Purple

Smorgasbord № 1 | Cosmic Flash Fiction

Photo by Peter Oslanec

Listen to a narration!

This is the story of the day the sky burned a fierce purple. A colour otherwise docile, calm, accepting, and welcoming, lit up the sky in an eddy of hues, for it is the quiet ones who snap the loudest.

The sky burned purple, somewhere halfway between the calm contentness of blue and the rage of red. One flowed through another until neither were recognisable anymore and something unheard of beckoned in its place.

You would think that a crimson sky would hurt the most, that pure, unadulterated rage, would be the most painful shade to scream at you; you would think that, and you would be wrong. Pure rage can be acclimatised to. You get used to it. You see the red sky for long enough and slowly you begin to forget that it can be blue. That it should be blue.

*

The sky glowed blue. It glowed a wonderful hue of blue, a perfect image of the calm, welcoming waters below. The flowers, the smallest of the smallest shrubbery, shimmered in delight, welcoming the breeze that tickled them silly. The world worked in blissful harmony.

But as with all good things, it was short lived. The harmony of blue began to be wiped out and replaced with the rage of red. It poured into every crevice, every cranny, every open receptacle, willing and able to allow it to usurp blue's reign.

In the end, they both lost who they were. War changes people, it transforms and concocts them into something else entirely, and the sky, the sky is no different.
Thus began the reign of purple. Purple, which glowered with anger and menace far worse than red would ever have been capable of. Purple, which took everything good in the world and stripped it bare until it wasn't. Until it was no longer good nor bad, it just wasn't. A non-state, unable to comprehend purple's harshness, choosing instead to run away, to escape purple's darkness.

From that day forth, the sky shone blue only within the confines of unconsciousness, when the mind is free to roam the lands of the past and comfort. But, as with everything, there will come a day when that too will fade. When the past tries to reach back and only finds purple skies. That will be the day the sky ceases to exist and the ground crumbles.

The day hope evades even the realm of dreams will be the end of time.

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