Shades of the Unspoken 🎭

The world had been stripped of colour for so long that most people couldn’t even describe what the loss meant anymore. Kids grew up knowing only greyscale skies and ash-washed streets. Elders told stories that sounded like bedtime lies, whispering of hues so wild and vibrant they felt like spells. A red that burned. A blue that breathed. A green that soothed. Everyone nodded politely, the way you do when someone swears they once met a celebrity or survived a tornado. Cute story. No proof.

But there was one person who refused to let those tales fade. Her name was Lira, and she had been born with a memory no one else had.

Not a dream

Not a hallucination

A memory.

Because Lira remembered colour.

It wasn’t even a full memory, just a flash from infancy. A ribbon being tied around her wrist. Warm hands brushing her cheek. A brilliant streak of gold so shocking it felt like sunlight poured into her skull. She could describe it perfectly, too perfectly for anyone to take her seriously.

They called it "colour-madness" in the city of Dredge. Whispered it under their breath as she walked by. Some stepped back, afraid the madness was contagious. Others stared at her the way people stare at a flame in a blackout night. Curious. Hungry. A little scared.

But Lira didn’t care. Not really. Not when she had a purpose. A spark. A memory warm enough to carry through the grayscale chill.

The day everything snapped open started like any other. Same washed-out morning. Same cold light leaking through the window. Same breakfast of char-grey oats and boiled nothingness. The world’s cuisine was as bleak as its palette.

She grabbed her pack, pulled her coat tight around her, and headed toward the Outlands. She told her father she was going scavenging with the others. That was a lie. She planned to go farther than she’d ever dared before.

Rumours whispered of something buried beyond the old border. A place where the sky flickered strangely. A place where the greyness… shifted.

People said it was dangerous. Off-limits. Possibly toxic.

For Lira, that read like an invitation.

As she walked toward the edge of Dredge, the city loomed behind her like a charcoal sketch. Buildings looked drawn rather than built. Even shadows felt flat. The world was hungry for something it didn’t remember ever having.

By the time she reached the cracked road leading out, her boots were coated in pale dust. Two scavengers passed her, pushing a cart of rusted metal. They didn’t look at her. No one looked at anyone anymore. When the world lost colour, it also lost a certain ease… a softness.

Or maybe she was imagining that part. Hard to tell.

The Outlands stretched in front of her like an unfinished painting. Broken cars. Dead trees. A horizon smeared with smokey cloud. Wind tugged at her coat as if to say hey maybe don’t, but Lira had made her choice years ago.

Hours passed. The sky dimmed from pale grey to darker grey. Then a deeper one. Weather reports were useless now because no one could describe anything except shades that all looked vaguely like sorrow.

Just when she started thinking she’d wandered too far, she saw it.

A pulse.

At the edge of her vision.

It wasn’t light. Not exactly. More like… movement. A shimmer. A ripple in the greyness that felt wrong. Wrong in the right way.

Her heart thudded. Her breath quickened. She ran toward it.

The air grew heavy as she approached the ridge. The ground vibrated faintly beneath her boots. As she climbed the last few feet, she froze.

There, in a shallow valley hidden between broken hills, was something impossible.

A tree.

Not a grey tree. Not a dead one. A living one.

But more than that

the tree was humming.

And around it…

Lira’s knees buckled.

She couldn’t breathe.

Colour.

Colour.

Colour.

A slow swirl radiated from the bark. Not bright, not the blazing gold she remembered. But a faint whisper of amber. Like a ghost of a colour. Like an echo. But undeniably real. Her eyes burned with sudden tears.

She stumbled down the slope, practically falling into the valley, and pressed her hand against the trunk. Warm. Alive. Real. The colour flicker strengthened at her touch, spiraling up the branches like a shy creature waking.

Oh.

Oh, she thought.

I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t wrong.

The air tasted different here. Not metallic like the usual world, but sweet, soft, almost like how laughter feels in your chest.

Then she heard a voice.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Lira spun, heart slamming into her ribs. A boy about her age stood behind her. Dark coat. Pale-grey eyes. A face that held surprise, fear… and something she couldn’t name.

“I’m not turning back,” she said, breath shaking.

He looked at her hand on the tree. “You can see it.”

A statement. Not a question.

“You can too?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. I can feel something. A warmth. But I don’t see anything.”

She exhaled. So she was still the anomaly. Fine. She’d survived worse.

“What is this place?” she asked.

He hesitated. “The Last Root.”

“Sounds dramatic.”

“It was a myth,” he said. “Something passed around in old books. They said the Last Root held the memory of the world. The way things used to be.”

Lira looked at the trembling amber glow. “So colour isn’t dead.”

“Dying,” he corrected. “Barely hanging on.”

Lira pressed her palm harder against the bark. “Maybe it just needs someone who remembers.”

The tree responded.

The glow brightened.

The boy stepped back, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know.”

That was true. But she felt something pulsing against her skin. Calling to her. Inviting her. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead to the trunk.

And then the world broke open.

Not physically

but in her mind.

The colours flooded her. The gold from her childhood. Then more. Flashes of crimson so wild she felt like she was standing inside fire. Blues deep as oceans she’d only heard of in bedtime stories. Greens so soft she nearly collapsed with the weight of them.

Her breath turned into sobs. Her heart felt too small for the universe pouring into her.

She wasn’t remembering colour.

Colour was remembering her.

The glow spilled out of the tree now, washing over the valley like a tide. Not fully visible to the boy, but he staggered back under its force.

“Lira—stop—your body—”

But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Something ancient and aching had waited too long for this.

The world needed colour.

Colour needed a vessel.

She had been chosen the moment that gold ribbon brushed her wrist as an infant.

The light burst up the branches and shot toward the sky. A pillar of shimmering gold cracked open the grey clouds.

Miles away, people in Dredge gasped as the horizon brightened for the first time in generations.

When the glow faded, Lira collapsed into the boy’s arms.

He shook her gently. “Lira? Lira, stay with me.”

Her eyes fluttered open. And they were glowing.

Amber.

Alive.

Awake.

“I’m okay,” she whispered.

The world was still mostly grey. But near the horizon, thin streaks of colour shimmered like newborn lightning.

A beginning.

“You brought it back,” he breathed.

“No,” she said softly. “We all will.”

The boy stared at her, trembling. “What are you now?”

Lira smiled, small and tired but brighter than the sky.

“Someone who remembers. Someone who restores.”

A spark danced across her fingertips. A tiny burst of gold.

She had become the first source of colour the world had seen in centuries.

And she wasn’t about to be the last.