When did the world lose its bright primary colors, leaving only gradient shades of mauve and brown? It happened so slowly that I never noticed it until I awakened from a vivid dream. The dream was punctuated with sharp, clear colors – deep red, royal blue, greens and yellow so bright that I could almost smell them, colors of growth and life.

Everyone else thinks I'm crazy. When I try to describe the way colors used to be, they just smile uneasily and change the subject. I'm not crazy. There used to be color, real color, in the world.

It all started with English Ivy. Ivy used to be brilliant green. Thinking back, I remember that I did notice the change in the color of the ivy. I remember being happy, because I thought that this opportunistic plant had finally run its course, and that the brown tinge to the leaves were signs that the plant was dying.

Not so. The ivy is still here, its leaves now a sickly burgundy-brown color. Others tell me that this is the color the leaves have always been, but I know better.

Perhaps we've all been infected with an ivy-like virus, one that is invasive and insatiable. Maybe the virus has pulled all of the photosynthetic cells from plants, leaving us only tired browns and shades in the middle of the red spectrum. Maybe the virus has caused wide-spread brain damage, so that no one realizes what is happening. But why have I escaped, and then only after I had the dream?

It was a strange dream, a wonderful dream, a terrible dream. I stood on a mountain top at sunset. Above me was a beautiful Parrish-blue sky. Below me was a verdant valley. I looked down upon thick-leaved, deciduous tree tops. I looked upon wheat, throat-catchingly golden in the setting sun. I looked at red poppies, at yellow pansies, at white Queen Anne's lace. I breathed deeply. There was an alluring scent rising from the valley, an aroma of growth and life.

It doesn't smell like that in our world now. Smells are dull and musty, like they've been kept in a cellar for too long. Smells now are old and faint, like shadows or memories of the original scents.

But in my dream, that intoxicating smell rose more strongly from the valley below. I looked down into the waning light and strained to see which plant was producing that tantalizing odor.

It wasn't a plant, of course. It was…well, it wasn't vegetable or mineral, so I guess it was animal. It was almost human, and it was nothing remotely human. It rose from the valley. Since when did men have the gift of independent flight? But the creature wasn't flying. It was flowing.

It was naked, yet it was fully clothed. It was covered in individual points of light so bright that they hurt my eyes, even when I closed them. Its face was illuminated from within, like children's faces when they hold a flashlight under their chins in the blackness of midnight . The creature's shape was clearly discernable, despite the dazzling star-like clothing. It was apparently male, and awesomely formed. Every Mr. Universe past and present would look upon the form of this creature and weep, because mere man could never hope to achieve such definition, such perfection.

Strangest of all, the creature emanated light from its shoulders. The light arched upward almost three feet before bending downward to ebb behind the creature's heels. The light waved, undulated, as though to the heartbeat of the creature. Sometimes it seemed to flow outward rather than downward, but the brilliance of the emanating light was too great for me to obtain more than a second's glance.

The creature hung in the air before me, appraising me. Then he stood beside me. “You mourn,” he said, in a voice deep and wild, assailing my ears like Pacific waves breaking upon a stormy shore. It was a multi-dimensional sound. It was as though he had independent vocal chords that sounded together, like the bowed strings of an upright bass.

“Let me heal you. Let me complete you. Let me make you whole,” he crooned, enveloping me in his arcs of light that I suddenly recognized as wings.

It was incredible, amazing, overwhelming. It went beyond the senses, beyond any earthly pleasure. He filled me completely: every void in my psyche, every chip in my soul. The undulating beat that I had noticed in his wings throbbed through my entire being, bringing a soothing healing.

Then it intensified. I was in pain, excruciating pain. At the same time, I was filled with an intense euphoria. I was overwhelmed by the twin sensations of pain and pleasure, woven together in one terrifying sensation. Where was the release of blessed unconsciousness? It never came, and the nightmare continued on and on until I was sure that I would, literally, die.

I remember his eyes. I looked into them and almost vomited. It was like looking over a precipice when you are afraid of falling. No human could look into those eyes without the shock of primal fear.

Then he was gone. I stood, shaking, upon the mountaintop. The last few rays of light glowed near the western horizon. Above me, the sky had deepened to almost black, and the first stars of evening twinkled brightly. The midnight blue of approaching night spread its calming cover over the valley below.

I awoke to a dull, dirty red-washed world. What happened to the bright colors? What happened to blue? It has vanished entirely. Yellow has faded to a cigarette-stained-fingertips color, and without blue, there can be no green. What has happened to color?

 

---(c) 2005 Cherie Renae - may not be reproduced without permission