Complicated Blue: The Extraordinary Adventures of the Good Witch Anaïs Blue

Blue

Anais Blue hated her name.

Not the first part. She thought the name Anais was kind of cool. It had something mysterious about it. It was different. It was foreign. It made her feel important. It was very close to its more common counterpart, the name Anna, but unusual enough to be special. She was secretly proud to carry the name Anais and completely content with being its bearer. It was the name Blue that she had a problem with.

Firstly, she hated the colour itself. She didn't think it was beautiful. She couldn't stand the sight of it and, worst of all, it was everywhere. When she looked up it was there; when she looked through glass it was tinted with it; when she went to the beach it was as far as she could see. It was was all over the place. She hated it because it was inescapable. She thought it was too ordinary. Just like her first name, she liked things to be different. Blue was too common, she preferred the colour purple.

If she had her way, Anais would have had the sky painted purple. Which incidentally it was on occasions. However, occasionally wasn't enough. It had to be all the time. It had to be permanent. In her opinion, everything blue should be replaced with purple. If she could have, she would have truckloads of it dumped into the ocean. She would have skywriters spray the heavens with it. She would have blue barred from the planet entirely. She was even willing to live with an excess of green to get it done. And green was her second-most hated colour. But if she had to make a choice between the two, she would rather live in a world that was entirely green, and not the blue-green one that it presently was.

The greatest frustration for Anais was that she did have the power to change things. She was a witch. She was capable of the most amazing things. She could change people into animals and vice versa. Or at least give them the impression it was happening. She could make huge objects disappear. Once she had taken the Empire State Building and put it smack-bang in the middle of London. People were surprised. That was until her caretaker made her put it back and flush the memories of those who had seen it. But the one thing she wanted above all others eluded her. It was an enormous disappointment to her that she didn't have the power to change colour.

She had made it her number one goal to find the incantation or potion with which she could do that. She had tried all the avenues open to her. She had done extensive research and experimented with various concoctions. She had attempted to make contact with those who were more experienced. All to no avail.

She had only found one way to do it. Colours could be changed on an individual basis. This meant that in order to achieve her goal she would have to personally cast a spell on every living thing on the planet. Casting the spell was not the problem, that was easy. In fact it was one of the most basic spells there was. The spell which made a person see something in a different colour was a trick even the most inexperienced novice could perform. Casting it en masse was beyond her capabilities. The best she had achieved was at a Rolling Stones concert. Fifty thousand people was a special achievement. But it was a long way off her ultimate goal. It was also a hollow victory as most of the audience were already seeing purple anyway.

The real problem was that she couldn't physically do it. Nor could she make it permanent. She couldn't get rid of one colour and replace it with another. This was especially the case with purple as it depended entirely on the colour blue for its own existence. So she had shifted her focus to something within her realm of influence. She decide to change her surname.

She thought this was doable. Deep down it was also the thing that made her dislike the colour blue so excessively in the first place. She really wanted to be Anais Purple. She secretly hoped that if she started with her name then perhaps everything else would fall into place. There was one problem, which she was unaware of, but soon to find out. Witches have special relationship with their names and tampering with them is not advisable.

Thanks for reading.

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