Taste the Rainbow

Disclaimer: I don't own Oban: Star Racers.

Her hair, she tells him, is a map.

It traces out the routes and pathways she has taken throughout the course of her seventeen—has it been two Earth years already? How time passes, so fast—years. She looks at it and sees through the layers of keratin and thick or thin roots, straight to the shades and pigments of once-tried once-loved never-again-ohmigod-that-was-a-disaster dyes. The colors have faded, she tells him, but her memory hasn't. A blessing and a curse, that she remembers almost every day of her melancholy life with an ice-cold clarity to match the ice-cold feeling it brings.

She has images to match those memories, spread out on the grass between them.

He picks up the youngest and oldest; the first. He hardly recognizes her in the dim lighting.

Black hair, free of the blood red coloring, hung clean and dark, contrasting with the soft pink dress. In the moonlight, he can just barely make out the tiny patchwork sewing etched into the fabric, marking it as an item once adored. Once loved, never again worn. Light cotton, wrapping her in a perfectly warm embrace. He sees another woman in the picture, her hair the same lookatme shade as the garment. He looks at her eyes and makes the connection; the tiny stitching binding both family and fabric into one cohesive quilt.

She rolls over on the grass beside him and taps the photograph.

"They say black is the absence of color." Her shoulders lift in a hapless shrug. "I don't think it suited me."

He looks at the man in the back of the picture, hair stiff and styled to make him appear taller. Hands folded behind his back, a result of constant posture training. A dark mustache groomed to perfection on a pale face with shadowed eyes above a crisp suit. A splash of red is visible as his tie and his face, though stern, aches to smile at the corners. He sees the man in the back of the picture, ten years later with white in his hair and a black suit to replace the tan one. A man who, be her definition of the shade, wanted to fade away.

He looks at the girl. Truthfully, he believes that white is the absence of color and that, by his teaching, her answer makes no sense.

He believes her anyways.

The second image fast forwards, bringing him to ten years old and a strange combination of photogenic and photophobic.

Her hair is longer here, tied back into a sleek black ponytail to reveal ears not yet punctured red with cold ice-diamonds. She's sitting at a desk; legs crossed primly, gray skirted uniform tailored to perfection and worn in the same fashion, revealing long ivory legs. In her uncallused hands, a book lies open to what he assumes is the correct page for the lesson. In contrast with this image of tidiness, she stares out the window and he can see a hint of a long driveway through the glass.

In the glass's reflection, he can see her face; torn between determination and total, absolute misery.

There is a thumb in this corner of the picture, but he welcomes this imperfection. This is not the girl he knows now, or the one before. There is no softness here; no pink cotton left to warm those eyes. She is a mannequin with a face, and the only other sign of humanity is the slumped shoulders that make the words silently screaming there all the more obvious.

LET HIM LOVE ME.

The third photograph is either immeasurably better or catastrophically worse.

Gone is the long black hair and the need for perfection. Now it is hot pink and hacked brutally short just below her ears which now shine with bright silver studs, marring her body the only non-violent way she knows how. Again, this is a peeper shot, caught by an intention to catch this girl on film. A stout woman with sharp-moon glasses and graying hair is holding her arm in a death grip, mouth shouting politely censored words.

He notes the electric blue polish on the fingertips and supposes that this princess-to-frog transformation was not, in any way, gradual or accepted.

She's wearing the boy's uniform ("I hate skirts," she informs him. "It's like giving everyone permission to view your ass.") and her face is furious while her mouth is open in obscene rebellion.

There is no love or tenderness in this image, only a desperate splash of colors to keep herself from falling completely out of this world.

The next photo was a self-taken shot and could not have happened more than a few days later.

Her hair is brown now and her eyes seethe with vengeance. She is making the world aware of her, letting it know that she plans to stay; blue or brown, father or no father.

She rolls until she is on her back once more, staring at the skies from the dewy fields. "I didn't expect a call nearly as often. But I did keep waiting on my birthday; every year. You know, just in case."

There is a number, carved not in Arabic but Roman Numerals in the bottom right hand corner. The pen is scratched deep enough to draw blood.

XII.

She is far too young for this.

Her hair is longer again, back to its length at the beginning of the pile. It is not quite black, but not quite brown either.

It is a basic platform. She is prepping her canvas, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Her face is distant but softened. Light falls around her form as she leans against a tree in the shot.

He can hear the birds chirping from the photo.

Her hair is still that same brown, but here it is warm; a mighty oak with an inner fire. She will not vanish.

The picture is beautiful and he wonders who took it. The lighting and the composition are wonderful.

It looks as if a lover had let the camera lens fall shut.

He wonders who it is.

He doesn't want to know.

Red for rage, spilling off of the crown of her head in angry torrents. A decade has passed with no calls.

A line and a star, drawn sharply in soft hues.

There are more holes in her ears to match the holes in her heart.

He has seen this movie before and places the photo back, face down.

He knows the ending.

They are laying side by side and when he looks at her, he does not notice the shape that the silhouette of her body makes or the strong profile of her nose, forehead, lips, and chin. His eyes are instead drawn to her shoulders, once covered with yellow metal to make them stronger. Now they are bare beneath the slim straps of her tank top and he can see just how slim they really are. Her hair is longer again, and black. Shining with power, absent of nothing.

Even lying down, he is taller than her but he cranes his neck lower and brushes his lips against that shoulder in what may or may not be an accidental motion to her. He hopes some of the weight has been lifted in that small contact.

Readjusting himself, he crosses his arms behind his head and follows her gaze to the stars. They are small diamonds, like the ones in her ears, puncturing the sky. Riddling it with holes to make it brighter, but all the more prone to falling down. He bends one of his legs, leaving only his foot to support its weight as the knee reaches for the sky. She mimics his gesture, knocking her denim leg against his. He smiles. She giggles.

"How long will you be staying?" He asks her, finding his voice.

"Well, Jordan wants me to visit him at some point. So maybe a month or two here, then a month or two there." She answers, still smiling with her voice and with her scarlet eye. His own blue ones crinkle in the corners, knowing that, in her time, this was a decent amount of time. "I have to hand it to you, Aikka, you've got one snazzy view here."

"Very few people travel to the Hill of Songs." He informs her. "Those without flying beetles do not care to make the trip, which is a pity. Once you have seen this place, it stays with you forever." Before she can question the name, as if on cue, the purple flowers she had been so curious about opened, releasing spheres of light that, slowly and quietly at first, began to sing. It was unlike Earth music, for the notes were not riddled with unnecessary beats and pops.

They sang out, crystalline and pure. They lived for nothing else in that one hour of night.

When the music faded, she sat up and beamed down at him, looking breathless. "Aikka, sometimes I think I love you." The way Molly says the words is so careless and carefree and innocent that it wounds him, but he does not let it show. He is a prince of Nourasia, born to uphold his honor and keep secrets. So he only smiles in return.

"Sometimes I think I love you too, Molly."

He handles these words with more care than she will ever know.

Sorry for the nonsensical nonsense. I'm tired.