House: Slytherin
Category: Drabble
Prompts: [Speech] "Why are your hands blue?"
Word count: 468 (Excluding Author's Note, but including entire Entry and Title)
Warning: This is an AU (Alternate Universe) piece. Art!Au.
Characters: Luna Lovegood; Theodore Nott
Summary: The world was supposed to be just yellow and orange, but it would appear that there was so much more to it than just painting a canvas to suit one's imagination. It was too late for me to realize it, when happiness and sadness were made of the same thing.
Author's Note: This is my 2nd/3rd try at a first-person narrative, and I have to say, I need to do this more often. :) Thanks Kai-Chan and Queen for Beta'ing! You two ROCK!
As always, enjoy
-Carolare Scarletus
Our Blue Skies
Happiness was yellow, or that's what everyone told me. When I look out from my dormitory window, I can see that the world is doused with the impenetrable veil of happiness. There are specks of orange and red, and the slightest intimation of pink. All of these colors coincide with one another, painting a masterpiece of the world that I have come to know. Hence, why I've tried to replicate it, though he's not the only one who'd noticed.
"These are gorgeous strokes," Theodore murmured, leaning in. I watched as his hand made some minuscule motion in front of my canvas. "But, I don't think you're conveying the message correctly. Where are the swirls?"
"Why does the world have to be filled with swirls?" I asked definitively. For months I've been telling him that the world was just a wide ocean of magnificent colors. Anything else was insignificant, including his meaningless observations of shapes.
Theo only looked at me. "You haven't learned anything at all, have you?"
"I have," I told him. "I just decided it wasn't worth putting it into practice. All I see is just colors. Nothing else."
Huffing, I looked back at my canvas, the brilliant contrasts of green and oranges. I was painting my very own starry night, finding the inspiration in the midst of all this pandemonium. When I turned back, Theo was doused in a sea of gold and orange. Happy colors, I surmised bitterly. They were colors I couldn't obtain, or dare include my own work.
"Why are your hands blue?" He asked suddenly, taking a cautious step toward me. "Luna, are you alright?"
"Isn't this what you told me to paint?" I asked him sadly.
"No, I told you to paint what you saw and not what you felt. This is all part of your therapy, remember?"
I looked down at my hands, gripping my paintbrush in a near death grip. He'd been right; my hands were blue. In fact, my entire smock was covered in the sad color. But, I didn't know why. I was too busy trying to paint something beautiful, but it hadn't been from my heart. I was too busy to notice anything else, especially something within my own little world. I'd gone against his instructions and I was paying dearly for them.
Sometimes, painting the world in shades of yellow and red wasn't enough. Perhaps, it was just another way of hiding oneself to the true problem at hand, and that was the world was filled with just as much blue as it was all the other colors, and blue was just one of those colors that we couldn't escape. The ones we found in ourselves ultimately reflected how we saw the world.
In my case, all I saw was sadness.
~FIN~