Colors

Colors

by Mike Conway

Jade tried to focus her eyes through the smoke and twilight. The sound of rending metal had long ended, and she felt completely numb. She was supposed to be at her dance recital. What happened?

"Mum?" she squeaked out before curling up in a fit of coughing.

At 13, Jade was called the "next generation of dancers" by her instructors, and this recital certainly would have sealed the title.

She put her hand on her legs. They were numb, but nothing seemed to be broken. She wiped her mouth and sat up. She made the mistake of looking at the hand she wiped with, which dripped with crimson. She gasped and called out again, "Mum!"

She looked around. For a moment, she could swear she saw rainbows, and images of clouds, and people... Which then faded to the scene of devastation surrounding her. What was once her mother's car was a shattered and twisted piece of metal. The passenger-side door was laying a good distance from her, and she could see into the vehicle.

Her mother was there, leaned against the steering wheel. She seemed to be looking at the girl, her eyes wide and mouth open, the familiar crimson dripping from her lips. Jade noticed that the mother's neck seemed turned funny, like it was...

Oh God, no! she thought as she turned away quickly and tried to crawl away. Right then, everything inside her seized her with pain. She collapsed, holding her sides. In that instant, she knew many things were broken inside, maybe too many things to fix.

A part of her saw the stage and the audience, and she felt the love pour from her heart as she took that first step in what would be the beginning of her own creation. She was glad to give it to them. The dance was a dance of life, laughter and, above all, of color.

Color.

The distant sound of sirens brought her back to the present. She rolled onto her back, the pain subsiding. The sky was growing ever darker, but through the treetops, she saw it. The orange sunset was fading and the stars were peeking out. The sirens quickly closed in. She never knew why, but color was the biggest part of her life, and dance only a close second. She could never figure out why, but those two things brought her the most joy.

She saw herself reliving the moments when she danced, when color and movement merged to make a new world for her. And yet, it was an old and familiar world.

Suddenly, before her eyes, the night sky was divided, and the rainbow appeared over the stars. Jade knew logically that this shouldn't be happening, that rainbows needed water to form, and the dry air should have prevented this one from forming. Disregarding the logic, she reached for it. Her eyes opened with realization and awareness flooded her. As her life crept from her, she knew, and she uttered, "Father..."

The sirens were loud now, and she heard the ambulance and fire trucks pull up, and doors open and close. She heard someone say, "I think we have a survivor!" Someone knelt next to her. "Are you all right?" he asked her. She looked at him and only breathed in response. He was bathed in colors. "What is your name?" the man asked her.

She knew the answer to that one. She knew exactly who she used to be, and who she was now, and would always be.

"What is your name?" he asked again.

As the color faded from her eyes, she exhaled, "Polychrome..."

[This story is released under the Creative Commons Attribution license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 ]