The sky shone red and orange as the sun began going below the horizon. He sat under a tree on the hill, watching sunset.
'Red is such a beautiful colour,' he thought, 'I hope my soul is red instead of black.'
*****
He was astonished when he began to see colours around people. He didn't know where they were coming from or what they meant. He asked his friends about colours but no one else saw them.
He was ridiculed by his stepmother when he told about his special ability. He was scared but had no one else to share his problem with.
Slowly he stopped worrying about it. Eventually he began wondering what the colors meant. Everyone had colours radiating from within. Some radiated a single colour and some radiated multiple colours.
Only when he saw a dead man, he understood that the colours emerged from the soul.
Every night he'd sit by the lake, star gazing. He'd look at his reflection in the lake and search for the colour of his soul. He never found any.
One morning, he went to watch the frozen lake. He'd heard that the lake froze for the first time in thirty years. He didn't want to miss it.
The sight of the frozen lake stupefied him. It stood like a giant mirror reflecting everything. He always wanted to go up the mountains at the far east but his stepmother forbid him. Now, he felt he was atop a mountain as the reflection of top of a mountain touched his feet.
He played, jumping from top of one mountain to another, occasionally slipping and falling down. But that was not his best memory from the day. Once, he fell face down and was slowly getting up when he saw the colour of his soul. Black.
He was dumbfounded by his discovery. He never saw someone with a black soul. He stood there staring at his reflection.
*****
Every soul has an ally and the ally soothes the broken souls. A soul that contains green takes colour from trees and soothes itself; the tree sheds a leaf. That's the reason why some like greenery, some like oceans etc; they soothe souls.
After the sunset, he climbed down the hill and was walking through the park when he saw her. She had a soul so colourful and vibrant that rainbows, butterflies and flowers chased her to borrow colors from her.
He stood staring at her, watching her run around happily. He never saw someone giving colours to the nature. He was more depressed than awed by the sight.
He slowly walked away into darkness, his ally. What he didn't know was she missed black and they completed each other.
