The Hunger for Color

Lina dreamed again. 

It came to her in jagged flashes—loud, bright, too much all at once. The world in her dream was wrong.

The grass wasn't grass. The sky wasn't sky. The trees, the flowers, the people's clothes—none of it looked normal. 

The ground beneath her feet was too alive, the sky too vast, everything pulling at her in strange, unfamiliar ways. It wasn't gray. 

It was— 

She didn't know the word. 

But it felt dangerous. 

She woke with a start, her breath shallow, the Neutralizer's hum vibrating through the walls. She sat up, gripping the blanket with trembling fingers. 

The dream came every night now. Different each time, but always the same feeling. Something raw and electric. Something forbidden. 

Lina knew the stories. Everyone did. They were whispered cautiously, behind closed doors, in the lowest of voices. 

A woman who had dreamed of something called yellow. 

She had told no one, had barely spoken of it at all. But somehow, they had known. 

One day, she was there. The next, she was gone. 

Removed. 

Not arrested. Not reassigned. Just…vanished. 

No one asked where she had gone. No one dared. 

It was better not to know. 

It was better to forget. 

Lina tried to forget. 

She didn't let herself think about the dreams. She followed the regulations. She kept her head down, her uniform neat, her movements precise. 

But she noticed things. 

The way the rain smelled after a storm—fresh, sharp, new. 

The way some people blinked too long when walking past Neutralizers, as if fighting something they weren't supposed to see. 

The way the trees looked when the wind moved through them—not just bending and shifting, but something else, something alive. 

It wasn't right. 

Or maybe— 

Maybe it wasn't wrong. 

One night, she woke gasping, the dream still burning behind her eyelids. 

This time, she had been standing in it. Not just watching, not just feeling—but knowing. 

The sky had not been gray. 

The ground had not been dull. 

The trees had been— 

Her mind tried to grasp the word, but it slipped away like smoke. 

She clenched her fists. 

Could this be what they used to call colors? 

The thought terrified her.  

She knew what happened to people who let their minds wander too far. 

A man had been taken from the transit hub once. He had only hesitated, just for a moment, while looking at a mural in the Preservation Hall. A relic of the past, carefully muted to fit regulations. 

But it was enough. 

They had seen. 

He had not returned. 

Days passed. Weeks. 

The dreams did not stop. 

And then, one evening, she met Jorin. 

It happened at the café, where she always sat by the window. The server placed her cappuccino in front of her, offering the usual reminder: 

"Avoid prolonged observation of the exterior. Extended visual fixation on environmental elements may lead to cognitive disturbances. Compliance ensures optimal function." 

She nodded, as she always did. But her fingers curled around the cup a little tighter. 

Jorin sat at the table beside hers. He was older, his face lined with something deeper than age. 

He was watching her. 

Not openly. Not enough to draw attention. But she sensed it. 

As he stood to leave, he placed something on her table. 

A slip of paper. 

A risk. A test. 

A time. A place. 

She should have ignored it. 

She didn't. 

The meeting place was underground, hidden beneath the city. 

Lina's skin turned clammy as she stepped inside. The space was small, dimly lit, filled with people who spoke in low voices, their eyes sharp, alive. 

Jorin gestured for her to sit. 

"You've seen it, haven't you?" he asked. 

She swallowed. "I don't know what you mean." 

His lips curled slightly. "You do." 

She looked away. 

After a moment, he reached for something wrapped in cloth. He unfolded it carefully. 

It was a painting. 

And it was wrong. 

The shapes were familiar—trees, sky, grass. But something else was there, something unnatural, something that made her breath catch in her throat.

It reminded her of her dreams.

The ones that came to her in bursts of too much—shouting, flashing, alive. And now, staring at the painting, it hollered in her face.

Her eyes burned, trained only to see gray, struggling to adjust. Her vision swam. A wave of dizziness crashed over her, her stomach twisting. The world had always been muted, even, right. But this—this was wrong.

And yet—

It wasn't.

A jolt of recognition tore through her, sharp and electric. The sight before her was too much—too jumbled up, too alive. Suffocating emotions pressed down, choking her.

Like the time she had been taken in for observation.

She had been fourteen. They never told her what she had done—only that she had thought the wrong thing. That was enough. The Compliance Officers had come for her at school, their faces blank, their voices smooth and polite as they took her from her classroom.

They had strapped her to a chair in a white room, the air sterile, silent. A nurse pressed a cloth soaked in chemicals over her face—not enough to hurt, not exactly, but enough to make her drift in and out of consciousness. Enough to trap her, to smother her just long enough to remind her.

A lesson pressed into her skin, into her lungs.

A warning.

This felt the same.

She gasped, her breath short and uneven. A rapid pulse beat at the base of her throat.

"I can't. I can't," she muttered.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the painting to vanish, willing her world to be right again.

She had to leave.

But something rooted her to the spot.

A pull deep in her gut, an ache she didn't have a name for. Fear and nausea twisted inside her, but beneath them, something else.

A fascination.

Slowly, she opened her eyes again.

It was as if someone had shone a light directly into her skull, illuminating something long buried, something she wasn't supposed to have. The world on the canvas hadn't changed—the sky stretched wide, the trees reached upward, the ground looked soft beneath them—but it no longer felt flat and silent. It had depth, movement, something almost breathing.

Jorin watched her carefully. "What do you see?"

Lina's breath came fast, uneven. She forced herself to keep looking. A door kicked open, something bursting free inside her, something she hadn't known was caged.

"Something…" Her voice wavered. "Different."

Jorin nodded. "You don't have the words yet. But they'll come."

He tapped a section of the painting. 

"This," he said, "is what they used to call green." 

The word sent a shiver through her. 

"Green?" she echoed. It felt unfamiliar, impossible. 

Jorin leaned forward, his voice low. "Close your eyes." 

She hesitated, then obeyed. 

"Think of the air after a storm," he said. "Crisp, fresh. That's green." 

Lina's brow furrowed. 

"The scent of pine needles," he continued. "Or the taste of fresh leaves—not bitter, but something bright. Something alive." 

Lina's hands curled into fists. She could almost feel it. 

"Green is the rustling of trees at night," Jorin said softly. "The sound of wind moving through leaves. The smell of earth after rain." 

A flicker of something deep inside her.

She inhaled sharply.

She still couldn't see it.

But she felt it.

She knew it was real.

And if green was real, then so was—

Jorin's voice cut through her thoughts. "And this—this is blue."

Lina's gaze shifted, her breath catching.

She stared at the section of the painting he pointed to.

Her stomach twisted. "It just looks like gray," she whispered. "Different from the others, but still…"

Jorin nodded. "Yes. It looks that way because your eyes have been altered—so you can't see color." His voice was calm but firm. "Except you have a mutation. And that means you can."

Lina shook her head. "But I don't see it."

"You don't yet," Jorin corrected. "But your brain is fighting to. That's why you feel it. That's why the dreams come."

Lina clenched her fists. The idea of it made her breath short. A mutation. That word alone could get her taken away.

Jorin's voice softened. "You're not broken, Lina. You're remembering."

Lina swallowed hard. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that she didn't want to be different. But deep down, she knew.

She was.

Her whole life, she had felt the world was missing something. Now, staring at the painting, she knew she had been right.

"Tell me," she whispered. "What is blue?"

Jorin's gaze held hers. "It's the sky stretching endlessly above you. The way the air tastes before a storm, sharp and cool on your tongue. It's the weight of deep water around your body, heavy but never crushing. It's vastness. Distance. Quiet."

Lina's lips parted.

The taste before a storm. The weight of deep water.

She knew those things. She had felt them.

But blue still slipped through her fingers like mist.

Frustration clawed at her chest. "I still don't—"

Jorin's finger moved again.

"And this is red," he murmured.

Another shade. Another feeling she couldn't name. But this one was different.

It burned.

It demanded.

Jorin's voice dropped lower. "Red is fire at your fingertips, the sting of spice on your tongue. It's the heat that rises in your skin when you run too fast, when your breath comes short and sharp. It's urgency. Want."

Lina gasped.

The heat of fire. The taste of spice. The pounding of her own pulse. Red.

It was there, in the back of her mind, just beyond her reach.

Something inside her trembled.

Her whole life, the world had been silent. Controlled. Distant.

But this? This was alive.

And she would never unfeel it. She stumbled to her feet. The room was airless. She had to get out of there.

"We meet here every Wednesday. Will you come again?" Jorin asked.

"I don't know," Lina replied, before stepping back out into the gray world. The streets stretched ahead as they always had, the people moved in their quiet, measured way, the air hummed with the ever-present pulse of the Neutralizers.

Nothing had changed.

But she had changed.

She walked carefully, hands tucked into the pockets of her regulation uniform, her face smooth, composed. She had been trained her whole life to suppress what should not be.

But now she knew.

The sky was gray. The streets were gray. The world was gray. That was real. That was fact.

But it was no longer enough.

The painting had opened something inside her, and now she could not close it again. The world felt thinner, hollow, like a faded copy of something it used to be.

She wanted more.

She passed two officers standing at the corner. Their gazes flicked to her, scanning, assessing.

She kept her breath steady. Kept her steps measured.

Had she hesitated? Had something in her face changed? Had she looked different?

She forced herself to keep walking.

But deep inside, something pulled at her, gnawing, restless.

She needed to see it again. To feel it again.

To remember.

She would go back next Wednesday.

Not because she should. Not because it was safe.

But because she had to.