Is the Sky Still Blue?

Samantha sat silently outside. She could feel the soft wind blowing against her face. She touched her bear feet to the soft grey grass surrounding her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what the grass had once looked like. It was a far away memory, but she could still see the beautiful green it had once been. Samantha lost her sense of colour a year ago. When the disease spread.

People weren't really sure where the disease came from. Rumors surfaced, sure but people paid little attention to them.  They were too busy trying to stay alive. The news had been reporting about the disease months before panic rose. People tried to barricade themselves from the germs but it was hopeless. Sooner or later every one would have caught it. Samantha and her family were safe at the beginning. They followed the rules. They stayed inside their house, washed everything they touched, wore masks and rubber gloves, they did the mandatory cleaning schedule the government had to keep living environments and clean as possible. They were as safe as safe could get. But it still was not good enough.

It was small things at first. A cough, and a runny nose. Then Samantha’s eyes started to hurt. She had read about the symptoms online with her parents and knew that this was their worst fear come true. They took her to the hospital like the government had said on the tv. Samantha sat in the hospital for months. The world rushed around her as more and more patients came in every day with the disease. For her parents' safety the doctors begged them to leave. But they refused. They caught it too and were sick alongside their daughter. One day Samantha took a turn for the worst. The doctors tried their best. She was able to live, but her vision was never the same again.

Samantha tried to feel lucky. Millions of people had died because of the disease. Her and her parents were not those people. They were like the rest of the population. They were the ones who had to live in the shadow of the world's former brightness. They wondered if it would ever be the way it was again. People tried to remain hopeful that colour would return to their lives some day, after all they had doctors and scientists who worked tirelessly to make a vaccine for the disease and they accomplished that. How hard could it be to fix being colour blind? The scientist didn’t seem to care about the loss of colour in the world though. They claimed it wasn’t a necessity, and when the next generation was born their vision would be normal and humanity would be the way it was before.

People still believed that the scientists and government would heal them though. But as the months went on though people began to lose that hope which they so desperately hung on to. After the year passed and the disease was no longer a threat people grew used to the black and white world. But Samantha still clung to the memories of the vivid life that was once taken for granted. It seemed like something straight out of a fantasy novel. She could still see the bright pinks, and yellows, the pastel blues and reds. The royal purple to the warm feeling orange. She could envision them almost perfectly. Or at least she hoped she could. The very thing that had been terrifying her ever since she got out of the hospital had begun to happen to her. Like the rest of the world, Samantha was beginning to forget.

Her thoughts were interrupted as her father walked out of their small house and made his way to her.

“Hey Sam.” He said, sitting down on a patch of grey grass next to her.

“Hey.” Samantha said in response. They sat in silence for a while not quite knowing what to say. Then she spoke up and looked at her father in his once bright blue eyes. “Have you forgotten too?”

“Forgotten what?”

“Everything. The way things used to be. The colour. They way the grass was. The trees in fall. The way mom’s hair looked. Everything is just… changing and I don’t want to forget about how things used to be, but everyone already has.”

Her father nodded his head and sat silent. A minute passed and Samantha began to think that he wouldn’t say anything at all when he suddenly (and randomly in Samantha’s opinion) said, “Look up.”

Samantha followed her father’s gaze towards the sky where time seemed to slow. A dozen or so clouds drifted lazily along the nearly white grey sky. An almost holy looking sun shone high in the sky causing shadows to sprout from every earthly thing in sight. The shadows were hauntingly beautiful. They would reach towards Samantha twisting in impossible shapes. Tree branches would link together to form what looked like a large black snowflake laying across the grass. The sun still caused shadows. Light still caused shadow. Even when things had changed so much she could still appreciate that familiar sense of knowing. The clouds even had shadows lingering on its underside which  tried to float untouched by the sun. The sky was the perfect silhouette for the clouds and sun. Clear, never changing, always wanting to be filled.

“The sky’s still blue Sam.” Her father whispered to her. He still gazed at the sky in an almost mystical voice. A slow cloud drifted past the sun.

“How do you know?” Samantha whispered back.

“Because it always has been. Even if we can’t tell it now, the sky's still blue. And the grass is still green. And your mom’s hair is still blonde, just like yours is. And everything that ever was is the same. We can count on that. Nothing has changed except us. It’s only us that’s changed.”

“What if we can’t change back?”

“Then we’ll look up. And appreciate the view that we have.”