Equinox

~Chapter One~

At one time, I loved my sisters. I believe that they, however, never felt the same.

I truly believe that they loved each other very dearly. The four of them, they were inseparable. When we were human, they would travel around in a group of four, picking out clothes that they liked at the market, whispering to each other about boys and showing off their talents to anyone who would watch.

Mother and Father were always intrigued by the new things that would come up with. They would always gush over their four talented daughters to anyone that would listen.

Spring, the self-proclaimed eldest, would dance. She would dance over to every bird on the ground, every bee hovering in the air. She raced with deer in the forest and played with the squirrels in the trees. It never failed, one of them would come over and either sit next to her or land on her. She always had a way with animals.

Summer was next. She had the most dangerous joy of all of my sisters. She loved fire. She loved the sun. Every day, in the heat of the afternoon, she would make her way outside and lie down in the sun's rays, absorbing them. Whenever the town near to us had a campfire, she would take a few sticks and plunge them into the flickering flames, then pull them out. After that, she twirled them around and around, throwing them into the air and catching them, then doing it all again. The crowd loved her. Soon, they began to have campfires just to watch Summer perform.

Autumn loved to paint. She would take tree leaves and gently brush reds and golds onto them, making the leaves look like something else entirely. I had once mentioned to her if she could sell her artwork, that it would fetch more than enough money for our family, but she had refused gently. Out of all my sisters, Autumn was the kindest. She wouldn't make fun of me as much as the others.

Winter was the last of my sisters, and she was the youngest of the four. We didn't know what she liked until later when it was just she and me who hadn't discovered our talent. One day, she happened across a frozen piece of water. She named it 'ice' and then proceeded to stand on it and push herself around. She would dance on it. It was beautiful to watch.

My parents were thrilled when their four eldest daughters found their talent. They even had talents of their own, far more powerful than any of my sisters. You see, we weren't a normal village family. My mother was Day. She would set the sun at before darkness and make it rise in the morning. My father, Night. He always made the moon shine in the dark sky after my mother made the sun set. He called out the stars, and they would obediently place themselves in the sky.

I had no talent. I loved to read, to examine everything my sisters did, to just look out the window on any day and marvel at how everything was so intricately created. If anything, I wished that the days would be longer. Everything I did, I did to impress the people around me, although I rarely succeeded. I was always considered the ugliest because my looks weren't as becoming as my sister's looks. Even my name, Equinox, was different.

If I wasn't being thought of as the ugliest, then I would be the runt, the youngest, even though we weren't technically born. My sisters and I are each the same age, "born" at the exact same time. Our parents thought us up, one at a time. We basically sprang out of their heads.

Before the split, our family was sort of normal. Well, as normal as non-human parents and human children who weren't born could be. My mother would cook in the kitchen; my father would chop wood outdoors. Every few days, my sisters and I would head down to the village marketplace and pick out food that looked tasty.

As overlooked as I was, and as different from my family as I felt, I was actually happy.

Then our lives changed.