Annie
"You've gone Mono again."
Chloe greeted me with raised brows and a playful smile, unsurprised by my all-black attire as I walked through the door to our cramped office space. Her grin was radiant, pearly white teeth against dark grey skin and even darker lips. A tangle of curls piled on top of her head, with a silk bandana keeping loose strands from tickling her defined brows. She was one of the lucky few who still managed to captivate, even when looked at through a pair of Mono eyes.
Her comment, I assumed, was about my typically blonde hair, which had been toned during my shower that morning. A creature of habit, I changed my hair on a weekly basis when I went Mono. There was comfort to be found in an old routine; reassurance that I could still be colourful even when my world was black and white.
"Am I that obvious?" I smirked, slinking down into my work chair, taking in the office around me.
It wasn't the first time I'd seen it achromatically, but it didn't make it any less drab. Void of all and every colour, my eyes had stopped being receptive to anything other than muted tones months ago.
The desk, which had been my home since graduation last year, was pale grey through my eyes, but I knew that Clo would see it for what it really was: light yellow ash, with slightly darker beige knots and rings scattered on its surface.
"You're not obvious... but that hair?" Her brows raised, as she pointed to her own dark hair. "Do you even know what colour you did?!"
She knew the answer to this already: I had absolutely no clue.
"Luck of the draw," I shrugged, pressing down the cool metal button on my computer monitor, loading it up. With a flick of a switch, I changed the display into mono-mode, making things easier for my eyes to distinguish. "I lost purple last night," I lamented, reclining back and turning to face her. "Which means I'm officially Mono."
It was the last muted tone to eclipse from my vision; a sign that I was well and truly out of love. Finally.
"Shit," Chloe sighed sympathetically, thick brows furrowing. It had been a long time coming. We both knew it was on its way, but it didn't make it any less heavy on my heart. "Why do you think it changed?"
I paused for a second, colourful recollections clouding my subconscious.
"Purple!" I had squealed excitedly, as the handsome man in front of me pulled skittles from the bag he was holding. His smile was broad, teeth perfectly white, revelling in the way my eyes would spark up with each new colour he revealed.
"Red," he declared, exposing the tiny crimson sweet in his palm, before tossing it into his mouth. We had nearly made it through the entire packet, simply for the pleasure of confirming that both of us could see the same thing; evidence that we felt the same.
We'd fallen in love.
Velvet brown eyes drank me in, the rosy blush on his cheeks and pink of his tongue only serving to make me fall even more enamoured with him. It was hard to believe that I had ever seen colour before I met him.
He'd got me thinking that I'd be living in colour vision for the rest of my life.
It was ironic, I supposed, that the pink of his skin that I adored so much was the first colour to go.
It had happened during yet another fight about whether or not I was ready to move in with him. Then, over dinner, the green of my salad faded into grey. Slowly, but surely, I was left with nothing but mauve.
