In the Ashes of Color, We Burn

The world had forgotten color.

It was not sudden—

but a slow unraveling,

like a painting left too long in the rain,

its pigments bleeding into nothing.

At first, the skies lost their blush of dawn.

Then rivers ceased their sapphire song.

The forests dimmed,

their emerald silence swallowed by dust.

And in time, even the stars dimmed,

as though the heavens themselves

were weary of burning.

Gray was all that remained.

Gray fields.

Gray oceans.

Gray cities of stone that leaned in silence,

their walls remembering laughter

that no longer came.

The people too—

their faces paled,

their eyes dulled,

their hearts numbed.

And they stopped asking

what red meant,

what blue once was,

what it meant to stand in fields

that glowed with spring.

But not him.

Arin still asked.

He still walked with questions

woven into the soles of his boots,

still carried relics in a bag

too fragile to hold hope.

Watercolors, once brilliant,

now little more than ghosts.

Pages of books,

ink rubbed into dust.

Memories he never lived,

but which ached in him all the same.

The world was ash,

but in his chest burned hunger.

Not for food.

Not for shelter.

But for proof.

Proof that life

had once been more than survival,

that beauty

had not been a lie.

And one day—

he found it.

It was hidden,

as miracles often are,

beyond a forest of skeletal trees

clawing against a dying horizon.

He thought it another graveyard of weeds.

But as he stepped through,

his breath fractured,

his knees trembled,

and the silence of his heart broke.

For before him stretched a valley of fire.

A sea of blossoms—

thousands, unyielding—

burning in scarlet defiance.

Spider lilies,

their petals curling like tongues of flame,

their red so vivid,

so impossible,

that his chest ached with the sight of them.

He fell to the ground.

His fingers touched a petal,

and the word escaped him

like prayer.

“Red.”

And in that red sea,

she stood.

A girl.

Hair black as the forgotten night,

eyes carrying a light

the stars had abandoned.

Her coat was patched,

her figure fragile,

yet she belonged to that valley,

as though she too

had been born of its fire.

She turned to him,

and in her voice was the quiet certainty

of someone who had seen

the same hunger.

“You’re not supposed to be here,”

she said softly.

“Neither are you,”

he answered.

She looked back at the lilies.

“They’re fading.

Not now. Not today.

But soon.”

Her name was Liora.

And in that valley,

their worlds collided.

He came back the next day.

And the next.

And the next after that.

Always, she was waiting,

her hands brushing petals

as if afraid they would vanish

the moment she let go.

They sat among the lilies,

two shadows wrapped in fire,

and they spoke of things

they had never seen.

Of oceans vast and blue,

their waves singing against the earth.

Of skies, endless and alive,

shifting from dawn’s blush

to twilight’s fire.

Of forests that had once breathed green,

and of autumn leaves

that fell like embers.

He showed her his paints,

faded into near nothing.

She touched them reverently,

as though even their ghostly pigments

were holy relics.

Together, they imagined.

And in imagining,

they began to remember

a world neither of them had lived.

One evening,

as twilight pressed its gray hand

over the valley,

Liora said,

“Maybe we’re the last ones who still care.”

Arin looked at her,

his chest burning with defiance.

“Then maybe that’s enough.”

“Enough to what?”

“Enough to fight back.”

They laughed,

though neither knew what they meant.

But for a moment,

their laughter filled the valley

and the world felt less heavy.

Yet miracles do not endure.

The withering began in silence.

A flower at the edge,

its fire paling into ash.

Then another.

And another.

Liora’s breath broke.

“They’re dying.”

Arin shook his head.

“Not yet.

They can’t.”

But they were.

The last flame of the world

was flickering.

They tried to save them.

Water carried in cracked hands,

songs whispered into the petals,

tears that fell like rain.

But the gray crept on,

relentless,

indifferent to their pleading.

And in time,

the valley thinned.

Where once a sea of fire

had defied the heavens,

patches of ash spread,

holes of silence in their song.

Liora wept.

Her tears left no stain

on the gray earth.

Arin took her hand.

And in his grip,

she felt not hope—

but promise.

“If they fade,” he said,

“then we will be the last flame.”

And so,

as the lilies dimmed,

their love burned brighter.

They became the rebellion.

Their hands found each other’s in the dark.

Their voices carried stories

of colors they had never seen.

Their lips tasted of rain,

of sorrow,

of defiance.

The world fell silent,

but within them raged a fire

the gray could not touch.

Until the storm came.

It rose like a shadow on the horizon,

black upon black,

ash upon ash,

a wall of silence

that hungered for the last spark.

The wind tore at the lilies,

their petals scattering like sparks

from a dying flame.

The valley trembled,

its red unraveling into void.

Arin held Liora,

his arms locked around her

as if the storm could not tear them apart.

“Even if the flowers vanish,” he whispered,

“love will not.”

Her tears fell into his chest.

And though her lips trembled,

she smiled.

The storm devoured the valley.

One by one,

the lilies surrendered.

Red turned gray,

fire turned ash,

life turned silence.

And when it was over,

the valley was gone.

Only two figures remained,

standing in the emptiness,

their hands still entwined.

No colors survived.

Not in the sky.

Not in the earth.

Not in the flowers.

But in their embrace—

there was still flame.

The world had become ash.

The heavens had abandoned light.

Yet in the fragile space

between two hearts,

red still lived.

Love remained.

Not to restore the world.

Not to undo the fading.

But to remember.

To defy.

To whisper into the silence:

we were here,

and we loved,

and that was enough.

And so,

in a world where all colors fade,

love endured—

the last flame,

flickering,

eternal in its defiance.