Karma didn't believe in children fairytales. She'd overheard some, during those cold nights spent alone at the library. The soft voice of a parent reading a story about dragons and princesses, about gleaming swords that shone in the bright moonlit night and continued to glow with reflected light until sheathed.

But they weren't to her fancy. The plumes of smoke exhaled from the dragon's nostrils, the great looming kingdoms run by powerful kings. They just didn't seem right to her.

She listened anyway, leaning against the wall separating the nonfiction section from the toddlers and children's reading corner. Her ear pressed to the cold wall, she yearned to hear the voice of another person.

(It was a small comfort in the silent place of looming bookshelves twice her size.)

And she didn't like mythology. Greek, Roman, Norse. They were interesting tales of wit and courage and Karma found she quite liked the subject. But reading it was a different task- the inked tales just weren't the type of book she liked.

Karma appreciated a challenge, and she felt that's what a book was supposed to be. Not a bunch of random spilled facts jotted down on a piece of paper. Connected stories with all their facts. Complexity done in the right way.

Those tales offereed her nothing of the sort.

(And yet she still read them quietly to herself in the dusty corner of her huge hateful house.)

But there she was, experiencing a clichè found only in myths and fairytales.

Her life was 'flashing right before her eyes'.

And yet, as if her memories rejected the notion of dying with clichèd thoughts, she began to feel a torrent of emotions accompanied by colors that screamed out at her. Neons of the brightest greens, glaring whites and firey crimson that flickered to life behind closed eyelids.

White, the color of purity. But in Karma's mind, a quiet color as well. Solitude found on snowy mountain peaks that chilled to the bone. Shaking winter snow out of the branches of the leaf-less trees by leaning against the cold bark.

(Her life began with an unnatural coldness, but it was sadly enough one of her happiest times. She didn't remember it, after all.)

Baby blue, next. As if color began to seep into her thoughts, her imagination starting up with full intent on finishing. But I think would be it's own color for now, and that was all it needed to be at the moment. Not show-stealing, not a bright and obvious color. Quiet joy.

(Imagination mixed with her cold beginning.)

A light sea green. More colors joined, but somehow the white was still obvious. Obvious that it could not be taken away by another color, could not be washed away by lightheartedness. Because solitude was still a part of her life.

(Like plunging into an icy lake, she felt the couldn't escape the feeling that even with her initial coldness, ice was going to take her. Encase her in a shell of frost with swirls and dots marring the surface of the thin winter beauty.)

A dark red, as if it the fiery color had burned away the white, the color was deep and devoid of all light.

(Rage filling the loneliness. But it had taken away the few joys in her life in exchange for filling the space of white.)

A quiet lilac. The time when blue had come once again into her life in the of one Shiota Nagisa. But the red was still there, burning. But the fire and quietened just a bit- fading into a lighter red that still announced itself but wasn't as bright.

(So loneliness came over the colors once more. Ice creeping back on her, filling her with a cold feeling that tore at her skin.)

And black.

(Too cold.)