Chasing Sparks » Isaac Lahey

𝟎𝟎. 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

To see the world in black and white is to live within the impossible contours of extremism.

This perspective of colour neatly divides the world into right versus wrong, good versus evil, and light versus dark. It requires very little analysis to determine who falls into the traditional "good guy" role and who becomes the "bad guy."

The imaginary line is drawn and you must choose where to stand, with the pure of heart or damned of soul.

The problem with this black and white thinking is it inherently assumes that the world is standing in a picturesque static, when in truth, it is so much more complex, nuanced and adherently grey.

It requires far less courage to live in the black and white than it does to live in the grey. The world of grey requires that we acknowledge the truth that no person is inherently good or evil. Good people can lie through their teeth, bad people can act selflessly.

This was the case for Eloise Howard, a girl who had been living in a world of grey for so long, she was beginning to forget that there could be any light against the sea of darkness.

It was difficult to see the good in others when she could quiet literally feel any and every lie spoken to her against her skin. As if imaginary fingertips were just barley running along the nape of her neck, leaving behind a brush of heat. It was a somewhat sixth sense warning her to others deception. A nifty trick in her youth, but the teenager had soon realized that this unexplainable talent was more curse than gift.

How easy it was for others to lie, to cheat, to deceive, when they believed no one could notice.

But Eloise noticed.

She had noticed how difficult it was to make friends who could lie straight to your face without batting an eye. She had noticed how easy it was for adults to lie to children, whether it was in their better interest or not. She had noticed how boys could perfect the pretty lies that would slide effortlessly out between kisses.

It had numbed her to the world, to the liars and the people that stood to her the closest, for they were one in the same.

What Eloise was in desperate need of was a spark. A spark that could light the fire and lead her out of her grey world and into the light.

What she hadn't been expecting though, was that spark to manifest itself in the entirely wrong person. Someone she shouldn't have cared about in the least, someone that at times she actively despised, someone that had lit her world fully ablaze with no intent on snuffing out the flame anytime time soon.