The Colour of the Sky
"A little further, Sloth."
It was…very big here.
"Yeah, we're outside now!"
Oh, he said that out loud? Oh well.
"Yep, try 'n' keep up, but don't run!"
His siblings called from up ahead on the hill, looking even smaller than normal.
"We would never catch you," Lust said, laughing.
Greed had laughed, too, earlier. Sloth remembered breaking through a doorway he couldn't fit, scooping out the bricks with his hands. If he didn't, they'd just keep asking, such a bother. Better get used to that, little brother. Greed said then, flashing sharp teeth like his, frowning too, not that Sloth could see much of them all down there.
One of his wrist chains trailed behind as he walked, collecting grass, the other swaying in Envy's hand. Sloth remembered the smell of smoke fading, the hard floor turning soft and wet the further they all dragged him.
"WHY THESE, STILL?" He said. Though, if he asked they might stick him back to the floor.
"They're so you don't float off." Envy threw the chain up, catching it again with his fingers all green. Maybe the grass was staining him.
"REALLY?" They didn't feel all that heavy.
"Yeah! Before I was born they hadn't invented gravity yet, so ya had to keep hold of somethin' else you floated away! The alchemist died a while back, so it could wear off any day now!"
"OH." Floating away sounded like a pain, but so was walking.
Lust was knelt down once Sloth reached the top, brushing over some cloth in the grass with Greed, a basket in the middle, while Pride took out some strange tube and wandered off. The grass tickled around Sloth's ankles, all shiny in the sunlight, everything blue and green and open here, so strange.
"Don't believe me? Greed'll back me up!"
Sloth watched Greed open his mouth three times, and close it again.
"Ehh, can't say, I wasn't there," he said finally, like it took a lot of work. "Ask Lust."
"Enough," Pride hissed, "stop filling his head with nonsense," and his shadow knocked the chain out of Envy's hand. "Gravity was discovered, not invented!"
"Well, my version sounds better."
"Hush. He is not your burden."
"You get him forever; I gotta leave an impression!"
"You do enough of that already, lil' bro."
"Wow, whose side are you on anyway?" Envy's fingers flashed while he rubbed them, still grumbling as he turned away.
Pride went back to holding the tube in front of his face. What was inside, Sloth wondered, the gold shining as he tilted it. His brother saw him watching, his little body not moving, but an eye lifting in the darkness around him.
"Hm?"
"WHAT AM I- SUPPOSED TO DO?" Sloth asked.
"Nothing. Here, peer through the lens and close one- never mind. Look." Pride stretched taller than Sloth had ever seen, holding the tube up for him. He reached for it,
"Be careful," and Lust gasped when he held it between his two fingers.
"Gently. You must learn to control both this, and your speed." There was a black stripe all along it now, and when Sloth squeezed, something pricked his fingers. It didn't look spiky, though.
Sloth held the tube over his eye, everything so much closer through it. Lust and the others waved, almost next to him. He waved with his spare hand, turned back to the open sky, the cool wind pushing at his hair, while the something pulled him away if he looked near the sunlight. How could there be so much out here, compared to back home? Sloth looked down instead, at home all grey and smoky, and down more to the grass, until he saw a dark blue spot in the green, the sky in the wrong place.
"HUH?" What was that? He lowered the tube, searching with his own eye. Brother padded beside him, taking and folding the tube smaller, and he heard the others nearby, too.
Sloth sat, lay down on his belly; it was so, so low down. A green line, with little blue spots on one side.
"That is a bluebell, Sloth." Pride said, sitting too. That made sense. It was very blue, way more than the sky, curled up, drooping like him. It must have had lots of gravity, too.
Sloth lifted his hand, folded it behind the thing without touching. Don't float away.
"PRETTY…" he yawned.
"It is." Lust agreed. Something flopped over his back, damp but warm. Was it the blanket? Greed and Envy smoothed it out until it covered him, leaning against him.
Sloth smiled. The chains on his wrists were quiet in the grass, and with his siblings huddled around him, where they could see the bluebell, too, he drifted to sleep.
"Keep digging, Sloth."
Now there was only Pride's voice, always the same, always the same things. The smell of dirt. Digging, digging. Have to dig. The floor was brown, the sky was brown, red when he sparked, black when the lights went out, black now, with Pride on the walls, white with his flat teeth snapping, not like his. Was there anything, or anyone else, before that?
Sloth remembered…something. Something small and blue. Was any of that real? He should ask, but talking was such a bother, too.
Eventually, he did.
"THAT BLUE FLOWER, THE OTHERS. OUTSIDE. DID…THAT HAPPEN?"
Pride's scoff echoed all along the tunnel, his eyes disappearing one by one. Sloth only dug, expecting only claws or teeth for an answer.
Something landed on the back of his hand, tiny, blue. Oh.
"Of course it happened. See?" The eyes glittered again from the ceiling.
He pinched the flower gently between two fingers, squinting in the candlelight, nothing like sunlight. But this close, it smelled like outside. It was the breeze, his siblings, the blanket, and all droopy like him. Exactly the same as before. He was the same, too.
Sloth held the bluebell close and dug one handed, until the petals matched the sky again.
