Beyond the Sunrise

Julip Hawthorne has always seen the world differently. Because of her synesthesia, every person has a color-voices shimmer with shades, personalities glow with hues only she can see. Her older sister Georgia burned the brightest of them all, a warm sunset orange that seemed to light up everything around her.

Georgia was the one who understood Julip's strange way of seeing the world. She encouraged her to paint the colors she saw in people, turning Julip's unusual perception into art. But when Georgia dies suddenly in a car accident, the world Julip once knew fades. The colors disappear, draining into dull browns and grays, and Julip is left struggling to understand who she is without the sister who always helped her make sense of it.

At the funeral, surrounded by Georgia's friends and the overwhelming weight of loss, Julip runs-literally-fleeing the graveyard and everything it represents. Running becomes the only way she can breathe.

But grief doesn't stay buried, and neither does color. As Julip begins navigating life after Georgia, old relationships strain, new ones form, and small sparks of color begin to return in unexpected places. Through art, memory, and the people who refuse to let her disappear into gray, Julip slowly learns that Georgia's light isn't gone.

And that maybe she was never meant to live in the shadow of a sunset.

Maybe she was always meant to be the sunrise.