Celadon

Celadon - Willow Green

New fic!! Another chaptered one but I'll try to keep up with both this one and Rumor Mill. Enjoy!

They call it celadon. The condition I'm in. Everyone learns about it in schools, once you're old enough to learn about your soulmate, you're old enough to know about celadon. 

"Scandalous." That's what they say. "A curse. A sickness." 

I don't disagree. 

The dictionary definition of celadon? 

Cel-a-don (n) - 1. the state in which you are an individual's soulmate, but they, respectively, are not yours. 

2. a willow-green color.

Our eyes, they're created only seeing the blacks and whites, the shadows of this world, until you find the one. Your 'soulmate'. The person, essentially, you will spend the rest of your natural-born life with, seeing the world in color and living happily ever after.

Some don't think it exists. Celadon. It's rare, unique, a sad spectacle. There's never been a case of celadon in which the victim ends up with a soulmate of their own. Edgar Allen Poe, Tchaikovsky, Alexander the Great, Leonardo Da Vinci, Freddie Mercury, they were all people who had it. All great people who had it. But somehow I don't think "Dan Howell" will be added to the list of celebrities with celadon. Just, you know, the sad losers who had celadon that eventually offed themselves. 

What people don't seem to realize is that we do see color. One color, really, but we still don't see entirely in black and white. All we can see is that damn shade of green. The shade of green on willow trees and in marshes and in some less sun-touched glades. That's what the bloody condition is named after, our one true bane, the reminder that we're screw ups. 

I've never met anyone else with celadon. There's support groups, that some with it are forced to attend, there's even some 'conditioning', in which clueless doctors think they can remedy the oppressed into seeing the colors and being soulmates with the one who saw colors for them. 

But me? I've never told anyone. It's terrible and I'm ashamed of it every day, but I just can never find a way to say it. 

I blame my cripplingly awkward disposition. When she approached me two years ago, well, I really should have said something.

I was in a park, with my parents and younger brother, eating an ice cream when she saw me. I remember being utterly confused when she ran to me, crying and flinging her arms around my neck while I patted her back uncomfortably and tried desperately not to drop my ice cream. 

"You're it! You're him," she had said to me, pulling away and wiping the tears from her eyes with a laugh as I took another unsure lick from my ice lolly. "I'm Charlie." 

It was at this very moment that I realized what the fuck was happening. I had glanced around me and realized that things looked different, yeah, but not overwhelmingly spectacular. Most everything was still black and white, except the few leaves and blades of grass that were that very shade my eyes decided to pick up. And, I had realized as I looked back at the girl claiming to be my soulmate, her eyes were changed, too. 

"Dan," I had said with a smile. I was polite. Still am. She just thinks I'm quiet, and distant, but in a nice way. I've gotten used to her in my bed on the weekends, and I've gotten used to the fact that I'll never quite adore her like she adores me. Because I'm her soulmate. But she's not mine. And really, what's the point in saying anything now? We met when I was 18, and she was 16, and now I'm 20 and out of high school and considering what I want to do with myself and she's taking a gap year before deciding on university. Our futures, in her eyes, they're non-negotiable. She loves me.