Colour My World
The volume of cloud underneath me sagged with the quietest of sounds under my front left hoof's pressure. Directly in front of me stood a window, separating my home from the outside with a masterpiece whose lines and colours shifted every moment in a ballad of tiny proportions. At this moment there was no rainbow in the sky, but its individual colours were present: red and orange hues dominated the background, on which the sun in shining yellow shaded Equestria's landscape underneath. This landscape contained brilliant green fields complemented by patches of violets, and Rainbow Dash flapping her magnificent blue wings on the horizon.
“Thank Celestia it's Friday!” shouted somepony on the street outside. Those words reverberated through and were amplified in my Cloudsdalean mind, since Friday, being the final weekday, compelled reflection. The past week belonged to autumn, and most of my work now was spent preparing snowflakes for the winter. Tons of fun would lie ahead for all the pegasi, and indeed everypony in Equestria, but there would be a shortage of rainbows for three months.
With too many details for my brain to comprehend and appreciate, it was inevitable that my head swirled and throbbed. Through this pain, a greater memory floated to the surface, building itself through facts that I never bothered to recall until now. It wasn't about my friends in the factory who left me, nor was it about those who had stayed loyal and honest for all my working days. It was about my past. My name, my cutie mark, an absence of colour, and an encounter with a lightning bolt.
I wasn't always this happy.
A mare was surrounded on three sides by pink curtains, and on the fourth by a featureless white wall. Beside her were two stallions, one wearing a white coat dotted with stains, the other sweating cold beads and breathing sparsely.
“Come on, Sunset, push through it! Push her through, my darling!”
“I am, Springtime! Just... one... more...”
“Almost there...” A soft pop sounded, and the anxious stallion jumped. “You did it! You did it!”
“So relieved... oh my.” She let out a long and heavy sigh. “Wait, something’s out of place here. Let me get my head round this.”
“Don't worry, dear. We have a long life to plan for this little foal here.”
“OK, you see... I have a red coat and orange mane, and you have a purple coat and yellow mane.” Tears fell down the bed. “Our daughter... she is none of these colours.”
Sunset Bliss was my mother, and Springtime my father. During and shortly after my birth, they said the above lines, the last pertaining to my grey coat, lighter grey mane, and dark grey eyes.
The colour had left me.
Then, when I looked blankly at the hospital room, everything came out either black, white, or grey. No hues, no saturation whatsoever, just luminosity. Depressing as it was, my parents were even more so, interlocking their front legs and crying in vain until the doctor intervened. Owing to their aviatory nature, pegasi are supposed to recognise colours well, so how could I work?
“Do you think she's going to survive when she's older, husband?”
“I don’t know, but we'll do everything for her. Anyway, is this a curse, or something else?”
“I think it's the latter. We'll find out soon.”
The days that followed were hectic for all parties concerned. Springtime, with Sunset’s help, dug up a mountain of past newspapers, hoping to find my rare medical condition reported in the past, and found nothing. The hospital staff searched their entire collection of medical records from forty years back, but ended up in an identical situation. In a last resort, my parents flew down to Twilight's library, with their hearts like the finest glass – after all, the possibility of a magical origin to the affliction had not been eliminated.
“I can tell you what this deficiency is...” As usual, she skimmed over the pages via her bright magenta magic to locate the desired information. “It's called achromatopsia.”
“Er... Achromatopsia?” Springtime stuttered, his tongue twisted from pronouncing the word. “What in Equestria is that?”
“The definition provided says: Congenital disorder characterised by an inability to perceive colour. The patient also suffers from having coat, mane and eyes coloured in shades of grey.” The glass warped and vibrated in a haunting melody.
“Is it caused by magic?” Sunset inquired.
“The condition is purely genetic. From what you told to me, I can conclude it wasn't hereditary, but caused by some gene mutation.”
“Can it be cured?”
“There isn’t a known cure.”
The glass shattered.
Of course, being parents, they loved me like they loved flying around, and named me Shady Shine for the shades of grey I possessed and the twinkling in my eyes. Their home, on the opposite side of Cloudsdale from where I live now, was where I spent my early years. Simple things – flying around, brushing my mane, reading – did not present any persisting challenges. As for colour, I learned them through association: lemons were yellow, roses were red, and the sea was blue. Every time they mentioned rainbows, however, some thoughts clashed: I was taught that rainbows represented happiness and joy through their six colours, but these were six shades of grey to me, and I didn’t get far from there. The curiosity blazed inside, but the true knowledge needed to quench it was out of reach.
I was unfamiliar with the outside world, so ponies came to my parents’ house if they wanted to talk with me. Such conversations, though rare, were with so much compassion on my part that they all left with warmed hearts. Sunset thought highly about this behaviour, to the point of telling her neighbours about how I should be a role model. Then school came, and those words of praise were overshadowed, but not by those who were negative about my shyness.
“Shady Shine, don't you want to fly around for a while?”
“I don't feel like it, Wind Whistler.” Breathing sounds leaked from behind the bookshelf. “When nothing I can see is emotional in some way, how can I enjoy myself? I just want to keep on reading stuff here to pass my time.”
“Reading, huh?” A colt appeared out of nowhere, holding a book with his front hooves. Its cover showed a pony tipping some white hat. “Who's this?”
My face scrunched up. Looking left, right and then both ways concurrently, I stammered. “Rainbow... Rainbow Dash?”
“Wrong!” His further words were muffled by a sinister laugh. Walking away, my hoofsteps combined with the beats of my heart to create a harsh dissonance. It was just another episode in my schooling years that was lost in a sea of darkness. Even the starry sky withheld thousands of little points, forming constellations for me to make friends with and to feel happy.
Sunset and Springtime never lost faith though, continuing to help me overcome the myriad depressions and humiliations I experienced right up to the end of school and beyond. That is, until one morning when I found a piece of paper lying on the bedside table, on which was written in black ink:
Shady Shine, we're leaving you to take care of yourself.
My own glass shattered. How would they leave me, a pony with a disability, alone? Picking up the shards, I continued through the remaining words, which occupied half the page.
We would have liked to stay with you forever, but we can’t. We think you're old enough to understand how to behave in this world, how to interact with it. We know you're very kind and curious, even though the latter trait is hampered by the shades of grey you can't stop seeing. Step out of your house, find something to do, and earn your cutie mark! Remember, you carry us in your heart, and in case you forget, this letter will remind you dearly.
With dearest love,
Sunset Bliss and Springtime
This wasn't anything short-term, but something that could very well alter my personality. I re-read the letter about five more times (the actual number slipped out due to overwhelming sadness) just to calm down, regroup, and think about what could lie ahead. Could I do what Fluttershy was known for, tending the critters with my grace and some know-how? I could have asked her to teach me the art... but I decided against it. I would live out a classic pegasus' life, manipulating Equestria's weather, though definitely not with rainbows. Thus, I took my saddlebag, whose buckle could be recognised by its four shades of grey, and slid the letter in. The front door swung open with a push from my left hoof, revealing the world which I had been separated from. For the first time in my life, I stepped into it.
Nopony acknowledged that I had taken this step. Some of them, trotting along the cloud streets or flying over them, gave a cursory glance and then resumed their activities. Others treated me like any other pony, one not to converse with straight away. In my endeavours to communicate with the outside world, I found nothing: no ponies to play with, no animals to be fascinated by, not a single ray of happiness striking my heart. Thus, I was curious: did something exist that could make me come alive? My first thoughts directed me to the spa, where ponies relaxed and sometimes found love. I spread out my wings, and very soon arrived at a tented building.
“Hello there,” I said to the spa operator, reaching for my purse. “Thirty bits for an hour inside.”
“You look odd, but that doesn't matter. What's your name?”
“Shady Shine.”
“OK!” The bits fell into her money box and I entered, leaving my saddlebag in the security of a locker.
The spa's baths were filled with prism fluid, a bright magenta substance that split beams of light into their constituent spectral colours. Therefore, it was the liquid analogue of a dispersive prism, but unlike a dispersive prism its properties were enchanted by unicorns. To enhance the experience of its users, the spa had glass panels on its roof, and according to a regular schedule they added or removed filters to the panels. The changing lights that followed could be interpreted in countless ways, and made conversations between ponies all the more lively.
Then again, I was alone, with no friends. Colour was meaningless, stripped of its hue and saturation, reduced to mere shades of grey. I had nothing to derive from the filtered light but melancholy: the trauma of school, the ridicule my achromatic body brought, the antiquity represented by black and white. Everypony around me was changing, and I tried to follow them – only to meet invisible walls in every direction.
Such was my thinking throughout the spa session, which ended when another spa operator went by and said “Shady Shine, your time's over!” At this instant, I stepped out of the prism fluid and reversed the actions I did when I walked in.
Three successive rings of the bell in Cloudsdale's weather factory, located on the city's east end, signalled noon. It happened that I was about to head for lunch then, and the rings would have reminded me if I forgot. Arriving at the café, where ponies were either eating their food or talking to others, I had to wait ten minutes just to reserve a seat.
As usual, the waiter came up, and I placed my order, a cornflower sandwich with a cup of lemon tea. These were two things that I really liked eating in the past, especially with Sunset, and doing it now warmed my own heart. With my stomach filled, I reached into my saddlebag and pulled the letter out. Judging from my present location, I felt encouraged to re-read it one more time, but only the words which struck a concordance with me:
...Step out of your house, find something to do, and earn your cutie mark! Remember, you carry us in your heart...
Stashing the letter back, I looked outside to try and determine what I could be good at. Snowflakes? Fat chance, it was summer. Thunderclouds? Not yet. Then an old, strange acquaintance came into view.
Rainbows among the clouds.
For other pegasi, they were an endless source of pride and joy; for me, they were an endless source of held-back curiosity. Could touching a rainbow generate ideas, and thus help me find a job along with a cutie mark? Could it possibly – a remote chance, but non-zero nonetheless – cure the affliction which I had suffered under all my life? Reading books all the time in my school library was never enough. I had to actually go through the process.
I picked a rather large rainbow with some clouds below, and flew up to its peak. Among the pegasi already flying around it, a small fraction looked at me with confused expressions. Another group was redirecting some thunderclouds towards Cloudsdale's pillared buildings for the promised heavy afternoon rainfall. Hovering over the six shades of grey, I closed my wings and let gravity take over. This was a fact I found cited in several books and had confirmed with actual observations: pegasi, being able to walk on clouds, were also able to walk on rainbows.
I fell straight down on the cloud underneath.
(Different types of cloud in Equestria are made by mixing various substances into ordinary clouds, themselves made with water vapour in the weather factory's machines. In all instances, this does not affect the ability for pegasi to walk on them: thunderclouds require electrically charged rods, which disperse lightning when pressure is applied, and snowflake clouds clearly use snow. Rainbow clouds have prisms in them, contradicting one author's idea that it used flight school rejects and the “pegasus device”.)
Merry May – I recognised her from school and the suns on her flank – came down to help me up. “Don't worry about the others,” she said, “and think of all the flowers in this world. Aren't they pretty, with their symmetrical shape?”
“I can't really see flowers. Besides, I fell through the rainbow when others could walk on it. Remember?”
“I know what's wrong.” Both of us took to the air. “Don't worry about that, too – enjoy your life as it comes.”
“What about my... er... lack of a cutie mark?”
“It'll come in due course, and you can be happy for that.”
“Thanks.” Touching down, I turned towards my parents’ former home, while Merry went in the opposite direction.
Having barely moved ten metres, a drop of water landed on my head, then another, then a third. Before long, the drops numbered something innumerable and were turning my furry, wool-like mane into a heavy mess. A walk became a trot, and then full-on galloping as I navigated the streets and alleyways for the shortest path back home.
One moment, my head was turning its gears beyond their recommended speed, plotting out a dozen virtual routes and calculating their distances.
The next moment, there was no motion, not even a fraction of a millimetre.
I had slid over the edge of Cloudsdale. Faster and faster I plummeted, the sparks from a lightning bolt arcing all over my body. Flipping over was impossible, as was opening my eyes or figuring out where I would land. My wings – I could still move them, but they were so badly burnt that no air was caught between their feathers. I was falling into a void, a literal and metaphorical void... but deep inside me, some ideas converged, and something, somewhere, came to life.
“She's awake... and colourful.”
Amidst the constant beeps of medical machines, those of electrocardiograms being most prevalent, those were the first words I heard since the lightning strike. Clearly I was awake, but I couldn't understand what “colourful” meant until I looked around. Ponies were sleeping behind curtains, and mine was the only one illuminated. The purple blanket of night lay outside, but I no longer perceived this as another shade of grey. It was actually purple.
For all my life, I had been forced to interpret the colours around me as uninteresting shades of grey, but now I was free to see how they actually looked like. The sheer variety that was now evident overwhelmed me with waves of euphoria and tears, which I felt would sweep me away into the sky and beyond. Then the nurse calmed me down, and I tried to express my feelings.
“I... I want to... want to thank the princesses,” I stammered, “since this is... this is just indescribable. It must have been their magic.”
“That's great,” Nurse Whiteheart remarked, holding a mirror to my face. “Look at yourself.”
After seeing my new colours, I giggled quietly, amazed by the amount of colour I gained, while being kind to those asleep. Whiteheart continued. “Do you want anything now?”
Pausing to think, a light bulb lit up in my head. “Two really small clouds, of the size which I can fiddle with my front hooves, and some prism fluid.”
“That's rather strange, but I'll get them anyway.” With her trotting off to get the items, I started a mental stopwatch – it read a minute when she got back. “Here you go then!”
I put the two clouds in front, then poured prism fluid into them. Straight away, what appeared before me was the elusive combination of colours that had intrigued me all my life – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. As a bonus, sparkles dotted its boundary, something even the best scientists at the weather factory had failed to produce.
“Really?” I gasped. “This... I just made something new?”
“Yes.” Whiteheart scribbled some notes on a medical record.
“Which means my special talent... is adding the sparkles to rainbows.” A flash came and went from my flank, and I examined the new cutie mark.
“You've earned it, mare.”
“Thank you.” My face was severely distorted due to a wide grin.
A few days later, I was discharged. Cantering out of the hospital, the fruits of my discovery were visible in the form of a shining rainbow north of Cloudsdale. The canvas of sky blue was only interrupted by a white sun, shining down on the outdoors foyer I stood in. Before I could move, Wind Whistler flew down to interrupt my motion.
“Hello there!” I greeted. “Nice to see you again, huh?”
“Wait, who are you? You... look so different.” She turned away for a while, her brows raised in confusion. “OK, I know your name, but now it doesn't really fit you, judging from your looks.”
“Certainly. After I regained my colour, I feel so different, like the previous years were that of another pony altogether. This is so... wonderful.”
“What would you call yourself now?”
I laughed, and made her laugh with me, because I was no longer Shady Shine.
I was Rainbowshine.