Colours

It was at that curious age, where the world was still full of wonder, when I first saw her.

The day is bright and charming, and there is an endless sky that leads everywhere and nowhere. It is still, quiet – until a soft pitter-pattering of footsteps approaches and brushes against the warmth of the bleak stone ground. I hear a thud, and a melodious progression of chains signals an emerging figure which quickly cuts through the dullness of what would have been a slow, lazy afternoon.

She is riding her red bike. It is small, simple, with two pairs of ash-coloured wheels and streaks of dusty yellow lining its rugged edges. The fire-engine hue was no longer as striking as it used to be, but that didn’t matter. Not a lot of things did. She loved that trusty old bicycle so long as it always agreed to take her to new places. It never failed her before and she was positive that it never ever will.

Almost immediately, she closes her eyes – tightly, as if presupposing some weirdly fantastic and wondrously bizarre journey that lay ahead – and feels the curl of her lashes tickle the left, and then the right, edges of those hard-earned bags where she surreptitiously and expertly collects each grain of the Sandman’s magic dust each night.

She accelerates. Delighting in the harried clink-clank of her trusty steed, she thinks of the small xylophone in her room with its welcoming tinkle of notes that dance around her private burgundy spaceship carefully parked and positioned in the vicinity of that unpretentious blue planet (her favourite because it’s blue) between Saturn and Neptune, underneath the faint glow of a jade Polaris.

She smiles, so eagerly, upon hearing the clandestine riddles which the ancient wind softly whispers to her; teasing her all the more by blowing tender kisses to the sides of her cheeks, the back of her bare neck and, ever so gently, to each unassuming strand of pallid – almost colourless – hair which adds a peculiarly whimsical contrast to her remarkable skin, a powdery blend of chalk and snow.

Soon, I saw an extraordinary spectacle of sights. An array of endless possibilities; flashes of what is and what is to be – whether it be imagined or not. Through her eyes, the world is neither black nor white: it is every colour that she imagines it to be. She does not know what to call them. But she doesn’t need to because she finds no need for words.

Suddenly, she stops and rushes off to greet a familiar old face. It is the dog, but she doesn’t know that. She only knows the delight she feels by playing with it or touching its soft white fur (same as her own finer-looking ones, only in a yellowish kind of cream). And she loves it just the same.

She leaves. Her attention is short, you see. She is easily distracted by many things because they are all too big and vast. But just as easily, she becomes fascinated by them.

That was how she spent most of her days. And in all those times, I spent it with her. That girl, she plays with me often but she does not who I am.

I have no name. It is our secret. Because the day she gave me one, she disappeared.