An Excerpt from the Diary of Sylphie Ashe #16:

An Excerpt from the Diary of Sylphie Ashe #16:



(These excerpts, though numbered, were not written in chronological order. We at the Institute of Historical and Archaeological Discoveries are unsure why the author did this.)

When I first saw the color blue, I cried.

Howard likes to bring it up at work parties, flourishing it like a party favor to garner attention. ‘You wouldn’t believe what Sylphie did when we went to La Crist La Vere!’ 

And I would laugh along, because Howard, though crass and annoying at times, was overall harmless. I like to describe him as lemon yellow, tolerable in moderate amounts.

But the truth was Howard didn’t understand; how could he have? He worked in Linear History. Very boring, uncolorful work. All numbers, dates, and facts. 

Blue was a color, my specialty.

I am a colorologist, a term coined in the Arthurian era when the world finally realized it had a problem, for colors had begun to disappear.

By that time half the world was already a barren wasteland. Global warming, pollution, and the atomic bomb wars had done their part.

There weren’t enough supplies; there wasn't enough of anything. So who was going to spend precious resources making vibrantly colored clothing or furniture?

Then the plants started dying. Flowers and colorful fruits—they never seemed to last.

Finally, the animals. Evolution started to set in. They say it started with the chameleons. Known to change to adapt to their surroundings, to blend in, and to protect themselves from predators. But what if suddenly their surroundings were just miles and miles of dry, parched grass and leafless brown trees? Color would only set you apart.

So why did blue make me cry? Let’s be clear: I’ve seen blue before. The sky, though it has lost much of its vibrancy, remains blue. And the oceans—what’s left of them—are blue, too.

But this blue?

God, this blue was sapphires in sunlight, thundering waterfalls, and blueberries on a hot summer day.

Blue eyes locked in mine.

Whispers of a time long past.

Sorry, you must be confused.

Let me explain.

When I first saw the color blue, I was thirteen.

Like any good parent, Ma had my four siblings and me on rotational chore duty. Today was Thursday, which meant sweltering under the blistering sun, wearing gauzy cloth over my dark hair and bare shoulders to protect from sunburn, and carrying a heavy basket of clothing strapped to my back, ready to be washed in the river.

River was a technical term. Most of the rivers by then had dried up, so humanity got creative. The town nearby had built a mechanical thing that pumped and filtered water for community usage. It was better than nothing.

Even though Thursdays were tough on the body, I didn’t mind them. I had to walk over two miles to get to the town, but once I was at the river, I could bury my sunburned arms into the cold, fresh water and pretend I was swimming.

Maybe one day I would swim downstream. Far, far away.

But today’s Thursday; everything had gone wrong. My little sister had stolen my favorite sandals, and we couldn’t afford meat for the week, so I had to chew on dried jerky and powdered grains. It also hadn’t rained recently, so the path to town was long, dry, and dusty.

So I was in a foul mood when I arrived at the river and in an even fouler one when I found out there was a line.

Huffing and puffing, I tried to remind myself that the line wasn’t that long, but my back ached and my skin was peeling on my shoulder. Dear God, how I wished for a drink.

Contemplating my unluckiness and woes, I was startled out of my self-contempt when someone pushed me.

I flailed, nearly falling over my basket, and whirled around once I had gotten my balance. “What in the world—”

Oh. My not-so-very-nice words died on my lips. Seeming just as shocked, a young boy around my age stared back, lugging a basket of his own nearly his size. But that wasn’t what had stopped me in my tracks.

His eyes were blue. And not just blue, like a puddle of water after a rainy day, or mid-summer sky blue, when it wasn’t cloudy.

Blue. A color out of a fairytale I could have only imagined. I had never seen something so brilliant, so clear. 

The blue-eyed boy turned towards me. Then his eyes passed over me, landing on a spot just to my right. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there.” He apologized.

I reached out and waved my hand in front of his face curiously. He didn’t react. “I don’t think you see much,” I said. Then I shut my mouth in embarrassment. Ma always said I was never good with words. They somehow always turned offensive.

Unexpectedly, his mouth quirked into a smile. “Can’t say you’re wrong there.”

Since he couldn’t see, I took my time observing him. It was the first time I’d ever seen a blue-eyed person before. They were rare, one of the last colored eyes to go extinct. For some reason, though scientists were still studying it, the color seemed to cause blindness over time.

It seemed it had progressed quite fast in this kid.

“I can see you,” he said suddenly, eyes snapping to mine. It made me jump. “Though, not very well,” he admitted sheepishly after a pause.

Unable to help myself, I dashed to the right, trying to lose him. That only made him laugh, blue eyes trying to catch me. He motioned with his shoulder behind me, still smiling. “It’s your turn.”

After that blue-eyed boy joined me every Thursday at the river. I later learned his name was Iris. “My parents named me,” he explained, our arms elbow-deep in the river. “We moved out here to study a species of turtles, only native to this area.”

“So, you’re like researchers?” I asked, confused. The word was strange on my tongue. People around here didn’t have fancy jobs or special titles. People barely had enough time to work and harvest food to feed their children.

“Scholars, teachers, something like that,” Iris said.

“But why?” I still didn’t understand.

He considered that for a moment. “Because in our world… Things disappear. Slowly, but they do. And one day, we’re going to forget some things ever existed. We won't remember how they smelled, how they tasted, or how they looked. One day things will simply…be gone. That is, unless someone remembers them.” He turned towards her, chapped lips smiling, long dark lashes spread over blue, blue eyes. “I want to be one, one day too. Because I hope in remembering things, someone will remember me too.” 

When I was fifteen, Iris brought me to his house.

Scholars lived in a different area, with actual paved streets and tall fences. His house was solid stone to keep out of the burning sun and had a ventilation system to keep the rooms cool. There were just three of them: Iris and his parents. They even each had their own room, which felt like too much space since I was used to sharing a room with my four other siblings. I wasn’t sure what they would do with all that space, but once I got there, I realized they used it to store books.

They were everywhere, lining the walls, stacked on the floor, underneath beds, and on top of cabinets. And these weren’t just your regular old, falling apart books. These books were colorful, in all shades. Rusty reds, pale greens, ripe oranges, and mellow yellows. I looked for one that was iris blue, but I didn’t see any.

“What do all these books do, other than create tripping hazards?” I asked, placing my feet carefully. Again, I was not known for my tactfulness.

Iris laughed, the books absorbing the echo. “Everything,” he said.

His parents were nice, though strange. They talked about a lot of things I didn’t understand. Electricity, engineering, movements of the earth. Things I hadn’t even ever thought to be curious about.

“Feel free to take any book to look at,” Iris’ mother told him at one point, her skin worn and wrinkled like softly used paper. “Bring it back, and you can borrow another.”

I’d never been offered something like that before, a gift I wasn’t sure how to use. But Iris encouraged me, so I picked one at random and read. It had been a long time since I had read a book; they were few and far between in this community, so it took me a while to get used to the feel and sound of words again. But once I started, it was hard to stop.

These books, they spoke of things I had never heard of before, stories of a world I thought I knew but had only scratched the surface of. I read like a parched man to water, unable to stop.

“Have you ever thought of becoming a scholar, Sylphie?” Iris’ mother asked one day over tea. They even added sugar, a luxury my family could never afford.

“Me?” I couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled in my throat. Iris’ family wasn’t usually very funny, so it felt odd now, laughing here among books. 

She smiled, still sipping her tea. She didn’t laugh. “Just think about it.”

Later that afternoon I found Iris sitting on the floor, head resting against the wall and running his hand along the spines of a line of books. 

“Can’t pick one?” I asked, chewing on some cookies, another luxury I couldn’t afford. I had tucked a couple into my shirt pocket to save for my siblings later.

Iris jerked in surprise. He seemed easier to catch off guard these days. When he glared at me, he looked to the left, missing my gaze.

After a pause, his mouth split into a smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He turned back to the books. “Would you pick one for me?”

It was the first time he’d asked me. I had assumed he had read everything already and couldn't decide. Shrugging, I grabbed one randomly off the shelf. This one was purple, maybe lavender, like I had learned. Another flower, just like Iris.

I held it out, but he didn’t move to take it.

“Could you… Read it to me?” Iris asked.

After a pause, I hunkered down next to him, resting my back against the wall. Our feet almost touched.

And so I read.

From there on, I read to Iris whenever I could. I came after I had finished chores at home and had free time, or when I could sneak out before the sun went down. We made it through book after book, most of them on topics I didn’t understand. A lot of the time, Iris would explain things as I went. Sometimes, he just listened and stared out the window, blue eyes in another world.

At some point, we shifted from the library to his bedroom. “It’s because my knees hurt,” he said. He would lie on the floor and let me sit on the bed.

It felt weird, lying on a proper bed and not a mattress on the floor, especially when it was someone else's. But the more I read, the more I forgot where I was. I was in another world, one with colors, but always with Iris.

But one day when I came, Iris wasn’t waiting for me in the kitchen or in the study. His mother answered the door, looking even paler and more worn than usual. This book looked distressed.

“He’s in his bedroom,” she said with a smile, though it was tight. I wondered why her eyes weren’t blue.

Iris was in his bed this time, eyes closed, blanket pulled up under his chin. He looked like a mummy, wrapped up for eternal sleep. His breathing was long and slow, dark eyelashes fluttering over blue eyes I couldn’t see.

I thought he was sleeping. Before I could decide whether to leave or stay, his eyes fluttered open, and he looked for me. “Sylphie?”

His voice was weak. I’d never heard him without his mocking undertone, his dry humor that overlaid his kindness. 

“Iris?” That was all I could think to say.

He uncovered his hand from his blanket tomb and held it out. How had I not noticed how pale his skin had gotten, how skinny his fingers had become? Maybe I had, but I’d ignored it.

I reached out, and when our fingers touched, they were cold. He tugged me towards the bed until I came to sit down next to him. “Can you read to me?” He asked. It wasn’t the first time he had asked me this. But this was a dying man's request. Entirely different.

I wanted to say something, anything. But not a single word I had read in the past years seemed right.

And so I read.

From then on, my memory is a blur. Probably because I don’t think I could ever relive it and survive again. Every day I came to Iris’ house, and I read whatever book he wanted, helped him drink tea, and fed him cookies. But every day he got weaker and weaker, thinner, and more exhausted. My iris was wilting.

And then one day his blue eyes closed, and I never saw them again.

That was years ago, too many to count. I stayed close to the Van Huesen family and helped them with the funeral, though every time I thought of blue my chest hurt like I was dying too. And when I turned eighteen, long after they had upped and moved, they offered me a scholarship to university. And that was how I became a colourologist.

It was a dying career, but one that I would have taken again if I had gone back in time and it was offered again. Iris had changed me at some point between the river and his deathbed. Maybe I became a colourologist because I wanted to see that blue again.

It was why, when I was forty-eight, bones weary, knees old and plagued with back pain, I climbed that mountain with Howard and another small group of historians during a nasty sandstorm and finally came upon the desert forest we had been tracking.

“Look, those are meerkat tracks!” Chastity exclaimed, gushing over them with her other zoologist, Izaac.

“This tree has to be at least a hundred years old,” Aurora said, already studying the plants.

While the others talked, I drifted away, coming to the edge of the reserve until their voices had long wafted away and I was alone.

It was there that I came upon what I had been searching for. Haloed by a ring of sunlight and amid a patch of olive green grass, lay a blue iris.

There shouldn’t have been enough natural resources to sustain it. Water was scarce enough in these parts, and the sun was too strong and too bright. And yet there it stood, stark and beautiful and startlingly blue.

I couldn’t stop the tears that flowed then. The emotion that rose from my chest entered my throat and filled my eyes before I could stop it. It had been so long since my days among the books. And yet something finally broke inside me, a wall built to keep my memories back, lest I be overcome by yearning. Freely now, fresh tears fell from my eyes and down my face, cool on my warm skin. Maybe they were blue too.

At some point the tears stopped falling, for there was nothing left in reserve. I felt hollow and empty, though in a good way. I had achieved a lifelong dream. I was sure Iris would be proud.

Before I left, I took a picture. We were only allotted a certain amount due to resources, and even though I knew it wouldn’t get the color right and it couldn't capture the sunlight how I would remember it, it was alright. Because to me, I knew what the color blue was. It was an Iris on a sunny day, wind blowing through his hair, a peaceful, kind smile on his face, and the smell of dusty books.

And blue, blue eyes.