Brown

Silence.

Emuru was completely silent as she paced back and forth about what to do. She had promised to show me the things such as the trees and buildings, but here she was wandering back and forth.

“Sorry,” she apologized, “I guess doing this is a lot harder than I thought—I probably shouldn’t have declared that on a whim. It’s just that I don't know where to start. Buildings and trees are so mundane because people like me see them every day, but at the same they’re all so unique and different from each other, making them hard to describe.”

She pauses as she thinks for a moment.

“Say, you were able to see the apartment complex I live in right? I didn’t really describe that to you, but you were able to see it anyway.”

I nodded.

“You also didn’t describe to me what a bus was, but I was able to see it anyway as well. It’s like somehow, I already knew what they were from the previous world I lived in, and I just needed someone to point them out to me in order to remind me of their appearance.”

“...Previous world?” she asked.

“Yeah, my previous world. I have a crazy theory that I used to live in another world before I entered this one. How else would I be able to name things like the colors blue, red, and yellow if I only ever lived in a black and white world? And like for this example, how would I know what a bus and an apartment complex looks like if I never saw one before?”

“Hmm… that certainly is a crazy theory, but I suppose with what you see and experienced, that would be the only logical explanation for everything. But still, have you considered that maybe you didn’t come from another world?”

“What do you mean? You sound like you have another explanation for everything.”

“Well… I was thinking that maybe instead of coming from another world, this ‘other world’ you’re thinking of, is actually this world, and the reason why you can’t see a lot of things is because somehow you forgot about all of it?”

I paused. Somehow, I had never even considered that idea. It did seem more plausible than being magically transported into this world though, but it also raises the question of why I forgot everything.

I thought back to the dream I had last night.

Does it have something to do with that blob? I wondered, but why would I want to forget everything? If anything I want to know more. I want to know why that blob was saying mean things to me, and what in the world it was talking about. I also want to know why I’m able to hear what it’s saying despite not being able to hear any other blob other than Emuru.

This new theory she proposed made no sense the more I thought about it. It left me with even more questions without answers, and made it seem like being transported from another world was the more plausible explanation.

After all, why would I willingly forget things if I had this many questions about the world that would be answered if I just remembered things instead? And why would I purposely want to make myself unable to see things like colors, buildings, and trees? There’s no way I would subject myself to only living in an endless black and white landscape right?

I couldn’t fathom why I would make such a decision if I had one.

Curious, I decided to ask her, “why do you think that?”

For a moment, she averts her gaze and lets out a sigh, but she relents.

“A few years ago, I used to have a friend who was just like you… well maybe not so much like you now that I’m learning more about how you see the world, but similar to you, she was unable to see people. The only exception was me.”

Emuru pauses and looks me in the eyes.

“When we first met, she was surprised to see me. She explained to me that she had shut people out of her vision a long time ago, because she had been bullied by people back in elementary school. Eventually, I helped her be able to see people again, but once we got to high school, we parted ways because we wanted to go to different ones… When I first saw that you were confused that there were other people around us, you kind of reminded me of her. I figured that you guys were probably in the same boat except… seeing as how you’re unable to see a lot more things other than just people, I guess whatever caused you to end up like this must’ve been much worse.”

Much worse? I wondered.

“Sorry… I didn’t want to bring it up so directly, because I was worried it might trigger something…”

“It’s okay,” I said, “if it was something bad, I don’t remember it anymore anyway.”

The expression on her face was still sad, and I noticed that she had become blue.

“But let’s not worry about that for now,” I suggested, “you said you were going to show me what the trees and buildings were right?”

She nodded, and looked around to the right before pointing at something.

“That there is a tree,” she said, “if you can imagine what a stick looks like, imagine a really big one with hundreds of tiny fluffy green things sprouting out from it and bunched around at the top. Each tree has a different shape and size and even color to them outside of just green.”

I looked to where she was pointing and used her words and descriptions to conjure something up, but after a few moments of just staring, nothing appeared.

“Sorry,” I said, “it’s just… I think I’m having trouble imagining colors on objects instead of people.”

“Hmm…” she murmured, “you said that you see colors based on the emotions that people feel right?”

“I think so, yeah. The only exception being if I don’t know what the emotion is firsthand. Then it becomes a little harder to see the color.”

“Aha! Then here’s an idea. For you, the color green is associated with jealousy and longing right?”

I nodded.

“Then imagine that the leaves of the tree are jealous—jealous at… being unable to land on the ground! And then the trunk of the tree and its branches—the things that look like the giant version of sticks—they’re brown, but you don’t know what that is yet do you?”

“No, but I’m sure I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Well brown is what you get when you mix green and red together… so imagine that the branches and the trunk of the tree are also jealous that the leaves get to be away from the ground, and angry that they have to carry the leaves who are jealous that they can’t be on the ground.”

Jealous and angry… red and green…

I closed my eyes, imagining the two emotions swirling and mixing together to come up with a rich, dark, muddied color—the color of brown. Despite having never seen it in this world before, I was able to not only recreate its properties, but also recall its appearance with the additional help of my memories.

Opening my eyes again, this time I looked back to where she was pointing, and instead of black lines sprouting out of thin air and drawing something, brown and green lines begin to appear and start to not only sketch, but also color something that seemed both new and familiar—a tree, short but bountiful in leaves.

“A tree…” I breathed out upon seeing it, “and it’s fully colored too…”

Suddenly, one by one, more and more trees begin to sprout around my vision as if being drawn into the world with a marker, each one a different shape and size with varying amounts of leaves.

They were slender, but sturdy, and made me feel calm upon seeing it.

They were beautiful.

“And now for the buildings and roads,” Emuru continued, seeing my eyes light up as I looked around the place, “there’s one next to us right now actually, and these should be a little easier for you to see, because you’ve seen one before. You remember seeing my apartment complex right?”

I nodded.

“That’s also a building,” she explained, “and luckily for you, most of them are actually either white, gray, or black so it’s okay if you imagine them as that, but if you want to see them as other colors, maybe try thinking of them as having different emotions too.”

Giant boxes with different emotions, I thought as I closed my eyes, one building is angry at another, who’s sad because another building is happy. Another building is filled with sorrow and frustration because another is jealous that another building gets to be brown…

Upon opening my eyes, I was overwhelmed with a powerful surge of stimulation as giant box-shaped things began appearing all around me, each one a different shape and size, and each one colored differently from the last.

“And now,” Emuru says, pointing to the long and weirdly shaped black, white, and gray pathways that began to sprout out from underneath me and intertwine between the buildings and trees, “you no longer need to rely on your ‘movement rules’.”