Color Store

Inspired by https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=576126815732042&set=a.465549346789790.110323.462100400468018&type=1&theater

  Leia glanced around the store. There are so many colors she has never seen outside of the store. She glances at the store owner: a man around the age of twenty she guesses. By his height, he must be grown up, but when he smiles his face turns so childish. It is a face that is full of delight and wonder, something that almost represents her emotions whenever she enters the store. She could never understand how this man could possibly be a demon. She has never seen a smile as kind as his.

  To be honest, she could see the colors in this store outside quite easily. After all, this store is the Color Store: the store she can buy colors from. For some reason, everyone else can see in color besides Leia. That is why this store exists only for her. But why doesn’t she buy the colors? Leia is afraid. The only thing that Leia can use to buy the colors is not money. No, the only thing the demon accepts are memories. The fear of losing something, and never knowing what she lost terrified Leia.

  However, that… the thing they call red. The autumn leaves in a painting are so beautiful. She could imagine them slowly falling from the trees, like crimson snowflakes slowly drifting down from the sky. She smiles bravely at the demon and holds asks for red.

  She sees father in front of her. Her legs are trembling. Fear? No, fear is only part of it.  She has been standing for hours. She can smell his breath. He was clearly drin…

  “You’ve taken away my memory already?” she asks the demon, forgetting what she recalled earlier.

  “Yes, and in exchange you can enjoy the beauty of the color red”, he tells her while smiling.

  She happily skips outside. The next week, she finds that the whole world is so much more vibrant. It is as if apples taste sweeter, even though the only difference is that they are now red. The next week, she decides that the beauty of red was worth losing memories and comes back in order to buy blue. She smiles at the demon who smiles back again with his delightful smile. This time, she requests blue.

  Her mother is crying. They are in Leia’s father’s funeral. What is this feeling she is feeling? It seems to be relief… and guilt. “If only she was never born!” Leia heard her mother scream between her wretched sobs. She felt as if her mind was torn away from her body. She is aware of her surroundings, but she feels disconnected from it. She thought that at least her mother loved her. But it wa…

  “I have taken away your memory. Come back again whenever you please. Enjoy blue”, the demon says smiling at her.

  After the two weeks, Leia was not scared of going back to the store and buying a new color again. She always worries about what she could possibly be losing, but every time she leaves the store the world is more beautiful. Nothing she could possibly lose is worth more than how beautiful the world is becoming. The outside world is becoming as beautiful as the worlds in the paintings shown in the store. She came again and again in order to buy more colors. And in exchange, she would lose a memory of the demon’s choice. Finally, she has bought all the colors except one. For some reason, she feels as if life is much happier. It must be because the world has become so beautiful, she tells herself as she asks for yellow-green. The demon gives a lonely frown as she buys the color.

  She sees herself entering a store. Then again, and again. She sees a man of twenty two years old with a really delightful smile. Every time she leaves the store, her heart is lifted. The world becomes more beauti…

  She finds herself in front of a store she has never seen before. The Color Store: May you leave here happier than before you came in it says on the sign. “Heh, that’s pretty lame”, she says before turning around and walking home.

  The demon looks at her turn around. He smiles softly to no one in particular, before walking out of the store himself and taking the shutters down. Until the next time he finds such a pained soul, the store will remain closed. 

Three Moons Ch1. Mother's Eyes

I never really fit into the crowds. I had traveled to many places around the world and no matter what country I visit, people still stare at my eyes. I've been to the U.S, Britain, Africa, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Japan, and France. It wasn't too surprising though; I don't think there is anyone else on Earth was born with a golden eye. My right eye shines reflecting light like the precious metal while my left eye is the brown color I inherited from my half Chinese half Japanese father. Ironically, my name is Silver, even though I have a golden eye. When I asked my father why my name is Silver, he told me that it was my mother who chose the name. Both of them are gone now. My mother died shortly after childbirth, and my father passed away almost one year ago from a hit and run accident. I never knew much about my mother. I only knew that she had a pair of golden eyes, crimson red hair, and was a very beautiful woman.

Besides the color of my left eye, I also inherited the shape of both eyes from my father, my nose, my height (5' 10"), and my hair. Not all of my features, however, were Asian. My skin color is a healthy tan, darker than the typical Asian skin color. Of course I have some features that have nothing to do with race. To my chagrin, I don't seem to have the ability to grow facial hair which allowed some of my friends to laugh at me, asking if I was a woman in disguise. It doesn't help that my eye lashes are slightly longer than the norm, and that I prefer to have long hair. My nose is well positioned and is connected well to the area between my eyes. Overall, I would consider myself good looking and would attract stares even if both of my eyes were brown. Well, besides my appearance there is also two things very special about me. I can speak any language without ever hearing it before... and even more strange, I can speak a language someone has never heard before and they would understand. I mean I can go to France and speak Chinese and they would all inexplicably understand me (but they still can't speak Chinese).

I was actually going to celebrate my twentieth birthday today, but I'm in a strange situation today. Earlier, I saw a bright white light shaped like the portals I see in video games and touched it out of curiosity. I don't remember anything that happened after that, but I just found myself waking up in a strange house. After I left the it, I quickly found out I was in a land. It is night time here, and  I can see three moons! I quickly realized that all three of them are in their waning crescent phase, but I suppose that was not what I should have been focusing on. 

"He has awoken!", said a woman who spotted me leaving the house in a language I have never heard of before.

Shortly after, I find myself in the present sitting in a room with eight other people. Each of them are wearing robes made of a fabric I have never seen before. Their robes are extraordinarily beautiful, each woven with beautiful designs and a great many different colors of inks. Besides their attires, their appearance is different than any of those I've met. Their eyes are a color I've only seen when looking in the mirror and their hair was the color of roses. I quickly realize that this is where my mother came from. Perhaps I am a half Alien considering that Earth definitely does not have three moons.

Wolf's character intro (a character I really like, but I can't go further with what I wrote because of someone else's privacy and the content I write afterwards)

Wolf. That's the name they gave him. Not that they cared for names, of course they didn't. They just needed something to refer to him while he obediently carries out orders. He was one of the experiments in the laboratory, genetically bred as the hybrid of a human and his namesake. He was created three years ago in the laboratory, but with the laboratory's technology he was born with body of a fifteen year old. He then had his mind hooked up to a machine where they “gave” him memories: memories of how to hunt, memories of how to kill, memories of how to to make someone suffer, wish they were dead. Years and years of experience beyond what someone of his physical age would have ever learned were crammed into his mind. And with these memories, something else was also jammed into his head. A great loyalty to the task force was driven into his mind. He was their loyal dog, out to kill, capture, and hunt anyone the Purity Police sent him after. 

Wolf stared at the white walls of his room for what would have seemed to be an eternity for anyone else. Three days he has been locked in this room and the only things without the depressingly pale white were his own body, and the few tasteless meals that were slid under his door. The door had a part that could be lifted, and meals were slid under it. Staring at these white walls would have made any man insane, but wolf was not a human. He was a killer, a killer programmed without such unnecessary thoughts such as boredom. His face was rigid in the same emotionless state it has been for most of the last three years. It was a shame because he had a face girls would consider cute... if there were to see him. But at a first glance they would probably be scared of his eyes. The parts of his eyes which would normally be white are a dim blue, the only part of him besides his silver hair that would suggest he wasn't completely human. His body had powerful muscles, but compact enough to make him look skinny. He was slim, and every ounce of muscle in his body was crafted with efficiency in mind. Large muscles would only get in the way.

Suddenly he hears a the sound of a doorknob being turned.

"Wolf. This will be your first mission. You know what will happen when you fail?", says a man in a white coat with large spectacles.

Wolf nods, and the man tosses him a clipboard with a few papers, a photograph, and a piece of dirty "was white" clothing attached to it. 

Two hours later, Wolf sees the night sky for the first time in his life. But he felt like it was his first time in three years rather than in his life. He glances at two people walking around this late, and thinks up over two hundred ways to kill both almost instantly. "No, they aren't the target", he told himself and suppressed his urges to kill. He walks for fifteen more minutes before he finds a girl shivering under a bridge: a girl who smelled exactly like the clothing on the clipboard. He walked a little closer before he sees her face, the splitting image of the girl in the picture.

Moonlit Stranger Ch. 1

I met Ahereal almost five years ago while leaving going home from my friend's house. It was very late, or should I say very early. I was heading home at two AM accompanied by nothing but by my multiple shadows made by the different street lights. Everywhere I looked I saw lowered shutters covering shop windows and windows blocked by curtains. Occasionally I would see a person or two, or a group of teenagers hanging out smoking and laughing. I decided to take a shortcut home through the alleyway. 

And it was there that I met one of the most disgusting excuses of a human I've ever met. Perhaps it was the revealing red one piece that I had on for my birthday, or perhaps he would have done it to any girl who walked through that alleyway alone. He was lying on a bunch of crates seemingly asleep. I would have assumed he was just another bum, but he was wearing a suit. I don't think bums wear suits. I tried to walk past him, when he stuck his hand out and held me by my right arm. I jumped and screamed, startled, but he did not let go of me. 

"How much for ya, eh?", he smiled to show his two rows of teeth. The front two teeth on the top row were made of gold.. but the other teeth weren't too far off in color. 

I tried to yank my arm free, but somehow this bum in a suit is much stronger than how he looks. I shouted at him "let go of me", to no avail.

Completely ignoring my words, he pulls me to him and I fell onto him him off-balance. "Come on, how much are ya?", he asks while licking my neck. I can smell the alcohol in his breath. He was sitting upright now and 

Needless to say, I was kicking and screaming by now. But I could not pull myself free of him. When he started touching my legs I closed my eyes preparing for the worst. But then, I felt him release his grip on me, allowing me to get free. My momentum threw me forward for before falling I landed on the floor. I heard a voice croak behind me. My attacker is two feet above the ground, feet flailing in the air unable to reach the ground. He was trying to pry a hand off his neck desperately. 

And that was him, Ahereal. My first impression of her was of her strength that appeared to be impossible in such a body. I couldn't make out her countenance in the dark night, but the moonlight made out his outline. She had a slim arm, one that should not have possibly held a man by the throat. With the same hand, she threw the criminal into bags of trash lying around in the alley, and then turned around to smile at me. Or at least, I felt like she was smiling at me. It was really dark.

"My name is Ahereal", my savior said while holding out a hand to me.

On the ruined bags of trash I heard an old crook laugh. "Her? You'd be safer with me girl! At least with me you'd live!", he said while giving a horrifyingly creepy laugh.

"Come on let's go, let's leave this bum", said Ahereal.

Even as we left, the sound of a disgusting human kept laughing.

Book Burning Scene.

Diana breathlessly arrives to see the Asudemian Library up in flames. Behind her, her three companions arrive also panting heavily.

Diana attempts to run into the library to salvage what she can from the raging flames, but is stopped by one of her three companions' hand.

"Stop it, it is not worth losing your life to save a few books", the owner of the hand tells her.

"A few books?", Diana cries. "A few books?", she repeated, "Those books are the records of our ancestors, the legacy they left behind. What is recorded in there is the vast accumulation of knowledge, experience, and history that they left behind, the knowledge our predecessors painstakenly kept in order to make sure their decendents will live knowing what they know. What burned up is not "books". What burned up is a father's gift to his son, the progress of the past generations, thousands of years of experiences, and the pure wish of our ancestors that their knowledge will be passed onto their children.