The “Blind”
One foot after the other. Clud-clump, clud-clump, clud-clump. She could feel her heart beating on her ribcage, could hear it in her ears. It was a dull, but an ever-present reminder not to push herself beyond her limits. She slowed her sprint down to a jog and whooped in a breath of air. It tasted of saltwater and the redwoods that lined the coast— hah, “red” woods. How could she really know what the redwoods looked like? Funny name. Turning, she glanced out at the mouth of the bay. Gray sky. Dark, slate-colored clouds. The seafoam was frothy gray-ish white. The waves were a rolling midnight black. The sand looked more like ash. Everything gray. Everything lackluster. All her life she had heard the stories of color. And yet, she had never been able to see them herself.
Her feet finally came to a halt and she rested on a bench on the cliffside, overlooking the shore and the somber openness of the sea. Her eyes squeezed shut in frustration. As a little girl, she’d blink tight and hope that when her lids lifted again, her eyes would change, and the world would come alive.
“I love you, mommy, isn’t that enough?” and her mother would chuckle.
“It’s a different kind of love, my dear, that will bring color to your eyes— and to your heart. You’ll see.”
Her mother had described the different colors to her as best she could. And, eventually, she was able to decipher which shades of gray matter were which “color”. Her mother would smile and tell stories to lull her to sleep at night, remembering the first time the world came aglow.
“I met your father at my senior prom. I went alone. I didn’t have a date, I just went with my girlfriends. We all had a time picking out our dresses. Jennine could already see. She was the only one of us that could already see. She was so critical about which dresses looked good on all of us. We didn’t really care, though, most of us couldn’t see yet. But that all changed that night, for me.
I entered the gym. There were balloons that covered the view of the ceiling. Streamers were stretched across the lights that hung high above the basketball nets. They really jazzed the place up… but I had no idea how beautiful it looked until I locked eyes with your father.
The first thing I noticed were his eyes. His eyes changed. They bloomed into a beautiful blue.. like yours.” The little girl turned to look at herself in her bedroom mirror.
Gray. Nothing but gray.
“His eyes came alive and before I knew it, colors were appearing all around me. The lights, all of the dresses and suits surrounding us, the floor… I looked down at my hands and for the first time, was able to see what my skin looked like. What I looked like. I looked down at my dress, and—” she began to laugh. “—Ah. I hated it. I thought it was such an ugly shade of green. Now that I could see it, anyway. And your father. I thought he was handsome before. But he came alive with color. My world was changed forever.”
The roar of the ocean as it spun and crashed onto the ash pulled her back from her thoughts. She concentrated with all of her might, and her eyes fluttered open.
Gray.
She heaved a sigh. For a long time, what she had feared most in her life was how long. How long it would take to see. How long it would take to find her person. But as she got older, her fear changed to: what if I never do?
Sure, she wasn’t the only one in the world that felt this way, but that didn’t help. It was unfair. It was unjust. It was completely and utterly arbitrary for a person to not know the color of the sky they looked up at every day, or what shades of green blanketed the trees that lined their street, or how their friends or loved ones actually truly looked… or, the color of their own god damned eyes.
What if they aren’t out there? What if I’m destined to be blind forever? What kind of a life is that?
Her eyes sunk down to look at her feet, and for half a second, her thoughts came to an abrupt and sudden halt. It seemed the world had stopped as well. It paused for just a moment— she nearly choked on the breath in her throat. The shrubs by the bench began to change.
They morphed from a slate-gray to a dark green (at least, she thought.. she was told all her life plants were green… is this what green looks like?). And the color spread to the dirt underneath her feet. This was a rich brown. Tears welled up in her eyes. She wanted to will them away, for they might blur her vision of the change. But she could not stop. Is this really happening?
The colors spread across the cliff where she stood. It reminded her of when ink met water. Or when you would dip your paintbrush in a cup of water to clean it.. the colors bloomed outwards until they were blanketing everything in her view. The ocean was more beautiful than she could have ever imagined. A dark, swirling blue. Crimson flowers on shrubs that lined the trail. She touched one of the petals with her thumb and forefinger. It seemed crazy, but she believed it even felt different now. The sky, though cloudy, seemed to glow with life. It was gray.. but it was not the same, lifeless gray that she had seen for twenty-three years. The world had shifted on its axis. She stifled a cry and cupped her mouth with her hand. If this was real, and not a dream, then where was…
She didn’t register the sound of feet plunking through the dirt on the walking trail. A young man, just as in awe as she, had been chasing the colors as it bled a path up the cliffside. His eyes finally rested on her.
“Do you see it, too?” he breathed.
She spun on her heels to face him. Tears brimmed her eyes. She looked at her hands, her feet, the ground between them, and then her eyes finally found his. They, too, were what she thought was “blue”.
~E.G.
A quick blarb for this challenge, as she is finally meeting her "soulmate" and seeing color for the first time. I feel there is more to be told here, a different time maybe.
elizabethgreen ™