The World Walkers: Unknown World: Paige: Seeing Colour in a Black and White World

A picture hung on Paige’s wall, drawn by her father. It had been done because she wanted to know how they saw her. Every time she looked at it she was reminded that she was different to everyone else. Instead of seeing herself in black and white she could see herself, and everyone else, in colour, but it had never been easy to explain. She couldn’t work out how to describe the colour of skin, or hair, or eyes, or even the shadows under someone’s eyes, in a way that anyone could understand. Nature was even harder. Describing the colour of grass to someone who didn’t know what colour actually was was pretty much impossible.

There were days when Paige wished, hard, that she had been born just like everyone else, but she had no idea what it would be like to see the entire world the way they did. Looking at the drawings artists did of the world around her gave her some idea, as did her own drawings, which had to be done in black and white because there were no other colours. She knew that no one understood what it was like to be her either. A few people didn’t believe that she could see colours, because there was no proof, and they hadn’t thought of a way she could provide proof.

Sighing, Paige tugged a strand of her hair forward so she could see it. People knew they had differently coloured hair, because they were in shades of grey, and in some cases it was possible to tell when someone’s hair changed due to age, but she couldn’t describe what it looked like to her. Making up names for each of the colours seemed wrong, even though she believed, as did everyone else, that she was the only person who could see them. There were no records of anyone ever being able to see colour, so she was the first too. She didn’t want to be the first or the only, but she didn’t have a choice.

There had been a time when Paige dreamed of meeting someone like her. Someone she could talk to about what she could see, and maybe decide the names of all the different colours with, but it never happened. It had got to the point when she didn’t think it ever would happen, no matter how much she really wanted it to. Even a book about someone who was like her would help, however far in the past they had existed, and make her feel less alone, less different, less like she didn’t belong with her family. Her search for that had led to her spending more time in the library than she ever thought she would.

Paige often found her mind wandering when she was looking through the older books, because they were rather dry, but she felt she was more likely to find what she was looking for in the distant past. After six months she hadn’t found anything, and she was beginning to feel it wasn’t going to happen. There’d been no mentions of anyone who could see colour. There hadn’t even been any mentions of colour in any of the books, even though some had been about botany. Nothing was going to stop her looking though.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.