Out on the horizon lay snow-topped mountains, where the alpenglow glowed as the red sun rose, their peaks like blooming flowers to behold. A forest of sessile oaks had taken off its cloak; the crisp autumn leaves had been replaced with a blanket of fresh snow.
Rays of light pierced through the half-closed curtains, casting a golden hue onto the windowsill. Beep... beep... beep. The alarm clock chimed. 7:30AM.
She stirred, her eyelids fluttering as the shaft of light stung her eyes. Pushing the warm blanket aside and sitting up for a moment's stretch, she let out a deep sigh of relief. It had been a long, restless night; the cold winter had been gnawing at her pale skin. She turned off the alarm clock. A peaceful silence filled the room—as if the air itself stood still.
Leaving the cozy embrace of her bed like a raindrop parting from a cloud, she walked to the window and pulled the silk curtains apart. Through her eyes, the world outside the window was monochromatic—a serene composition in shades of white, gray, and charcoal. It was like a sketch on a white canvas. The same view as always, yet different in little ways.
She hobbled down the wooden steps, each one lazier than the last. She walked into the bathroom and switched on the light, staring at her monochromatic reflection in the mirror above the sink for a full minute. Then, she picked up a cup and her toothbrush, squeezed toothpaste onto the bristles, and began to brush her teeth before moving on with her usual quick shower. Drying herself off, she finally looked up at the ticking clock. Tck... Tck... Tck. 7:43AM.
After placing the towel aside, she entered the lone kitchen, illuminated by the light from the windows. Breakfast was laid out, accompanied by a note:
Good morning,
I made you your favorite—honey toast.
Do eat it on the way to school.
Mom
P.S. Don't forget your scarf!
Casually grabbing the piece of toast from the plate, she left through the front door and walked down the sidewalk. School was just ten minutes down the block. She still had a lot of time to spare.
Around the corner, a gust of wind sent a spray of fresh snow glittering like dusted diamonds from a pine bough. It also snatched a sheet of paper from the hands of a young boy struggling with an overstuffed portfolio. A flurry of charcoal sketches and watercolor studies—a vibrant, chaotic bloom of color and lines—scattered across the pristine snow like a firework show. 7:49AM.
"Oh, biscuits!" he yelped, more exasperated than angry.
Without thinking, she stepped off her path, catching a page as it pirouetted past her face. It was a study of the very mountains she saw every morning, but they were drenched in impossible, glorious color—violet shadows and a sunrise of fiery orange.
"Here," she said, her voice softer than she'd used all morning.
He looked up, his face a canvas of freckles and relief. "Thank you! You have no idea how much this helps." He gathered the pages, and she helped, her hands sorting deep blue seascapes beside bold, abstract red shapes. For a few frames, the world was no longer displayed on an analog television; it was a riotous gallery of grand palettes. 7:55AM.
"The sun is surprisingly bright today," he continued, falling into step beside her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "It makes everything look... different, don't you think?"
She looked from his paint-stained fingers back to the world, and the monochrome film over her vision had shattered. The sky wasn't just blue—it was a searing, crystalline cerulean. The sun was a bold vermilion disc, setting the snowy canvas ablaze, and its light was no longer a pale hue but a liquid gold that dripped from every branch and danced in the glittering snow. The world wasn't just different; it was alive. Even if just for a moment.
The boy's gratitude was met with a nod, his scattered pages now a gathered stack in his arms. The shared smile was offered, and then the walk was resumed. But the silence that followed was different—it was a presence, a third entity walking between them.
"Yes," she said, and a real, small smile touched her lips. "Different."
She still had a lot of time to spare. But now, for the first time, that felt like a gift. 8:00AM.
A breeze whispered past, lifting a few stray strands of hair across her face. With it, the memory of color was dragged across her vision—a phantom smear of vermillion and azure. Her breath caught. Fingers, which had been curled into fists at her sides, were slowly unclenched. The decision was not so much made as it was unearthed: the boy beside her was no longer just a person, but a path. And that path would be followed.
A whisper was exhaled into the cold air. "It is decided."
"I just realized." The voice, apologetic and warm, fractured the silence. A flinch was suppressed. The world of color was extinguished, the grey filter seamlessly re-applied. His face was turned toward hers, its canvas of freckles now arranged into a look of mild embarrassment. "A name was never given. I'm Charles."
Her own name was retrieved from a great distance. "Charlotte."
"Charlotte." The name was tested, given shape by his voice. A nod was exchanged. The air was now stretched thin with the unsaid.
But the conversation could not be allowed to end. The thread, so newly discovered, could not be dropped. He was the sole tether to a world that had, for a moment, been real.
Her gaze was lifted to the distant, monochrome peaks. "The mountains," the words were heard, as if spoken by someone else. "In your painting... they were made to look... alive." 8:03AM.
His head tilted a little, a study of her face being conducted as if for the first time. A slow smile was allowed to touch his lips.
"Alive," the word was repeated, tasted. A nod was given. "Yes." His gaze was held on hers, and in that moment, the grey at the edges of her vision was thinned, like a veil being pulled taut. "It's funny, isn't it? How most of the world is content to see things as… still."
A pause was left to hang in the frozen air.
His eyes finally released hers, a slight shrug offered to the morning. "Not you, though."
His observation was met with a silence that was filled with the realisation of her own truth. To her, the world is not alive. It is greyscaled.
A hundred shades of white were registered.
Fifty shades of grey were catalogued.
Twenty-five shades of black were endured.
This correction is not spoken. It is simply held, a wall of post-it notes kept against the vibrant, impossible world he seems to inhabit. The walk continued down the snowy pavement.
"Yeah," the word muttered, a quiet concession into the cold air—like a dove being freed from a cage it had once gilded. It was not an agreement with his world, but an acknowledgement of the chasm between them, a chasm she had spent a lifetime beautifully papering over. 8:06AM.
The silence resumed. The pavement was traversed. The school gates were now visible in the distance.
They strolled up to the grandiose gate. Beyond it, a crowd of academy students stood motionless around the central fountain, their chatter drowned out by the roar of water. Their faces were upturned, speckled with a fine mist as plumes of water arced and crossed in the sun, weaving a shimmering, ephemeral cage before collapsing back with a thunderous splash.
Charlotte, having taken no more than a dismissive glance at the fountain, turned towards the cold marble of the noticeboard. Her ashen fingers glided past the all-too-familiar sights—a blur of black ink on white paper, another part of her mundane mornings. Behind her, Charles seemed to have his legs rooted to the cement floor, his breath misting softly in the air, his entire being poured into the spectacle of the water—a living canvas of light and motion that held his concentration completely captivated.
"This would make a fine piece…" he muttered to himself before pulling his legs out of the cement.
His gaze drifted back to the space where Charlotte had stood, expecting to find her quiet patience. Instead, he found a pool of sunlight, empty and warm. A faint, curious smile touched his lips.
Where had she wandered off to? He shook the thought from his head, deciding not to linger on it.
His eyes, alight with amusement rather than alarm, swept across the courtyard—past the cheerful awnings of club stalls, the open arches of hallways leading into sunlit halls. It was a gentle puzzle. A flicker of a navy blazer there, a glimpse of silver hair there, but none of them resolved into her. The discovery was not frightening, but intriguing—a new splash of color in the morning's canvas. She had simply... vanished into the tapestry of the bright, mellow day. 8:10AM.
Meanwhile, Charlotte had been gazing at the paintings in the art exhibit—a pointless act of reconciliation with her current predicament. She paced the exhibit, her deadpan eyes moving from one oil painting to another charcoal sketch. It was, as usual, a nuisance to tell them apart without delicately grazing the surface of the art.
She reached the wooden stairs that led away from the halls, her hand grasping the metallic railing. At the top of the steps, a faint impulse made her hesitate. She turned her head, casting a single, final glance back at the cavern of artwork below. Her eyes found a particular charcoal sketch—not with longing, but with a hollow sense of confirmation. Then, the moment passed. She turned and walked away.
Above those flights of stairs stood rows of marble sculptures. She would have been another pale, silent form among them if not for her uniform, the only thing that gave her an identity—of something breathing. Turning a corner, she was met with a modern double-door. The plaque above the door was etched with the following words: "Art Studio."
Charles, on the other hand, was meandering along the gravel paths, losing himself in the vastness of the academy's garden. A gentle breeze whispered through the leaves, carrying the sweet, earthy scent of damp soil. His gaze drifted to a low, sheltered spot along the stone wall, where a patch of Algerian Irises defied the season. Their delicate, violet-blue petals, striated with veins of a deeper amethyst, nestled deep within clumps of grassy leaves. A soft smile touched his lips as he watched a single, early bumblebee hover and hum nearby, its busywork a comforting, familiar melody. This was perfection—a moment of simple, unburdened tranquility. 8:18AM.
"Such beautiful flowers… If I just had my canvas with me…" he thought, the words a silent breath in his mind.
The irises were a study in subtle colour, their delicate forms bowing slightly under the weight of the morning's dew. The light, filtered through the lingering mist from the fountain, seemed not to shine upon them but to glow from within them, turning each droplet into a tiny, trembling prism. He could already see the brushstrokes in his mind's eye—a wet-in-wet wash of cobalt violet and a whisper of ultramarine blue for the petals, a touch of cadmium yellow pale for the tiny, guiding marks at their hearts.
With a sigh of resignation that clouded briefly in the cool air, he finally pulled out his phone. It felt foreign and awkward in his hand, a poor substitute for the familiar, comforting weight of a brush, the tactile grit of pigment ground into oil. He crouched down, his knees pressing into the damp gravel, ignoring the cold seeping through his paint-smeared trousers. He framed the shot, his thumb and forefinger spreading on the screen to zoom, chasing not just the image, but the feeling—that specific, almost magical quality of the light he knew would be gone in another hour.
Satisfied with the inadequate digital record, he pushed himself back to his feet, a slow, deliberate motion. He stood for a final moment, letting the scene sear itself into his memory far more reliably than any phone's lenses ever could. The world, which had shrunk to the intimate scale of a single flowerbed, expanded once more. The chatter of students, the distant roar of the fountain, the path beneath his feet—it all rushed back in.
He was refocused. The garden's allure was noted, archived, and set aside. Now, a new objective has sunken into his head.
"She's not in the garden… Guess I'll have to look elsewhere." His lingering thoughts of the Algerian Irises had stalled his search for Charlotte. "Maybe a visit to the Art Studio before that." 8:22AM.
Sliding his phone into his pocket, he instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes, his gaze lifting to the vast winter sky—now a clear, hard blue since the snow had stopped—as if checking the light one last time before he moved on.
A sudden chill crept down his neck, coaxing out a soft, involuntary sneeze. He sniffled, mumbling to himself, "I just realised how cold it got... Should have brought my scarf…"
Trying to escape the cold, he hurriedly left the snow-decorated garden, his breath misting in the air, his nose reddening, the tips of his fingers growing paler by the minute. He pried open the doors leading back into the academy's halls and slipped inside, letting out a comfortable sigh as warmth enveloped him.
His mind, once a riot of color and composition, narrowed to a single, silent objective—to find her. To find the quiet girl, Charlotte. A sudden, certain instinct pointed him toward the one place that made sense. A place where someone like her would usually avoid stepping foot in—the Art Studio.
Charles began to run. He hurried down the now-crowded corridors, dodging students in his rush to the studio. His heart hammered against his ribs, his lungs rasping for air, his attire growing more disheveled with every step. He sprinted up the wooden steps, flew past the marble statues, and turned the corner—finally barging into the Art Studio and slamming the door shut with a resounding bang.
The sound echoed and faded. He stood there, chest heaving, and looked up to see her standing in the center of the room—already facing him, her expression unreadable.
Still panting, he met her gaze. "There you are," he managed, the words bursting out with his breath. "I've been searching for you everywhere." 8:27AM.