Formless

Formless

“Oh God.”

“What?”

“They’re matching.”

Rinsa’s hair quickly underwent several abrupt shifts from green to red to yellow to orange and back to green again, and stayed there. A jarringly bright, saturated shade of green. He was sure that at the moment his eyes were agonizingly bright.

“What? No…” Jazme whipped his head toward the academy doors, watching as the ‘they’ that Rinsa had been referring to strode through them arm-in-arm. Jazme’s eyes widened, and the color of his eyes paled slightly, his long hair turning white. He stared for a good five seconds and then shrugged and tried to stammer out a response. “Well…that-that doesn’t mean anything…”

Rinsa ignored his best friend and glowered at the couple that had just left the academy, the large male being foremost in the center of his Phazon death glare. Brogar Physsha. The jock. Captain of the shiftball team. The most popular guy in school. The one person Rinsa hated more than anyone in the world. The person he’d most like to tie in a knot and hang from the school flagpole.

It made no sense that standing directly beside him was the person that Rinsa cared for more than anyone else in the world. The person he would have done anything for. The person who knew him better than he did. Lazelle Sorrsha. The most beautiful female in the history of the Formless. And that was saying something, cause a lot of them could get pretty damn hot.

But more than the fact that the two were together, more than the fact that they actually looked happy together, more distressing to Rinsa than anything he’d ever felt was that fact that they matched. Or rather, she matched him. Lazelle’s once luscious crimson hair had now shifted to the color of Brogar’s straight, gleaming, sickeningly perfect blonde locks. Her luminescent eyes, which had once been the most perfect shade of light green on the planet (in Rinsa’s opinion), eyes that had looked into his soul as easily as if it were actually physical, were now identical to Brogar’s revolting baby-blue peepers. It was the most horrifying thing Rinsa had ever seen.

Any self-respecting Formless who knew anything at all realized that it was significant when two Formless of the opposite sex had perfectly matching hair and eyes. Because as every single Formless was a changeling, finding another that matched exactly was next to impossible. Every Formless was born able to change into virtually any form they wanted, whenever they wanted. They all had a natural form, the body they were born with, but they could change themselves to look however they wanted: make themselves fat or skinny, tall or short, male or female. But all Formless could tell when you weren’t in your natural form, or simply “natural” as they all referred to it. They just knew. Normals couldn’t tell, of course. They could barely even tell the difference between siblings who were what they called “twins”, which was completely laughable. But Formless could tell.

Formless mostly distinguished themselves with color. As long as they were in a human form, the form of the Normals, they retained a hair and eye color that was usually unique to them and only them. If you found an unbound Formless with the same color eyes or hair, it was considered a miracle of some sort. And the colors were limitless. Their hair and eyes could be any color in the spectrum, of any shade. No color was unnatural. Some Formless differed in color by the most miniscule difference of saturation. One’s hair color might have been the slightest, slightest bit lighter than another’s, but it was still considered wholly unique. It never threw anyone off, because the Formless could tell. Don’t ask them how; they just could. The smallest difference in shade or color was invisible to a Normal, but to a Formless it was as obvious as a second nose.

And mooding didn’t count. Being changelings, Formless were always…well, changing. And the most obvious changes about them were again color. Their hair colors changed depending on how they were feeling. When they were content, it was natural. But if they were feeling anything else, the slightest other emotion other than perfectly at ease, their hair color changed. And the colors it became meant different things to each. One Formless’ hair might change to red when they’re angry, while red for another might mean they were tired. Eye color changes were more limited, only a few shades, but they more often were read depending on how bright they were. Because all Formless’ eyes glowed. And like the hair, the changes were different from one Formless to the next.

These color changes were called “mooding”. Two Formless might have the exact same hair or eye colors when they’re mooding, but that didn’t count if their naturals didn’t match. And they could tell. It was really quite obvious.

And Rinsa could see as plain as day that Lazelle was not mooding. They matched. It was simple as that. Brogar and Lazelle were matching.

His hair went through enough colors to put any self-respecting rainbow to shame, and make even most Formless arch an eyebrow.