Land of the Blades

5. Eyes

By the time I woke up, the sun was already setting on the horizon. We were still at the place where we had fought the Lunarians, but now almost all of the Lustrous were around, going in and out of the ocean.

—The Amethysts?! —Was my first though, jumping from the ground where I had been lying.

—They were shattered in pieces, but thanks to you the Lunarians couldn't take any piece of them away. They will be fine once we find out all of the pieces that fell into the sea and Rutile puts them together —Adamant said, he was sitting next to me while hugging Phos. He told me that she had been crying until she fell asleep.

—Here, I think this is yours —Bort said, handing me... a hand.

As I looked down I found I was missing exactly that, yet I didn't feel any pain.

—I found it while looking for the pieces of the Amethysts. I think it was that arrow that you shoot.

—So that is how that works —I murmured. As it turned out, I could use some mass of my body without losing size, but it will refill itself if I didn't returned the missing mass, making me loss hands or maybe the whole arm. Just for curiosity, I tried to move the fingers of the hand while Bort was still holding it, and to our surprise it reacted. Bort was surprised and a bit disgusted, so she threw my hand to the ground. Adamant tried to catch it before it landed, but it was out of reach.

—Oh, It didn't shatter —he said when it hit the ground and just did a "thud" sound. He looked confused for a moment, but after looking at me he seemed to regain his composure.

—I must admit it is a weird feeling —he said once Bort had run away—, I can't be broken nor lose pieces of myself, while the rest of the gems are so fragile. You are on the middle, you can't be broken, but you can lose pieces of yourself. It is something to what I have to get accustomed.

—Please don't, I'm not planning on losing them. If anything, I have to train them to crawl their way to me.

—That would be scary... —Pho said, still sleeping, and Sensei covered his mouth while looking away. Could it be that this man had a strange sense of humor?

About half an hour later, when it was already dark, we had finished gathering all the shards of the Amethysts twins, and started to walk back to our home. It had been a very busy and eventful day, considering it had been my first day since I had awoken, but weirdly enough I seemed to be the one who was less sleepy of the bunch.

—They need energy from the sun, so they get sleepy on the night and on winter —Adamant said as he was carrying at Diamond, Phos, and Yellow Diamond, while holding the hand of Bort, while the rest of the Lustrous where holding their hands in a chain. I was carrying the bags containing the pieces of the Amethyst.

We finally got home where Rutile had been taking a preventive nap to prepare for the all nighter it would take her to fix the twins. She was pissed that they had put pieces of Eighty Four in the bag of Thirty three and viceversa, and I just was impressed she could differentiate them between each other.

—That's right, Sensei told me that your hand broke off, let me fix that before I get too focused on the twins —Rutile said after everyone else had went to sleep.

—It's alright, I just put it in its place and it stuck itself to my wrist.

Rutile raised an eyebrow. She asked me to show it to her, but she couldn't find anything wrong.

—This is unprecedented, we normally need to apply a resin to kept it together and let the pieces merge during some time. I guess considering your "flexibility" it is not much of a surprise. More than a metal, you seem to be like clay.

I smiled, that seemed to be a fair comparison. I helped Rutile fix the twins for a while, learning that it apparently doesn't matter if the pieces were originally not from the same part of their body, as long as they were of the relatively same size, they will adapt and take the desired form.

—Even if some pieces of us are taken away by the Lunarians, we can be fixed by using the same or similar materials. However, we keep our memories on our bodies, so some will be lost alongside our missing shards. There are cases where even the personality changes a bit when we use pieces that belonged to other gems, like when Phos--

—Hey, it isn't fair to speak of someone behind their back, you quack doctor.

Phos was arriving just at that moment, saying that she had finished preparing my room.

—Go ahead, you need to rest —Rutile said—, just wake up early so you can say good morning to these two.

I nodded and followed Phos. She seemed restless.

—Thank you for saving those two. Not even with these eyes I could do anything to help them...

—Your eyes?

—Yes, it's what Rutile was saying, though it would be more likely to say they were lend to me from a very intellectual sempai of us. I thought they had made me more intelligent, but at the end I keep making the same rookie mistakes.

—Well, I am pretty rookie myself, so let's team up. Let's train and become stronger, you with the intelligence and I with the strength, so that the Lunarians won't take away any of us anymore.

She looked back at me, her blue eyes and greenish hair glistening under the light from the moon, her expression was one of surprise. I held my hand towards her, and after a moment, she smiled and held my hand with both of hers.

—Let's do it! —she said very enthusiastically, just to be surprised by the crack that went all the way from her hands to her head.