L i b r a

by Falling Wednesday

I scraped the skies and brought a piece back.

I didn't want to share it so I hid it away.

But when I wanted to look at it,

I couldn't find that piece of blue and white.

So now there's a hole in the sky and a hole in my chest.

o o o

Rough, but warm and comforting hands gently held the back of my neck and chin. They slowly lifted my head and I felt the most delicious water slip through my lips and wet my tongue. I opened my mouth wider, begging for more when the hands went away.

I felt my throat weakly rumble as some words made their way through. I don’t know what they were, but the comforting hands came back with more of the elixir. I drank deeply until I started to cough and sputter.

I peeled opened my eyes. A pair of red orbs peered from behind the strands of a head full of black hair.

My heart skipped a beat.

“S-Scorpion, get your hands off me!”

With every ounce of my strength, I pushed the wretched creature away from me.

“Whoa there, it’s rude to push away somebody who just saved your life.”

“I never asked for it,” I said through clenched teeth. I dragged myself away from the Scorpion as far as I could, but he mockingly caught up in a few steps.

“Stop that, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Ugh, I don’t need your concern,” I snapped.

The boy before me briefly ran a hand through his messy, long hair, briefly exposing the pointy ears of a pure Scorpion.

He took a breath, closed his eyes, and then opened them again.

“Look, I’m not a bad person, okay? So just stop and calm down.”

“Funny you think you’re worthy to be called a person.” I retorted. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the hurt in his disgusting, red eyes.

“That’s a bit harsh. You should at least be grateful; I pretty much saved your life. The others had forgotten about you because of that stupid game I told them to stop playing; you’ve been in here for nearly three days now.”

Okay, so his eyes weren’t disgusting. But I still detested him. Why? Because he was a Scorpion. His black hair, red eyes, abnormally long canines, almond skin, and pointy ears filled my entire body with dread. That’s when I noticed his bare, dark chest.

“Wear a shirt, will you?”

Rod shrugged and suddenly bent over me and started to unbutton mine.

“What the- hey!”

“You’re wearing my only shirt right now,” he said casually.

I scowled.

“Don’t lie to me. A monster like you wouldn’t dare-”

The shirt I was wearing wasn’t Leo’s.

“I didn’t know the prince of Libra had an overdeveloped chest.” He knocked the hat off my head and my long, golden hair tumbled down past my shoulders, “and a hairstyle that simply resonates femininity.”

My brain had shut off as soon as I realized that the rat had changed my shirt, but my mouth kept trying to fruitlessly form words.

“Don’t think of me as a pervert or anything of that sort. Your other shirt was drenched in sweat and other nasty things, so I decided to wash it. Nobody told me that the prince was a girl.”

A loud rattling of possibly heavy keys intruded.

“Oh, bloody Fera,” Rod cursed.

He gathered my hair into a panicked fist and took out a knife from his back pocket.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed.

Then he proceeded to chop off my locks.

“You cut my hair!” I cried.

The golden strands hung from his fingers for a few moments until he threw them in a bushel of hay. He then turned back to me, moving so fast that he nearly toppled over my body.

As if that was the final cue, the door slammed open.

“Rod, what are you doing in here?”

Rod quickly buttoned up the shirt I was wearing and pushed me away from him. There were two figures standing in the doorway. The owner of the angry, demanding voice stomped towards my direction and glared at the boy named Rod. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but I flinched and turned away when she shot me an angry look with her crimson eyes.

“You untied him? Oh, and I see that you’re playing Mommy again with your little cute bowl of porridge and comfy blanket. Why not show him to his new room? Make him as welcomed as possible!” Every word dripped with sarcasm, and she even had a smile that came along with batting eyelashes.

So they thought I was Leo. A lump suddenly formed in my throat and my eyes started to sting. I would never be able to erase that image of him spread out on the floor with my green dress slowly turning darker as his heart continued to pump blood out of the ugly hole in his chest. Anybody who walked in would’ve mistaken him for me. It should have been me.

Rod stood up to his full height and put one of his hands on his hips. I noticed the fire in the girl’s eyes flicker for a second as soon as she remembered that he towered her by nearly two heads. Rod probably reached a few inches above six feet.

“Zenny, shut up will you? My ears are kind of hurting.” He rubbed the side of his head to prove his point.

The fire was blazing again.

Zenith scowled and stomped over closer to Rod. She grabbed Rod by his necklace and pulled him down so that his nose was only a centimeter away from hers.

“He is a prisoner, a hostage- not a guest! What will Vartan say if he saw this? Tie him back up and get out now. Only Nayd and I are allowed in here to make sure that he’s not dead or anything.”

“Oh really? When I came in, he was barely breathing.”

“Dead people don’t “barely breathe.” He was alive wasn’t he? That’s all that matters.”

It was my turn to get angry.

“Hey, I’m human too, you know.”

I gave myself a pat on the back for being able to speak up.

But that was before the two balls of fire started to burn into my head.

“Excuse me? Do you know who- I mean- what we are?”

The scary girl pointed a finger at me. It looked dangerous.

“Just because you’re the prince doesn’t mean you can interrupt us like that; not after what you and your country did to us,” she spat.

Next thing I knew, I was angrily on my feet and ready to curl my fingers around her jet-black locks.

“What in the name of Libra are you talking about? It was Scorpio who attacked us in our land and stole our artillery!” I pushed Rod away when he tried to stop me and continued. “If it wasn’t for you guys who were just so desperate for emeralds, our underwater castles wouldn’t be in ruins right now! Our people would also be able to raise normal families and eat at least three meals a day. Everything would be perfect, just like six years ago. No, don’t start talking about the “Period of Truce” we’re going through right now. After this year is up, the war is going to begin again.”

I let the last bit sink in as I caught my breath. I didn’t realize how rough and heavy my breaths were until I had stopped shouting.

“But you killed our king.” Zenith’s voice was almost inaudible and dangerously cold.

“And he was worth hundreds, no, thousands times those emeralds.”

Without saying another word, the girl turned around and left the room. I forgot that there was somebody else besides the three of us until the girl’s brother shut the door behind them.

“Well, that was Zenith,” Rod said as soon as the last of the footsteps died away. “She’s bossy and scary most of the time, but that’s only because she’s extremely protective. You’ll have to understand her; the death of our king affected her more than it did others.”

Before he could explain why, the door to the storage swung open again.

“Why is Zenith crying?”

At first, I thought it was the wind, or the stench coming from Rod’s shirt, playing tricks on me. But no, it was definitely a voice singing notes to a melody disguised as words and phrases. Each syllable softly tumbled out of the incomer’s lips and wrapped around my throat like silk ribbons. He only said four words, and I couldn’t breathe. No, I’m not being melodramatic.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time I saw Aedan, especially the way his single eye focused on me. His left eye was concealed behind a patch, which was curtained by his pitch-black hair. A nasty scar escaped from under the patch and ran down the side of his face a few centimeters. I didn’t notice all these flaws because that one eye, that lost ruby, looked straight at me, holding me in an invisible embrace.

It definitely wasn’t love; no, nothing like that at all.

It was more like a breath of familiarity. He was different, I knew that for sure. His ears were not as pointy, his skin not as dark, and the shine in his eyes was not as intense as those of the others. At first glance, nobody would’ve suspected him to be a Scorpion. Only his one red eye painted what he really was.

“The prince.”

He gave a slight bow.

“I hope everything is to your liking.”

My few seconds of infatuation and respect shattered. He was mocking me.

Playing along, I gave a deeper bow and smiled.

“Yes, everything’s splendid. Thank you for your concern.”

“That’s good to hear.”

He returned my smile and stood upright again. Like the others, he was dressed in peasant clothing. A single vest was all he wore to cover up his torso, and his pants were tied with rope at the waist and ankles. The Libran emblem on the left pants leg showed that he must have stolen them from a Libran soldier. Or found them in a battlefield. Strips of stained cloth were wound around his hands and his feet were bare. The war must have hit them as hard as it hit Libra.

Only the necklace hanging around his neck seemed to have any value; it was the same one Rod was wearing.

“You may call me Aedan, Your Highness.”

I didn’t realize I was standing there analyzing the incomer and flushed red.

“You’re just another Scorpion to me.”

It only took Aedan three long strides to stand before me. Rod silently stepped aside and started scrubbing the floors to clean my embarrassing mess. Aedan gently took my hands and put them together as though in prayer.

“And you’re just another prisoner to us,” he replied.

I didn’t even notice the coarse rope being wound around my wrists.

o o o

After a few moments of tugging and pulling and cursing and shouting, I found myself in a small room that reminded me a bit more of home. It had golden walls and windows embellished with rubies. Hundreds of antique clocks ticked and tocked in and out of sequence. In the very center of the room was a gigantic bed that nearly reached one wall to another.

In it was a man who I later learn is Vartan.

At first, I thought me and Patchy here were the only ones in the room. The thirty-two-year-old was buried in a mountain of hand-embroidered cushions and in a deep slumber.

“Vartan,” Aedan said softly.

It took two more tries until there was an avalanche of pillows and then the rise of sleepy-eyed man.

Vartan was a strange character. First of all, he dressed in riches unlike the other people I’ve seen so far; his pajamas were made out of silk. His hair was pitch-black like any other Scorpion, but his red eyes were five shades darker than most. Instead of two, pearly-white canines, he had two silver ones. His beard had beads and feathers hanging from them, and his eyebrows were pierced with several stones. His pointy ears were also studded with all sorts of assortments.

But it was the rollers in his hair and the brown coating on his face that first caught my attention.

“My apologies,” he mumbled. “I must have fallen asleep during my beauty session.”

Vartan blinked a few times and then focused his attention on me.

“Oh, my. A visitor! How embarrassing of me,” he exclaimed as he ripped out the rollers and wiped away the brown stuff from his face.

Vartan pulled out a handheld mirror from behind one of his pillows and examined his profile before turning back to me again.

“I’m assuming you have a lot of questions filling your little mind right now. But I’ll answer all of them later. Explaining where I got each of these fine treasures will take some time,” Vartan said, stroking his curly hair.

“Right now, the issue at hand is you being on our airship. Why are you on our airship, hmph?”

Dramatic pause.

“Well, Mister. You are here because we kidnapped you.”

I looked at Aedan from the corner of my eyes to see if I was the only one who was confused. I was.

“And we are here because I had a dream. And not just any dream. It was a Gazelae Dream.”

“A guhzeelay dream?” I repeated.

“Hush! Yes! Of course! You see this pillow here? It is called the Gazelae. Why? Because every other inch of it is stitched with prancing gazelles. The Gazelae holds wondrous powers even I don’t understand. And it was this very Gazelae cushion that delivered a message to me from the other side. A message that told me to kidnap…you.“

He pointed a freshly manicured finger at me.

I felt as though my innards were boiling as I became angrier and angrier. I bit back my tears and clenched my fists.

“Are you telling me that I was kidnapped by you wretched creatures because of a stupid dream? Damn you. Damn you to Fera!”

Aedan, who was silent and still, suddenly whirled me around and said firmly: “Don’t you dare speak that way to Vartan.”

“It’s quite all right, Aedan,” Vartan said quietly. He looked slightly amused.

Aedan bowed in apology to Vartan.

“I’ll take him below,” he said.

“No, that won’t be necessary. In fact, take him to the upper deck with the others. I had another dream last night, which is why I called you over with our prisoner. No, that’s not right. Our guest.”

Vartan crawled over to the foot of his bed towards us. I was able to smell a mixture of herb cigars and perfume of crushed flowers. He touched my chin with finger that had a crimson ring on it. It looked like the necklaces Rod and Aedan were wearing.

“And we must always listen to our dreams,” he whispered.

He brought his nail to the nail tying my hands and slicked through it as if he was submerging his hand in water.

o o o

“This is where we eat.”

I was still dazed by what had happened. Prancing gazelles, dreams, and Scorpion lunatics. What else? Right, I’m a guest.

Aedan pushed open the wooden door and led me inside. The warm smell of warm biscuits and pork distracted me from my thoughts.

The dining cabin was apparently connected to the kitchen, a swinging door providing the only bridge between the two rooms. The only time indicators were the small windows along the sides of the cabin. It was night.

I tore my attention away from the moon and tried to take in the rest of the cabin. What seemed to be the entire crew was sitting on makeshift chairs behind a single, wooden table placed in the middle of the room. Aedan kicked over a bucket for me and pulled out an empty trunk for himself. I hesitantly sat down and looked at the people around me, trying to seem as disgusted as possible in the process.

I caught sight of the two burly men who had kidnapped me. They were currently in the middle of an arm wrestling match. One was completely bald and the other didn’t even bother wearing a shirt.

Aedan noticed me staring at them.

“They call themselves Fang and Claws. We don’t know where they’re from, but they do what they’re told without question. Obedient fellows.”

He continued to name the other bodies in the room. Nadir was the quiet twin brother of Zenith, the scary girl who had yelled at me earlier. Verno, the smallest and youngest of the crew, was Rod’s apprentice. Rod was currently in the kitchen preparing everyone’s meal as the kitchen boy and cook, and Verno was setting up the table. A shriveled, old woman with no teeth was sweeping the same area repeatedly while humming a Scorpian lullaby. She was a prisoner of the airship for over fifty years. Nobody knows her offense, and she had forgotten. Being older than the captain himself, she became a part of the airship and a part of the crew as their fortune teller and cleaner.

I only listened half-heartedly of course.

“Hello, Mural. Sweeping up the cobwebs again?” greeted a bright voice.

I turned around to notice Zenith walk in and bend over the old woman.

“Be careful of the number twenty-four today, darling. Uranus is being a bit finicky today,” she said in response. Her voice sounded like crunched leaves.

“Oh, silly Mural. You always say that about Uranus,” Zenith said good-heartedly.

She turned away and made eye contact with me. My body tensed up involuntarily.

Zenith’s bright smile immediately melted away and left a furious scowl behind. She narrowed her eyes.

“What is he doing in here?” she said coldly.

“Captain Vartan had another dream!” the 10-year-old apprentice answered.

Zenith’s face fell.

“C’mon, just sit down, Zenny!” Verno said, tugging at the girl’s tunic. He pulled out a bag of potatoes for her to sit on.

Zenith silently sat and glowered.

The next few minutes might as well have been hours. The two men had stopped arm wrestling, the apprentice was reading a book next to Zenith, and the crazy old lady was calmly sitting under the table. And the entire time, Zenith had her eyes boring into my head. Never have I felt so awkward and hateful and vengeful all at once in my life. I was the princess of Libra, and here I was dressed in peasant’s clothing at the same table with the Scorpions who murdered my brother, attacked my home country, and kidnapped me.

And I wasn’t doing anything about it.

Zenith never took her eyes off me, and I swear I could feel beads of sweat starting to gather at my forehead.

Finally, I spoke up.

“I should be the one wearing that face expression of yours right now,” I said heavily.

“You’re not the one sitting across the thing that killed our king,” she shot back.

I stood up, my body shaking.

You killed our future king just a few days ago.

I opened my mouth, but didn’t say anything. What could I say? What would they do if they realized I wasn’t Prince Leonard, but Princess Ariel?

Every pair of red eyes was on me.

Finally, I let out a deep breath and sat back down.

After a few more heartbeats of silence, Zenith spoke.

“You see this?” Zenith bunched up her dark hair and pulled it to one side. An angry ‘M’ with the tail of a devil was imprinted on the lower right of her neck.

“After Libra killed King Edom, we were succeeded by his brother, Deimos. And this…this is what he gave his people; his mark. He owns us. We’re all his prisoners.”

She let her hair fall back over the horrible branding.

“We don’t even know why he’s doing this to us. But if we still had King Edom, our people wouldn’t have to worry about running into guards standing at every corner and homeless children begging for food in the streets. We would be free.”

“I’m going to make Libra suffer what we suffered, and maybe then you and your people will understand,” Zenith paused and touched the branding on her neck with her fingertips, “that death will always lead to another and another and another.”

She looked up at me and smiled an empty smile.

“It never ends.”

The door to the kitchen swung open and Rod came out balancing a tray of steaming plates.

“Food’s ready, everyone! Whoever gets the blue plate, look out for bugs. I think I saw a cricket crawl into the mashed potatoes.”

Suddenly, the solemn air was lifted as everyone grabbed a plateful of warm food from Rod’s tray and immediately started stuffing their mouths. I couldn’t think over what Zenith had just said about their country because my mind was filled with the aroma coming from the food. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.

By the time Rod finally seated himself at the table, everyone had nearly finished the pork and biscuits.

Rod put a tongue in his cheek and looked down at the blue plate full of mashed potatoes he was left with.

“You guys are such pigs. It makes me want to throw up,” he commented before stabbing the mashed potatoes with his fork. He fished out the cricket and dumped it on the ground.

Suddenly, I felt something scurry under my feet. A scream erupted from my chest and I scampered onto the table.

“There’s a rat in here!” I cried.

No one else reacted. In fact, it was as though I hadn’t even opened my mouth.

Curiously, but cautiously, I peered under the table. I followed the sound of crunching until I found a lump of black fur by Rod’s foot.

It was twice the size of a rat.

“Oh Libra,” I breathed.

“Good Leda, good girl,” Rod crooned.

The rat-like creature with black fur wiped its face with its paws and then climbed onto Rod’s lap.

Rod caught me staring and laughed good-heartedly.

“It’s just Leda. She’s a ferret,”

“I know what a ferret is,” I snapped.

The rodent, or ferret, was the length of my arm from nose to tail, and had red eyes like any other Scorpion. The pattern on its face made it look like it was wearing one of those goggles my mother wore when she went swimming in our water gardens.

I relaxed and bent down to get a closer look at it.

“You can pet her if you like,” Rod offered.

Just as I reached out to scratch the ferret behind her ears, someone tapped my foot.

“Will you please get off the table first?”

I realized that my feet were on Aedan’s plate.

“Oh, my bad,” I stated.

I scrambled off the table, secretly clapping at Patchy’s misfortune.

“I bet you wish you had the blue plate now, don’t you?” Rod teased as he happily stuck in a spoonful of mashed potatoes in his mouth.

Aedan wiped his mouth with the end of the table cloth and pushed his food away. He then stood up.

“I’m going to bed. Show our guest where we sleep after you’re done, Rod.”

I couldn’t help but make a face at the arrogant boy before taking another bite out of my slice of pork. I was surprised that I was even able to swallow despite the situation.

It was made by a Scorpion, but still delicious.

o o o

A lot of the words and names I use are deliberate. Here's a little glossary to help you all out:

Aedan: "Fire." From Irish mythology.

Ariel: "Lion of God" in Hebrew.

Deimos: "Terror" in Greek mythology.

Edom: "Red" in Hebrew.

Leonard: "Brave Lion" in Polish.

Leda: "Woman" in Greek Mythology. My original name for the ferret was "Lady."

Mural: I wanted to name her something that meant "wall" but Mural was the closest I can get to a name-sounding name.

Fera: (Infera) "Below" or "beneath" in Latin. Their name for Hell.

Vartan: "Rose" in Armenian.

Verno: "Flourish, grow green" in Latin.

Constructive criticism is always appreciated.