No Requiem

The world was painted in shades of black and white. The vibrancies of color were something sought out by many, yet achieved by few. It was a spectacular phenomenon, the way that color washed over the world in all of its unique hues and intensities, and the acquisition of the ability to experience it was regarded almost as highly as the cliché love story that often followed. It was a mystery, how it all came about. It was only an instant in which the world fell into its current monochromatic state, the color withdrawing like water down a drain. Some barely noticed it, for they were frequently making eye contact with the one the universe had deemed as their soulmate; so, by the time the world was devoid of any of the color it once held, those lucky few had watched the color blossom and flourish across their vision once more.

Iris Sheiling didn't give a rat's ass about soulmates, nor was she desperate to brush color across her world. She wasn't old enough to remember the when sky was a pretty blue, or how the ocean sparkled with so many different shades of blue and green. That was long before her time. Her life had always been grayscale, and she enjoyed the starkness and the simplicity it offered. It was uncomplicated, straight forward in its limited shades and she took comfort in the fact that it was the one thing that wasn't complicated in her chaotic existence.

The most complicated part of that chaotic existence? She looked exactly like her deadbeat, sorry excuse for a father. She knew next to nothing about him, as he had never been a part of her life and her mom was too preoccupied with her job (and its ability to keep her distracted from the depressing faded colors of her once radiant field of view) to ever correct the perception. She knew she had his light eyes, his inky hair that fell stick-straight and rested at her collarbone. She knew that the freckles that dotted her fair skin like the stars that once shined in the sky were his, as was the slight slant of her eyes that pointed at her button nose. The resemblance was uncanny, and even now, her mom could barely stand to look at her longer than 15 seconds without her eyes becoming glossy and her voice becoming hoarse with despair. Iris thought she was pathetic; the apparent grief her mom couldn't overcome was what had forced Iris to essentially raise herself. Iris swore from an early age that she would never be so helpless, so dependent on another person that without them, she was nothing. She swore that she would never cave to the societal pressure to do everything she possibly could to find her soulmate; she was perfectly happy on her own, social norms be damned.

******

"I am under no obligation to make sense by you." Iris sneered at the fiery girl that sat on the worn leather chair, her legs curled under her petite body as her figure was drowned by a crewneck Iris was almost certain belonged to the dark-skinned boy that slept in the bed down the hall. Her hair was still crimped from sleep and the lines on her cheek, no doubt left by her sheets that were surely rumpled, still shone dark on her fair skin as her eyes glared back with just as much fire as Iris's did.

"I would think," Grace's voice bit back, her normal rumbling tone raised several pitches higher as her cheeks tinged slightly darker against her skin. "As your best friend androommate, that I would have every goddamn right to know why you refuse to just be happy! This whole thing has turned you into a fucking nightmare!" She was screaming now, her voice high and wobbly, her knees coming out from under the pullover as she moved to stand. "Every time Zach comes over, I don't hear the fucking end of it! You lock yourself in your room and blare your music so loud no one can even thinkwithout getting a raging headache! And then, you constantly are texting me and asking me when we're going to leave, or what time he's going home! I can't catch a fucking break here Iris!" Her eyes were shining now, evident even in the stark black and white tones Iris fought so stubbornly to maintain.