as they always did. Libra sat next to him on the bench. Leona sat ot his side on the floor, looking up at her origin with bright brown eyes. Cancix stood in front of him and looked down in his direction, her  bare arms folded over the chest of her aqua gown and her hipped swayed to one side. Taura rested her chin on his knee and allowed her long dirt colored hair to fall off his leg like loam.  SHe looked up with shining green eyes and anxiously anticipated her father's words.

 

He looked upon each one of them and smiled. Each face a representation of himself and something to have pride in for him, then he looked down to the book and realized what he had really called them all there for. "Girls," he sighed as he tapped the book with his wrinkled hands. "There is something you should know." Each girl looked to him, astounded that there was something they didn't know about him. He was their father, nothing was to be kept from them. Or so they thought. "This book is a book of my biggest mistakes."

 

The girls moved their gaze from their father to the book he held in his hand. They each looked upon it's beaten cover and overly turned pages, wondering why it's significance was only important now.

 

"The Book of Sylvari is something I've housed for a long time. It is very important because it is the beginning of civilization. This is the key to your existance." The girls' eyes grew wide as the looked at the seed that bore fruit in their form. He turned to Libra and had her stretch out her hands. Shakily, she outstretched her palms and he gently placed the large book in what he deemed capable hands. "This book belongs to the four of you more than it ever has, me and i not only entrust you all with this responsibility." His white eyes left Libra and fell upon the blue orb he focused on lately. "That is your calling." He pointed to the focus of his pupils, forcing the girls to follow his fnigers.

 

"That?" Cancix spun to look at the small speck off their big palace. Their father looked at her squinted nose at what she had already deemed a lost cause. He laughed a bit at her reaction and looked at the others. Taura's eyes shined at the new opportunity. For her, this would be a new adventure.  Leona looked from her father to the orb in confusion. Out of all the astreroids, why that one? Libra looked at her father for the explanation behind the questions that plagued her mind as well.

 

"Why there?" she questoned. Her crystal eyes relaxed on him. His smile only served to make her relax even more. She trusted him.

 

"That, is the perfect blend of the four of you. Earth wind Fire and Air. Just like this planet, you four combined makes something incredible." He looked at each one of his girls knowing they would prevail. He turned bakc to Libra and held her arms where the book stopped. "You must begin life there." Her eyes grew wide at what he was asking. She was left speechless. He looked to the others who he knew would have something to say. Taura beacme giddy and bouncy. Leona looked off into the system looking for her answer. Cancix batted her eyes and began to smile. She knew that this was something she could excell at.  "Take this and practice, you'll go when you're ready." The girls stood up and walked out the same way they came in, silently.

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Libra

 

Libra clutched the book close to her and then placed it on a book stand in her room. The room was decorated in a dark color green. She kept her eyes glued to the book as she back up toward her bed, adjacent to the book stand. It was so much power, that to her, was just non chalantly placed in her hands. How could her father trust her with the very means of their existance unless something was going on that she didn't know.Tears rolled down her soft white cheeks, as knock at the door broke her thoughts. She faded in and out in suprise and then back enough to let her visitor in through croaks in her throat.

 

"You got time,Li?" Taura poked her head through the black hole that served as the door to her rom.

 

"Always for you, Taura. Come in." Libra smiled as she wiped the ters from her cheeks and pulled herslef back from the wind she shocked herself into. Taura sat next to her elder sister and looked at the source of her worries in confusion.

 

"Whay are you focused so on Sylvari?"

 

"Sylvari?" Libra looked at Taura eyes twisted and a smile on her face at her smaller sister.

 

"Book of Sylvari seems too long to say all the time. I figure if we are going to use it all the time we should get a faster name to call it by. Sylvari." Taura smiled at her explanation and Libra sighed in her sister's silliness. Taura folded her legs onto Libra's bed and continued to look at her. "So, why are you looking like Father was?"

 

"Just thinking." She didn't want Taura to worry.

 

"About what?" Taura cocked her head to the side and looked at her sister.

 

"About how we are going to learn from this. If I unerstand this, Father is not going to help us in this respect." She lied. This wasn't the main problem., But one of the smaller problems that no doubt contributed to the big one.

 

"How are you so sure he will not?" Taura's face sank into a serious state.  Her brown skin taught around tensed features.

 

"The way he just handed over something that he has harbored for so long with little to no explanation and giving us a big responsibility of creating life? I mean this just distances him from us, don't you think?" Libra got up and paced in fornt of her bed while her sister sat there is quiet contemplation as  she poured the emotions she didn't want her sister  to know inadvertantly.

 

"Distancing?" Taura repeated sylable by sylable. "Would he really do that?"

 

Libra stopped in front of her long enough to stare into her large, hurt green eyes. "I hope not."  She sat down next ot her yourgest sister and pressed her head into her shoulder for her to cry. Libra knew where that face led and that was normally an endless night of crying. "I could always be wrong, you know." She tapped her sister's back, trying to console her. Taura looked up at her sister and lifted an eye brow; there were no tears stains on her cheeks.

 

"And when was the last time you were wrong about Father, Li?" Libra's consoling smile faded as she looked at her sister. "Right" She stood up and threw her brown hair to her side. "You haven't been wrong in-"

 

"That doesn't mean I can't be wrong now," Libra yelled at her. She was already frustrated enough by the very thought, her sister confirming it would make it too real for her liking. After all , it was just a thought to her. "Listen," Libra sighed as she flopped back down on her bed. She allowed herself to fall into the perfectly laid pillows, putting their organization into disarray. "I don't know if it's for real. I was just thinking about it that's all."

 

"Not everything Father does has an alterior motive. Maybe this is just a transferance of power. A chance to see if we are worthy of the universe by testing us with one planet?" Taura thought out loud, trying to help her sister find a bright side.

 

"But why would Father want to give us this planet or the universe for that matter? Why not do it himself? " Libra looked at Taura for answers that she didn't have.

 

"I don't know, Li." Taura looked at her sister and shrugged her shoulders. "I just don't know."  Libra stared at the roof of her room as if the answeres were painted above her. "Why not ask him yourself, Li?" Libra shot up like a bolt of lightning across the cosmos.

 

"I can't ask him that!"

 

"If you have so many questions, then why not?"

 

"Because what if he thinks my questioning means I am not ready for this. What if he takes our new responsibility away because of me. You know better than I, of Cancix and Leona's anger. You really wan tot instigate it?"

 

"I suppose not." Taura's eyes rolled in her head, letting out a sigh of defeat in her words. Libra got up off her bed and walked to her youngest sister. She took Taura's  long fingers and slender palms in hers owm and looked into her sister's eyes.

 

"Keep this between us, please. If the others knew of my doubt...."

 

Taura let a small smile cross her face, giving Libra a ray of confidence in her.

 

"Of course."

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Cancix

 

Walking silently into their respective rooms, each girl left her Father. Libra silently walked, wide eyed and Book of Sylvari in hand. It was such a waste to leave such power with her oldest sister. Once her sisters left the hallway, her speed increased to a near sprint as she journeyed to her room at the end of the hallway. Stopping at the last door, Cancix looked down her track long enough to see Taura close the door of Libra's room, then disappeared into her own. She closed the black hole door behind her, folding her arms against her chest and pacing her room.

 

"Libra? Why Libra? Of the four of us, why did Father give it to her?" Cancix threw her arms down, balling her fists up at her sides. She paced faster and faster, letting her blood boil even more at the thought. "And that little insignificant rock? It has no use to us! We are able to make worlds anywhere we want. Even in thin air if we'd like with that Book! And She? She will never see the improvements we could make with such power. She will simply follow Father's orders and have my other sisters like servants behind her. She will never excell if she confines herself to Father's mediums. When will she learn?"  

 

Cancix threw herself on her bed defeated, placing her chin on a pile of thrown pillows on her royal blue sheets. She stared out of the window she had Leona burn through her wall and into the aquatic world she created outside of it. Out there was her escape from everything. The one place where eveyrthing went her way, lay right in that hole. She blankly stared in that direction for some time before getting off her bed and walking to the small opening. She placed her hand on the burnt edges of the window. Slowly, she began to sweat, then melt out of the hole dripping into her world by her finger tips.