Bernie didn’t see color. Not in the way corny, quietly racist white folks mean it. In the real way. In the way that reduces chromatic pigments to varying shades of gray. So, it really was lost on her that blue was her signature color. She wore it every day without fail, piling navy atop indigo and accenting with cobalt.
It’s not that Bernie didn’t know about color. She did. It’s that she gave up long ago trying to make it mean something to her. She’d accepted that there were just some things she’d understand — like advanced calculus and how to make soufflé — and some things she wouldn’t.
That’s why she didn’t stop to wonder over a laurel hedge that inexplicably turned blue as she passed. That’s also why she was immune to the surprise her fellow pedestrians had at seeing the sidewalk shift from slate to teal.
It was magic that she was making, though she couldn’t see it. But just because it wasn’t visual didn’t mean she was unaware of its presence. Bernie was well aware that everything she touched changed. Something cellular, under the surface of typical sight, twinkled in a new way once she got her hands on it. When it did, it became ever-so-slightly more blue. She never noticed the colorful tribute or did much with the magic itself. Bernie just let it leak out, subtly shifting her surroundings because she couldn’t help doing otherwise.
Her magic had grown restless under such lackadaisical care. It began to slyly seep out on its own accord, playing with things in a way she would not see. It made Bernie smile, this mischievousness, so she pretended not to notice and let her magic change the world of its own accord.
This story was written as part of a visual writing prompt project I started on Instagram. Each week I offer an image to spark stories and poetry. I make sure to always share a response of my own. They’re short; micro-fiction, really. Still, they’re stories I put energy into so I’m giving them a home here as part of a microfiction series. I hope you enjoy.
I love this as a metaphor for creativity—the idea that maybe we can’t always see the impact of the magic we make, but we can feel it’s there.