The Lost Girl ✨Once Upon A Time✨

Chapter Four

   Scarlet was never Wren's favorite color. Nor was it the most flattering color on her.

   She had always fancied more practical colors, colors with meaning.

   Silver was a personal favorite. 

   Sure, her tanned skin had warm undertones that contrasted horridly with it, but silver was elegant. Silver was the color of the moon dancing its way across the onyx sky. Silver was the sly version of gold, just as rich, just as powerful, but sneaky about its gleam. You took second place so that when you overthrew the golden first, you caused a spectacle. Silver could be a blade, could be ice, could be a crown. Silver was practical.

   Stormy blue was gorgeous, though Wren could easily be biased. Her own eyes were the definition of the color, stunning, calculating, dangerous. With looks like a knife so sharp it could cut you; it was a treacherous color for eyes. Luckily, that was precisely what was necessary in her current predicament. She was too soft, the corners of her mouth too upturned, the angles of her body too bony, the will of her stomach too weak. But her eyes, her eyes could slice through you with just one look; her eyes could keep her alive.

   There were other colors too. The yellow of the raincoat and boots she used to wear to splash in puddles before her family would have so much as let her think about watching Once Upon A Time. There was the shade of brown, the shade of her mother's teddy bear, now hers, the one she kept despite knowing she was far too old for childish endeavors. There was the vibrant green of grass after the rain that Neverland had snatched and bent into something twisted. Those colors were too innocent for her here, those colors were weak.

  Scarlet was an entirely different story. Scarlet was the color of poisoned apples and witch's shoes. Scarlet was the color you painted your lips in to camouflage all of the bitter lies that rolled out your mouth. Scarlet was the color on your palms when you got caught amidst a crime. Scarlet was blood in the water- but more importantly, scarlet was the color that Wren Elair awoke to.

  Her lips were stained, caked in deep red. The top was long ruined, its cloth both soaked in its dried deep hue and smeared with something fresher, more violent. Her skin- gone pale, was too plastered with the annoyingly dangerous color. So much for Wren not looking good in red.

   Perhaps there was psychology to back her aversion to the color.

   She'd always enjoyed psychology. It made the world basic. It made her impossible navigation amidst a planet of people, insane, misguided people, a whole lot easier. You could see inside their heads, find their motives. It was like playing a game of Sherlock Holmes, always being five steps ahead of everyone else, and yet it was so simple. Psychology was just tracing thoughts, finding what made people tick. Sure, seeing inside people's heads didn't exactly make you popular at parties, but Wren had never been one to make friends easily. It was better to be clever, to be volatile and adaptive, than to end up with a knife in your back from someone you came to trust.

   Sadly, Wren wasn't Sherlock Holmes. She was just a high school student, just a high school student with no social life and a personality stolen from ink on pages.

   The obvious answer was beneath her nose, quite literally. Blood. Scarlet was death, and so scarlet was danger. Her primitive ancestors had learned this rather quickly, she figured. Flames, blood, the setting sun, yes it had all symbolized danger, to them and their young. It stuck. Death is not something that can be bred out of your mind, even millions of generations later. It should have been obvious, no matter what culture you lived in or language you spoke, chances were you had a name for the color red because the color could be the difference between life and death. Scarlet was bad.