tales for dreamers: colours in mutiny
Colours have a mind of their own. They won't always stay within the lines. Heck, they won't even always stay themselves. How, then, is one supposed to colour?
The colours are strewn about, remnants of a world that fell into ruin a very long time ago.
As if an angry child broke them into little pieces of chalk because they wouldn’t stay within the boundaries she has outlined for them.
The elephants she had so painstakingly sketched in various shades of grey are now running amok, pinker than her rosy cheeks.
And the moon, the silver-coloured thief of light, takes to frequently disappearing from the paper, and when she deigns to reappear, is as blue as a robin’s eggs.
And then there are the sheep, those innocent balls of wool, they keep morphing into orange and now they don’t look very innocent anymore.
Worse still are the meadows, where the grass grows greener and greener the closer they get to the horizon.
Her favourite was the Town of Shadows, silhouettes of minarets and skyscrapers, she had coloured them black as outer space, aglow from the light of the setting sun. And look, now her town is soaked in red.
And when they think she is not looking, all the colours fly across the paper like a flock of birds in a cloudless sky, leaving behind a rainbow in their wake, and spill over the edge of the paper like molten gold.
It will not be long before the child sees the wild beauty in their freedom.