There was a girl in a monochromatic world who reeked of color. This world, where black and white was the norm, despised any droplet of color. It was wretched, strange, and staining. It would bleed through clothes, it was transferrable through contact, and worst of all the aura of color was so strong that even the presence alone drove crowds away.
People didn't want to touch it, fearing its contagiousness. People didn't want to go near it for it was suffocating. They also feared to become different. To stand out. To suddenly not be able to hide underneath their monochromatic cloaks.
So the girl roamed about, like an infectious disease. Her colors emitting a glow that scared people. Whenever she tried to get along with them, they'd put up walls, they'd put her down, scoff at her. Colors were permanent, and the commitment was terrifying.
One day, a curious boy saw her colors. He could feel their intensity, he knew they would burn, but his fascination made him want to learn. He approached her slowly, taking her by surprise. She didn't know how to act because he was the first person to ever want to share a space with her. Her desperate eagerness made her act fast and she grabbed his hand.
He was alarmed. It felt like something beyond his imagination. The colors scorched him, searing into his skin. The immense shock of it all made him snap away. He was terrified at their difference. She realized she had hurt him and felt terrible, shrinking away, trying her best to tame the colors from hurting him anymore. However, the damage was done.
The pain was too much for him, he didn't want to feel it anymore, so he ended up running away from her. A week passed and he looked at his scorched arm, scarred of color. His friends told him he should get it treated but he didn't want to. His friends warned him that people would look at him funny if he continued to walk around like that with colored scars. For some reason, he didn't mind. He had felt something different and his curiosity was growing.
Slowly every day he began to experience new emotions. He started dealing with new situations and to him, life began to become much more interesting. He had bore this pain, but it was strangely teaching him so much.
Days passed and he started realizing color wasn't bad. The heat wasn't necessarily burning, but could be seen as warm. Being used to the icy coolness of the monochromatic world was comforting, however he was learning the new boundaries of the heat of color. Suddenly, he didn't want to be the same, he wanted to be covered in different hues.
People started looking at him funny, found him repulsive, his refusal to regain his icy veil made him unwanted. Still, he was becoming happy. He discovered a newfound form of comfort, he started discovering his individuality, he started finding confidence in his uniqueness. The colors gave him strength he never knew existed.
He wanted to find her again, to tell her how much she helped him.
When he found her though, her blazing colors had diminished significantly. If before they were comparable to the sun, now they looked like candlelight, desperately clinging onto the oxygen in the air to breathe. He asked her what happened, she said she had burned too many people and had been working on taming her flames all this time.
She said she left too many people hurt. He shook his head and said it wasn't pain that they were feeling, but an unfamiliar shock so new people would wince as if it were something harmful. She looked at him doubtfully, she had just recently learned to be proud of her ability to hide the colors. And here he was, unraveling the reality she had just managed to get used to.
He pointed at the burning ground behind her, a very clear trail of where she had walked. He said people would come, just like him, they would all come back because they wouldn't be able to go back to the monochromatic world.
She still doubted him, proud of her dimness. He reached for her hand, and she was taken aback at how much her color had spread. He had let it engulf his entire arm and beyond his shoulder. What began as a mark, he had let it grow, cultivate the color to his own liking. When their hands touched, for the first time, someone didn't pull their hand away. He held her hand tightly, warmth met with warmth, a sensation she had never felt before. He reassured her this wouldn't be the last time she would feel this.
A year down the road, she was surrounded by people of color. They all came back. All of them walked together, holding hands, scorching the ground they walked on with hues. Her little flame grew in size, though incomparable to the beginning. She was slowly regaining her ability to emit a stronger light again. The majority of the world was still monochromatic, and people found color repulsive, but the group didn't care. They were just happy to share their colors with the world. And they started to attract all the other colorful people who had only been trying to contain their hues, just like her.
Their monochromatic world cracked a little. There was a clear path of color that existed now, and it was up to people who saw it to decide whether or not they wanted to take part.
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