Where there's a Weewoo, there's a way Circulation: 174,678,845 Issue: 383 | 13th day of Running, Y11
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The Beauty of Colors


by lionzoo

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I am a symol. All that was ever in my mind was: dig, dig, dig, dig, and guess what else? Dig. I was born underground and was raised underground; I was underground pretty much my whole life. I was part of a small group of symols. My job was to make tunnels. Lots and lots of tunnels. There is no light at all down there in the tunnels. So my eyes were small. They were like little black beads, my mother told me when I was younger. All I ever saw was brown dirt and occasionally some roots from trees. My claws were sharp, designed for digging. I was built for building tunnels.

     One day changed all that, though. I was digging like any other day, but I was digging upward. Towards the outer world. I dug a hole outside and a blinding razor cut against my eyes. I shut them. My eyes stung sharply. Then as I slowly opened them, I found a world so unlike my world underground.

     There was a beauty of colors that swirled around me. The sun was a bright color. The sky was a cool color. The grass was a soft color. I never knew the names of them. I only knew of two colors from digging underground, brown and black. I crawled out the hole and looked around.

     A creature was coming towards me. It was wearing nice, cute, cool, sweet, all the colors that I have never seen before. I even saw a hint of brown. As the creature got closer, I realized how big it was. Its shadow resembled black, a color I saw most of my lifetime. I saw it as a human. My Uncle Ben told me about people. He had gone above ground before. I would listen to him with inspiration.

     “They were inventors!” he would exclaim. “If they think you were cute enough, they’ll take you to their home and take care of you.”

     “But what if you don’t want them to? I don’t; I want to stay and help the group,” I said.

     He laughed. “Then don’t go above ground!” His voice echoed in my head as I looked up at the human’s face. It smiled at me. Startled, I hesitantly smiled back.

     "Hello, little guy! Who are you?" it asked. I looked up and saw another creature next to it. A creature that soon became my master. It was a Gelert. It was panting hard, and it looked at me with playful eyes. Its eyes were a nice color of warmth. I relaxed at that color and crawled towards the Gelert. It looked at me as I inched closer,

     "Look, Cherry, I think he likes you!" the human said. Cherry, the Gelert, smiled big and picked me up. Her paws were soft and had no claws like mine.

     "Wanna be my petpet, little fellow?" she asked.

     I remembered my voice. “I want to stay and help the group...” I looked at the smiling faces around me. The colors of everything, the sky, Cherry, the human. I guess I had to move on and away from the group. I looked up at Cherry and slowly nodded.

     * * * * * *

     I thought that would be the end of my tunnel making days and a beginning of the beauty of colors. I was comfortable with that notion. Too bad I was terribly wrong.

     I was happy the first week living with Cherry. Cherry petted me softly, and she realized my loving of colors. She would read books to me. Most about a petpets being loved. There was even one about a symol. The symol was taken care of badly, so he ran away and came back. I thought I would never have done that. I would listen with curiosity, then at the end the book would poof into a color of smoke. Cherry would teach me the color's name. That cool color on the sky, I learned was called blue, and Cherry was the color red. I was contented to be loved and to have learned the names of colors. But when we went to the Turmaculus, everything turned upside down.

     We were going somewhere and Cherry was excited, so I became excited with her. She was holding a big smile. She exclaimed to me, "You're going to help me get a cool item, or maybe even help me get rich! You're going to be so happy with me!"

     I trusted her with all my heart, but when I saw how I was going to help her, my heart sank to my stomach. My stomach kept turning it around until it finally realized what it was and spat it back out. My heart throbbed with every beat. We were going to a monster named the Turmaculus. The Turmaculus was a greenish color, but it was a slimy color of green. The color of purple on it was a sick color. I trembled and shook in Cherry's arms. She put me down right in front of the sleeping beast.

     "Why don't you..." Cherry pondered. She was trying to think of something, something that I would do. I trembled, wondering what she wanted me to do. She lit up when an idea popped into her head.

     "You should kick him!" she said.

     I gulped. I brought my clawed foot back. I looked behind me to find Cherry smiling at me. How could she smile like that? How could she smile when she was risking my life to get something valuable? I was still looking at her, making sure that she wasn’t that mean and that she would realize what she was doing and take me away from this monster.

     She did not make a move to try to get me away. Actually, she nodded her head at me to kick that ugly green hide.

     I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut. I brought my foot forward. I barely left a scratch on his skin, but he still sent out a ear shattering howl. He looked at me with anger in his eyes. His eyes was a brown color, the color of my home before. Then he looked at me with hunger, a shining glint in his eyes.

     "GRRRRRRRRR." He looked at me with hunger. I must be a delicious shade of brown. He reared up and aimed his mouth at me.

     Instinctively, I dug below me quickly. Right before the Turmaculus slammed his mouth down on top of me, I covered the hole and dug farther down. A familiar darkness surrounded me as I dug.

     I was like that symol in the story. I ran away because I was abused. But I could go back. That symol didn’t go back, but I could. Then I remembered Cherry, how she was so nice, reading to me, and teaching me colors. But she turned against me. She wanted me to risk my life to get her a prize. I would not forgive her, not after what she did to me.

     I then vowed to never come up again to the light, as even the beauty of colors weren't worth that experience. My eyes never saw any other color beside brown and black ever again.

The End

 
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