Purple and Green

I looked up at the three moons in the dark pink night sky, they really did look beautiful. I shifted my gaze to our sister planet, Melandriota. Her dark blue surface was banded with stripes of various other shades of blue. 

I was snapped out of my thoughts when I heard a squeaky voice behind me.

“Miss, it is time to eat.” I turned around to see a short boy far younger than me. He had bright purple eyes and his pale face was shadowed in the dark. He was wearing shabby, ripped clothes and had dirt on his face. I, on the other hand, had minty green eyes and my elegant evening gown was a stunning yellow and was brand new. 

I made my way inside my house; it was a grandiose mansion, in my opinion it was way too big for my family of four. Then again, it was constantly bustling with our purple eyed help. 

I walked over to the elegant dining room to see my family was already seated. My sister looked a lot like me and my father, we all had chocolate brown skin and piercing green eyes. My mother, however, looked nothing like us. She had radiant orange hair, compared to our crimson hair, and her skin was a pale white, but did she have our green eyes. 

“Today, I bought out a failing company ran by a bunch of stupid little purple eyes,” my mother said, starting up a conversation about how many purple eyed business had been failing lately. 

I remembered reading about a time when green eyed people and purple eyed people lived in harmony as equals. We worked together to build a society on this small planet of ours. We collaborated together to colonize our planet. We fought together as brothers and sisters in the great war against Melandriota. But then, the green eyed people felt superior, cast aside the purple eyes as lesser beings, and took over the resources of the planet. 

Suddenly, I felt a cold liquid seeping through my dress. A purple eyed servant had spilled a glass of water on me. I gasped as the servant started vigorously dabbing a cloth on my lap. 

“Sorry ma’am, sorry ma’am, very sorry ma’am,” she whispered trying to soak up the water. 

My sister shot up out of her seat and began scolding the servant, “that dress is worth more than your life savings. I don’t want to see your face around here ever again. Take all your belongings, if you even have any, and get out of here. I will personally make sure you never get a job inside anyone’s house ever again.” 

The purple eyed woman scurried away with tears streaming down her face and my mom scoffed, “can’t get any good help nowadays,” just loud enough for her to hear. 

After an excruciating moment of silence, my mother filled the dining room up with her rants about how the purple eyed servants in our house were “undisciplined” and “spoiled.” My father and sister chimed along, but I didn’t say anything, which was typical of me, I didn’t talk much. 

Eventually dinner ended, and I headed up to my room. The purple eyes’ sleeping chambers were on the ground floor, but our family bedrooms and guest bedrooms were on the top floor. I climbed up the ornate staircase and walked into my room. I changed into my nightdress and dropped the gown on the floor. A purple eyed servant would eventually come by and take it away, maybe keep it for herself or pass it down to someone she knew. Whatever she did, I did not care. After all, I never wore the same dress twice. 

I laid on the enormous canopy bed trying to sleep, but I could not. I kept thinking about the day I had at work. I worked for a rich, green eyed businessman who owned many of the companies in this part of the territory. I have to say; I had a pretty lucrative job, then again, which green eyed person did not. Recently my company had hired a purple eyed worker as an assistant to the boss, and he was doing fine until today. 

The purple eyed worker had a fairly simple job, in my opinion. All he had to do was attend to the boss. Yet today, he still managed to mess up that task. The boss asked him to schedule lunch at the grand opening of the hottest new restaurant, but purple eyes here forgot. The boss ended up having to settle for lunch at another, not so trendy, restaurant. Obviously he was fired, and I doubt he would ever work for any business ever again. A mistake so little as forgetting to make a call cost a good man his job, and probably every job he would ever have in the future, something that he had worked so hard for. 

I tossed and turned in bed, thinking about what would have happened if I had been that purple eyed worker. I have made plenty of mistakes in my life, but I’ve never done anything that cost me my job, or my future. It is upsetting to think a person’s whole life is determined by the color of their eyes. Something that is so out of their control, or anyone’s for that matter. If everyone could decide what they could look like, we’d all have green eyes. I am thankful to have been blessed with green eyes. If I had purple eyes, I’d be stripped of all the privilege I’ve been handed my whole life. The way we treat the purple eyed people of our planet is not fair, it truly is not. It’s not fair that just because they look different from us, we have the right to treat them differently, as less. But really, there is nothing I can do about it. 

Author’s Note:

Although the world may not be as black and white, or should I say purple and green, as I depicted, people are still people. And a person should NOT be treated differently because of their skin color (or eye color). Instead of having the mindset “there is nothing I can do about it,” we should join together as a community and accept everyone for who they are, no matter what they look like, where they are from, their wealth status, their beliefs, their gender, or their sexual orientation. The only way to destroy hate is through love, and in times like these, we need more love than ever.