The colorless Shoyru
Our story begins with a small, white Shoyru named Airi, though she was no ordinary Shoyru mind you. She had quite a bit of problems going on in her life, but don't we all? Let's just say hers are a little, well different.
Airi was born like any Shoyru, in the 'create a pet' center, though she was not born like the others with red, green, blue, or yellow colorings. Airi was white, a bright white, not only that but she was the runt of the litter and was quite a bit smaller than her siblings. Then one day a human Neopian, just starting her Neopian life took Airi home with her.
Her owner had been a happy, spunky girl with long red hair and deep blue eyes, just like Airi's eyes. Her name was Alice, and for a time they were happy together, they built a house, went shopping, and played games. Then as time passed Alice started showing up less and less, and eventually she just stopped logging on all together.
Airi spent many days inside of her home weeping to herself, wrapped in a depression over being abandoned. She waited several months with hope that Alice would one day log on again and then the happy times would be back, but she never came.
As time passed Airi realized that it was time to move on, and slowly she got over Alice. She realized that she had some good things on her side, like she was a 'owned' Neopet and not a wild one so she could do daily things and earn points with using Alice's username.
Airi decided that one day she would paint herself faerie, since that was her favorite color out of all the paint brushes. She really enjoyed hanging around the Rainbow Pool and watching the other pets get painted by their owners or siblings.
So after about a year of saving her points, and only eating jelly and omelets, she finally had enough neopoints to buy a faerie paintbrush! She was so excited! She quickly gathered her points and flew over to the trading post to find a faerie paint brush. After a bit of haggling with the Neopian over the brush, she obtained the paint brush she wanted and tightly hugged it to her chest as she flew to the Rainbow Pool.
Airi slowly stepped into the warm, sparkly water and looked around at the other pets being painted, soon she would be like them, soon she would be pretty like them. She dipped the faerie paint brush into the water, brought it out again and put it to her belly. She stroked it upward and saw that a streak of lavender color on her stomach. She started to paint her body all over with the brush and soon her whole body was lavender. She asked a fire Acara to help her with her wings and smiled brightly when they grew long and split into two sets in wings on each side. She flapped them a few times to help speed up the drying process and watched the blue coloring sparkle in the sunlight.
She hummed as she walked over and dropped the now normal paint brush in to the brush bin, so that when the faeries came at night they would take all the used paint brushes and restore them back to magical working power to be sold once again.
Airi spent the day showing off her new color to the pets around Neopian Central, flying, flipping, and speeding through the air with her new wings. After a long day of celebrating she settled down and went home. She heated up a left over omelet and sat down on her couch to watch some neovision.
Later that night, after eating and resting she decided to take a bath to wash off any excess paint that had not dried or was still blotched on. She slowly stepped into the hot water and sighed as she sunk in. She picked up her sponge and some soap and began to clean herself only to find the water turning slightly purple. Well the excess paint was supposed to come off right? She continued to, cautiously now, clean herself until she started to see pieces of lavender paint floating around in the water. She looked down at her foot that she had been scrubbing and screamed. Her foot was white, just as it was a few hours ago! She looked at the rest of her body and her new paint was slipping off, just melting away like nothing.
Did she do something wrong?! Were you supposed to wait a day before taking a bath? No, she's never heard of that before. The hot water? No, it can't be that either. She was so sure that her paint had all pretty much dried, but now…now what was going on?!
She continued to scrub her body trying to see if at least some of the coloring was staying on, which it wasn't, then she remembered her wings.
She turned to look over her shoulder to see that her wings were back to the plain white coloring and shape that they were before.
That night she went to bed weeping over her lost neopoints and coloring. Maybe the Neopian had tricked her and sold her a bad paint brush, she wasn't sure, though she was sure that every inch of her body was white again. That bright, haunting white.
She awoke the next morning sluggishly and made breakfast. She finally got around and out about noon to go hunt down the Neopian that had sold her the faulty paint brush. She found him where she expected, back at the trading post trying to sell off some goods.
Airi landed a few feet away from the stand, so to not disturb the goods on the tables of the other traders. She walked up to the stand of the fraud Neopian and pointed at him, "You sold me a bad paint brush yesterday! I want my neopoints back!"
He looked at her a moment, "A bad paint brush? Now how could I do that? I get all of my goods through perfectly fine shop keeps. There is nothing wrong with a single one of them. A bad paint brush really? Who has ever heard of such a thing?"
Airi glared at him, "Yes a bad paint brush! I'm not sure who you get your goods from, but they are faulty!" she yelled. Many of the Neopians and traders turned to look at them.
"Hey, hey! Keep your voice down! Just because you are upset, doesn't mean you need to ruin my whole business. Plus I'm not stupid. After you bought my brush, you didn't even paint yourself and are back here trying to get a refund on something you haven't even used yet", he said.
"I did to use it! But-"
He cut her off by saying, "Well then you went out and got a white paint brush and painted your self back."
"No I did not. I used the brush and then took a bath and the bath water took all of the faerie paint off of me! It had to be your paint brush!" she said, now furious with the trader.
The trader sighed and waved her off, "That is ridiculous, ask anyone. Once you paint yourself it sticks to you until you paint your self again, or you get zapped. Simple as that, you my dear are speaking complete gibberish."
Many of the Neopians at the trading post were now listening to the conversation. Some were whispering, others were laughing at the small, angry Shoyru who was now almost pink with anger.
"I am not speaking gibberish. It is true, I'll prove it to you. As soon as I can afford another paint brush I'll come back and show you!" she growled at him and then spread her wings and took off, flying away from the laughing trading post.
She still had a few neopoints left over and decided to save a bit more and buy a Christmas paint brush. Surely, if the paint disappeared again, then maybe the clothes wouldn't. Then in the next few weeks she had enough points, went out and purchased a Christmas paint brush, then went to the trading post to find the trader.
She found him and pulled him to the Rainbow Pool. After showing him, and a crowd of other Neopians that had been there that day and had recognized her, that she could paint herself, she stepped out of the Rainbow Pool water.
"Could someone go get a bucket of regular water?" she asked. A random Neopian in the crowd said that they would and ran off with their lupe and brought back three buckets of water.
"Good, thank you. Now pour them on me, and I'll prove to you that it will take the paint off of me." she instructed. The Neopian complied and began to pour the water on her. The crowd gasped as the water ran down her belly and arms taking the green paint with it, along with the clothing that Christmas Shoyrus had. Soon enough she was back to her plain, white self again.
Airi grinned at the trader, "See? I wasn't speaking gibberish. I was telling the truth!"
The trader smirked at her then gave a little snort of smug laughter, "I that. I do have to say that it is weird and impressive. But your initial argument was that the paint brush I sold you was faulty. You didn't buy this paint brush from me little Shoryu, I'm sorry to say that the paint brushes aren't faulty, you are."
With that being said he walked off, back towards the direction of the trading posts. He couldn't leave his post for to long, things would be stolen.
Airi sunk to the ground as the traders words sunk in. 'you are...faulty...not the brushes…you…YOU...'
The crowd disperse leavening the small Shoyru to sit and think of what was happening. The rumors and whispers of the colorless Shoyru would spread around for the next few months. Neopians would hunt down Airi and give her neopoints and sometime paint brushes just to see if she would try it. She never would.
Soon the excitement died down. Airi sat around staring at all of the other pets running around Neopia, painted and happy. Soon it had been almost six months since the whole 'colorless Shoyru' thing. Airi went into the safety deposit box and looked at all of the paint brushes that she had gathered from other Neopians. Maybe, just maybe this time they would work. She grabbed a nice silver brush up from one of the shelves and made her way towards the Rainbow Pool. Sure enough later that night the paint washed off to reveal her bright white coloring. In a frenzy of anger, sadness, and hope she went back to the Rainbow Pool every day with a new brush, begging each one to work and not wash off. Though it was all in vain, never did one color ever stay put, or any of the clothing that came with the brush. She had successfully gone through every paint brush there was.
Once she thought that she had it figured out, that she would buy a transmogrification potion and turn herself mutant. She didn't really care that it wasn't the most pretty of colors, but she was so sick of seeing nothing but white.
She grabbed the potion from the shop keep as soon as she had paid for it and chugged it right there. She felt her body changing, morphing, mutating. She looked down after finishing the potion and say the blue body and her clawed hands. She hummed with happiness that it had worked, now to see if it would wash off. She thanked the shop keep, who looked sick after watching the mutating, and hopped out of the shop. She threw the empty bottle in to a near by trash can and flew home.
She ran the bath as usual, and taking a deep breath she stepped in. Later she stepped out weeping, the color had not stayed. Her head was back to normal size, her hands clawless. At this time Airi completely gave up hope of ever being painted permanently.
Some months later she was sitting in faerie land watching all of the faeries, and faerie pets zoom around the clouds in happiness. Airi herself sat on a cloud next to the Wheel of Excitement. She sighed as she watched with sad eyes.
"Hello little one." A voice next to her said.
"Ah!" Airi yelped, falling off of her cloud in the process. She looked up to the Fountain Faerie looking down at her.
"Oh! I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to scare you. I was just watching you from my pond over there," she pointed to her rainbow pond which was supported by clouds, "and it looked like you really like faerie pets. I was wondering if you would like to be one? I can paint you if you'd like that."
Airi just sighed and turned away, "No thanks it doesn't matter anyways. You can paint me whatever color you like, but at the end of the day it's all in vain."
The faerie gave her an odd look and floated around to face Airi again, "What do you mean?"
"I mean that if you paint me it doesn't stay. I've painted myself hundreds of times, and yet at the end of everyday when I take a bath the paint comes off and I'm back to being a regular white shoyru again", Airi sighed.
The faerie waited for a moment as if for waiting for the shoyru to say 'surprise!' or something like that, but after nothing else came she said, "Well that's odd. I've never heard of such a thing."
"Yea, neither have I nor the rest of Neopia."
"You know what? Maybe if I try and paint you it'll be different. Since my magic is different than paint brushes it might just work, and just to prove it to you I'll paint you for free just this once", said the faerie and floated off towards her pool, motioning for Airi to follow.
Airi sighed but none the less she picked herself up with her wings and hovered over to the pond.
Once there she landed in the shimmering rainbow water and waited for the Fountain Faerie to do her thing.
"There, now hold still," the Fountain Faerie said as she picked up some lavender water in her hands and began to pour it over Airi. After she finished she floated down to Airi's eye level and said, "See now dear? It worked."
"Yes it worked for now, but wait for me to dry, and then pour regular water on me and you'll see my dilemma."
"I don't see how it could wash off, but oh well", she said as she motioned to a passing air faerie, "Oh Psellia, could you come over here for a moment please?"
"Yes?" Psellia asked as she hovered over.
"Could you blow some wind at this shoyru? I just painted her and she wants to show me something, but she has to be dry first", said the Fountain faerie.
"Sure I can", said Psellia as she moved backwards. She pulled her hands back behind her while chanting a little spell then pushed her hands forward and with them a strong gust of wind.
After a few of these gusts Airi was completely dry. "Okay now, watch", Airi said as she bent down and took up some of the regular water in her hands and poured it over her body. Just as all the times before, the water flowed down taking the color with it.
The Fountain Faerie and Psellia gasped. "What in Neopia happened?" asked Psellia.
"It washed off", said Airi, "It always does. I don't know what's wrong, I don't know how it happens, but it just does."
"B-but there's no way…it shouldn't have come off like that", the Fountain Faerie said in a stupor. She turned to look at Psellia, "We should alert Fyora about this."
Psellia nodded the looked at Airi, "Please come with us to the Hidden Tower, we really should show our queen this."
Airi nodded, might as well go along. She had always wondered where the Hidden Tower was anyway. She spread her wings and took off as the other two led the way. They secretly made their way into what looked like a cloud, but on the inside the Hidden Tower appeared.
Airi gasped as she saw it. It had been here this whole time? Wow, it was kind of obvious once she thought about it. She was about to ask the faeries if Jelly World really did exist if the Hidden Tower did, but she didn't get the chance as they landed inside the tower right in front of Fyora.
"Hello you two," Fyora said as she looked at the faeries then down at Airi, "Oh so you have a little friend with you. Didn't I tell you that you're not supposed to bring pets here even if they beg you? They're supposed to find it on their own."
"Yes my queen, we know, but there is something special about this shoyru", the Fountain Faerie said while giving a slight bow of respect. Psellia and Airi did the same.
"Special? In what way?" Fyroa asked
"We'll show you," said Psellia and grabbed a darigan paint brush from near by. She began to paint Airi with no hesitation.
The Fountain Faerie had flown back out to go fetch some regular water from her pond. When she arrived back Airi was fully painted and dried.
"Ok now my queen, watch this." She said and dumped the water over Airi.
Queen Fyora, being slightly agitated by the free use of a paint brush and water getting all over her floor, watched as the coloring slid right off of the shoyru.
"What in Neopia?" she asked in amazement.
"Exactly!" said Psellia.
Airi just looked at the floor, this was really getting old. Nothing could paint her, no one could help her, let her just go home.
"Well this is certainly different", commented Fyora, "How long has this gone on?"
Airi looked up from the floor at her, "Forever I guess. Ever since I first painted myself faerie and long time ago."
"Hmm," Fyora hummed for a second, "Let me go look through my painting spell books and see if it says anything at all about this." She gave a slight nod to them, told the faeries to watch the tower then walked off through a near by door.
After several minutes passing she re-entered with three different books. They hung a 'closed' sign on the outside of the tower and began their work. It took several hours of spells, painting, and washing to go through them all. At the end of it, Airi was still not paintable.
"I can't possible see what's wrong here. After all of my spells, all of those paint brushes…and all of that water", Fyora said giving her soaked floor a sad look, "You still can't stay painted."
Airi sighed and nodded. She set down on the soaked floor, not minding the cold water, "It's fine. I don't mind not being painted. Well I do wish that I could get rid of this white coloring, but I can't and I guess I'll have to get used to it…"
Fyora though for a moment, "You know what? I have something that might help, but not completely cure you. Wait here."
Airi watched her go out of the door again and wondered why they don't just give up?
Fyora quickly entered again with a paint brush, but not an ordinary paint brush. It was the same size and shape as any other brush, but the paint on the tip of the brush kept changing. Darigan, rainbow, gold, zombie, royal, faerie, and many other paint colors flashed by on the paint brush's tip.
"What's that?" Airi asked staring at the brush, "I've never seen that brush before."
"No one has, I just made it. It's an all in one brush. It may not paint you permanently, but it will save you many neopoints. Unfortunately I don't know how to rid you of the white coloring now, but I shall do research and maybe one day we'll succeed. As for now take this brush as a present from me. Every morning when you wake up you can paint yourself with it, no rainbow water needed. Just think of the color you want and start painting."
Airi stared at the paint brush in awe as Fyora continued to talk.
"Every night it will wash off, but then you can make yourself a new color in the morning. Every morning until we can think of how to break whatever kind of spell you're under that keeps you white", Fyora smiled and handed Airi the brush.
Airi stared at the brush then hugged it close, she smiled gleefully, thanked the faeries, promised Fyora to come and see her at least once a week, then flew out of the window still clutching the wonderful new paint brush to her chest.
Maybe she couldn't get rid of the white, maybe she'd stay white forever, but she could at least put an illusion over for the time being. As she flew towards the setting sun, towards home, she couldn't help but think of the past. Think of Alice, think of the trader, think of everything, but more than anything she thought of how much better things were beginning to look after so much bad. Maybe, just maybe there was still a little glimmer of hope in her little Shoyru body.