(Prompt: Everything is naturally monochrome. Color is obtained through finding and harvesting rainbows.)
I remember the first time my parents described color to me.
I was fascinated. In the days following I spent a lot of time testing the limits of my imagination, trying to see things in red and blue and green and yellow. I couldn't. Instead I culled images of fantastic beasts who shone bright lights and donned the darkest armor.
Ours was a small community, numbering maybe half a hundred. I was told we were somewhere on the edge of North America. I had never seen a map, and had no awareness of my location relative to anything else. I was born and raised in Seventeen. I was the only one though.
Everyone who lived there came from somewhere else, but they rarely spoke of it. Not near me anyway. There were some who lived on the wall who would not talk to us. They dressed differently, with heavy boots and immaculate pants and jackets. Sometimes they would point their long-barreled guns at one of the community, but I can't remember them ever firing. My parents told me that as long as everyone did their work, the Others wouldn't bother us. I remember the constant feeling of being kept in the dark of my elders' past lives. I couldn't fathom the depths of their secrecy.
I was nine when everything changed.
Deep into the night, there was a loud explosion, and then another, and three or four more. My parents were in the cots on either side of me and they both came to me. They led me to the back of the building, with the rest of Seventeen. No one spoke above a whisper. I was a little scared, but mostly I was confused and curious. I had never heard a sound as such. I remember wondering if perhaps I was about to experience color.
Through a foggy window, I saw dozens of men come storming through giant holes in giant gray walls I had scarce imagined not being there. Then I heard what I knew to be gunfire. Some of the people who had poured through the fence were falling to the ground, and the rest were ducking, diving, firing. Through the commotion I remember the sickening thud of Others falling from their towers to dirt below.
We huddled together for what felt like days.
Everything was silent. The night was bitter cool and dark. The door to our sleeping quarters opened and a handful of men burst through, their guns raised as they swept toward us.
Several of the community began to rise. Most of them were crying. Some of them were saying thank you. My parents held me tight. I could feel the warm tears from my mother's eyes as they trailed down my own face.
One of the men threw his gun to a cot and came to me. He knelt to me, and I could see he was holding back tears.
"We've come to rescue you," he said. "I am so, so sorry."
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