Crystals Of Arlin

A New Home

~4 years later~

It was now the middle of spring, I had just now turned 20 last October.Within the past 4 years Zara,Derlin, Lance and me all became bestfriends, we were hanging out all the time and helping the two brothers with training.Lets just say their dad was in the military and both of them wanted to live up to their father's respect, plus I just guess combat was a normal thing for the family.The brothers told me and Zara numerous stories about how whenever they try to sneak up on their mother and attack her, (playfully of course) she would turn around and well....they would end up on the floor.The way they would describe their mother sometimes would make her sound like a spy, due to the way their family was it not only was what made their family so close knit but gave for very funny stories (usually ending up with someone else getting hurt in the process) but they were all so use to it, it never lead to any hard feelings just all fun.Zara and me were headed over to the Saglem's house(Saglem was the brother's last names)because Derlin called us up saying he had a project he wanted us all to work on together. When all of a sudden we got stopped in our tracks "Hey" I was staring down at my feet so I didn't realize someone approached us until I saw their black shoes, when I looked up I knew exactly who it was. "Hey Alphonse"I said, very excited to see him again he was always away at one of his friend's house."Yes" Zara said giving him a dirty look, they didn't have the best relationship as siblings but you could tell they still loved each other."Where are you guys headed?" He asked."To the Saglem's"Zara quickly answered, I'm assuming she just wanted the conversation to be over I think she was still angry because the last thing I heard of him was he was trying to get his rat Spike to be friends with her frog Leaf."Oh good you're giving me a perfect excuse." Alphonse responded and started walking with us."What do you mean?" Zara replied just as confused as I was."You see, I have a crush on Derlin but I don't really know how to introduce myself"her brother explained, I kind of giggled to myself luckily he didn't hear me but I guess Zara and me were thinking the same thing."He's probably not gay Alphie"Zara said while making a funny face at Alphonse."Oh yeah? We'll see about that"He quickly responded very sure of himself.
Because the house wasn't that far we were already there, I rang the door bell since the other two were to busy arguing."oh good you're here, Lance come on!!" Derlin stepped out the door."Wait we're not staying here to do the project?"Zara asked confused what was happening."oh sorry no the project is actually somewhere else" Derlin explained as Lance stepped out the door.Derlin was wearing black basket ball shorts and a blue graphic tee shirt, where as Lance was wearing all black. I couldn't really call Lance weird because out of the group of us we were all pretty much wearing black, He was just the only one actually wearing a full black outfit.Derlin took lead and everyone followed behind him, besides Lance who already knew where we were headed.We headed around the Saglem's home and headed into the forest behind it. The forest was honestly beautiful with flowers everywhere, birds chirping and leafs crunching beneath our feet. Nobody really spoke up I think we were all just admiring the beauty of it in our own ways. After about 4 minutes the boys stopped in their tracks, when I looked up I saw what looked like an old tree house. Before the boys moved in I remembered there were some older boys who had lived there before so I immediately assumed they had built it with their dad when they were kids."Lance and me found this when we were exploring one afternoon, i wanted to fix it up but I figured it'd be alot faster with multiple hands." Derlin explained, right after I looked to the left of where the treehouse was and realized there was a beautiful river running down, continuing behind the tree house.I think Zara caught my gaze and looked herself and I knew she couldn't help herself-"This is perfect for Leaf!" She was heavily excited to bring her frog out to the river."Just make sure you don't loose him"Alphonse added in."Alphonse is it?" Lance asked."Uh yeah how'd you know?" He asked genuinely curious."Zara told us alot about you"Derlin answered who was now writing in a journal trying to come up with a good blue print for the treehouse."awww you talk about mee?" Alphonse playfully nudged his sister who was still staring at the river, I think she was watching the fish swim around."shut up" she quickly responded to him and then walked behind the tree house along the river, I think she was trying to see exactly how far it went.By this time Lance and Derlin were talking about the blueprints since me and Alphonse were awkwardly standing there we decided to go see what they were planning."do you guys think there's enough wood laid out here for it?"Alphonse said peaking over Derlin's shoulder looking at the blueprint notes he had written down."Should be we just brought it all down here before you guys came"Derlin replied looking at.Shortly after I saw Alphonse whisper something into Derlin's ear, immediately after I saw Derlin blushing and Alphonse looked back at me smiling.Thats when I realized me and Zara were definitely wrong.I smiled to myself because it was definitely cute but my smile didn't last long.I saw some leafs falling in front of me and when I looked up I realized Lance had decided to climb up the treehouse to actually go check it out, but his feet kept getting caught on the leafs of the old wood made ladder.He was almost to the top so I thought for sure he had, had it but I was definitely wrong. Not even seconds later he slipped off of a old plank that seemed to have completely rotten and he came falling down. Then something crazy happened, Alphonse who was just in front of me, a good 15 feet from the treehouse itself was all the way under the ladder catching Lance. Me and Derlin looked at each other in disbelief in a matter of a second he was all the way over there, almost as if he teleported. By this time Zara had just returned and saw what happened she wasn't nearly as shocked as us, mainly just worried about Lance.I ran over to Zara and pulled her aside while the boys were making sure Lance was okay and they started talking about the wood steps they wanted to build instead of the ladder. I grabbed her shoulder still in shock and quickly whispered to her, "did your brother just teleport?" She just kind of laughed at me, which in turn I thought she was fucking crazy but then she spoke up to me."he has..powers?" She said, she definitely knew but seemed as though she was confused that I didn't."well he clearly didn't teleport but how did he run over there so fast?" I asked still wondering about the situation."he can control time, all he did was slow time around him and pretty much ran over normally, it just looked fast to us." She explained which made me think of what he was trying to do with Leaf and Spike then I realized why she was really upset with him. I realized that he was trying to introduce the pets obviously rats and frogs probably won't get along so before they attacked each other he probably slowed time to pull them apart, which is why I understood why she would be angry if for some reason it wouldn't have worked one of the animals would of gotten hurt and well it probably wouldn't have been Spike. Plus not to mention the amount of jokes or pranks Alphonse could probably pull on Zara given his powers.During me thinking things over the boys had started working on the steps so me and Zara headed over to them to figure out what we needed to help with.Just because we were girls they assumed we could just bring them wood, let's just say that idea didn't stick very well with me and Zara so we helped with screwing screws and nailing wood for the steps.With all four of us working on the steps Derlin was definitely right the steps were done within 30 minutes.As Lance put the last step in we decided to all head inside to see exactly what was up there. The treehouse has a bench built into it and was covered with 5 different boxes all filled with different things. Since there was 5 of us we all took one box and opened it,Derlin found old blankets in his.Alphonse found photos from when the treehouse was first built with the family surrounding it,you could tell everyone was smiling and very happy.Lance's box had a bunch of jewelry in it, which he was disappointed in so Zara traded boxes with him so she could look at all the jewelry.The box Zara gave Lance was full of old books, although under all the books and comics was a key that definitely peaked his interest.I was the last to open mine since I was to busy looking at what everyone else had gotten in theirs, so I took the box cutter they gave me and quickly opened it immediately after my jaw dropped.Everyone was confused because they couldn't see inside but clearly Zara knew already."they're pretty aren't they? She told me they were found around the forest here." Zara spoke up. Everyone looked up at Zara confused on what she meant so she explained.She pointed to the picture still in Alphonse's hand "The lady in the picture is their mom, she passed away 2 years ago." Me and Alphonse knew about Zara's gift so we didn't question it."What are they Layla?"Alphonse asked"Crystals"I quickly replied.Zara started-"She says everyone should pick the one they're drawn to"as soon as she said it I pulled out a red quart looking crystal.I passed the box around and everyone picked their own crystals out and passed the box back to me.Zara picked out a purple amethyst, Alphonse got a blue agate, Lance had gotten a light green emerald,Derlin got the clear Quartz.Everyone started checking out their crystals, when I looked down into the box I realized there was another crystal inside-"Woah, does anyone else have something on the back of there's?"Derlin asked, staring at the back of his crystal."yeah"Lance replied."She says everyone has something that represents them as a person, just so everyone knows exactly who's crystal is who's"Zara explained."guys there's another crystal in the box"I told them still confused."she told me there should of been 6 of us not 5" Zara replied to me."but who's the sixth person?"Lance mumbled quietly. I went to pick the crystal up, but it shocked me just as like if you rubbed your socks on the carpet and went to shock somebody."she says nobody else can hold it, with skin anyway" Zara told us."Here"Lance who was sitting right next to me took his beanie off and handed it to me, when he did though I noticed how pointy his ears were."have your ears always been so pointy?" I asked him. "Oh uh.. yeah" he awkwardly rubbed them."me and Lance come from an elf bloodline"Derlin added in.everyones mouth's dropped open and we were all staring at the two boys. After a few minutes of all of us taking things in Alphonse spoke up."So do you guys also have like magic powers or something?" Me and Zara just kind of looked at each other, he didn't mean it to be but the question came off as kind of offensive."Well I don't, but Lance has a strong connection to nature" Derlin replied.Lance just kinda put his head down because he was embarrassed because now everyone was looking at him.I grabbed the crystal with the beanie, it was rose quartz when I flipped it over it had an arrow with a line through it, on it."An arrow?" I asked very confused."Well Derlin works well with a bow and arrow"Lance responded. But when Derlin tried to pick it up it also shocked him."it must not be for you then"Alphonse added in.After that we all decided to put the crystals in our pockets and continue exploring the tree house, it had a second room to the right of it.Derlin opened the door and started to walk in, but luckily Alphonse who was right next to him put his arm in front of Derlin's chest to stop him.When Derlin opened the Alphie realized there was a few wood panels missing on the ground, enough to where we couldn't walk into the room without falling."Well looks like that's not going to happen until we fix the floor"Alphonse quickly stated.We went back out and decided because we had extra wood we would add some railings to the stairs.Alphonse, Zara and me decided to work on railings while Lance helped Derlin with the floor of the second room. After awhile we Derlin and Lance came back out to help us, when we all realized night was about to fall."We should all probably be heading back in"Derlin stated, to which the whole group pretty much agreed and all went into Derlin's room to hang out and talk blueprints for the treehouse.
When we got there Zara, Alphonse and me all decided to take the sofa they added in Derlin's room, while Derlin and Lance sat on the bed."My main goal for the treehouse is, instead of it being like a kids playground. Is to make it into a small home, with multiple rooms."Derlin explained to the group."Ooh can we all get our own rooms?"Zara quickly added in, very excited."Zara that's gonna be alot of work to add on 5 rooms to it"Alphonse said looking at her."Actually 6 but yes."Derlin stated, we all looked at him in shock but we did all agree to help him with the project so none of us could really back out at this point.Derlin was writing down how he wanted to connect the 6 rooms to 8 different trees that were all very close to the treehouse, when I decided to take out my crystal and look on the back of it.My red crystal was very pretty and shiny, when I turned it around I noticed it had the same symbol that I had saw in Zara's astrology book ♎. I knew I was a Libra but that peaked my interest, I had put the last crystal in my pocket so I looked over at Zara and flipped the crystal around "this is an arrow right?" I whispered to her so I wouldn't distract the 3 boys chatting."Ooooh, no Layla that's the sign for Sagittarius" me and Zara stared at the crystal for a little bit wondering who it actually belonged too.