As they move deeper into the woods, the sky grows darker, and the light fog that had begun to curl around their feet grows darker and more opaque. The blues and purples of the trees and bushes appear dull in the darkness, until all the colours that are left in the world are muted tones of violet and darkening shades of grey. Despite his usual comfort in this sort of gloom, all it does now is give Ozzy the chills. He hopes, in the back of his mind, that Styx didn’t get lost in such a terrible, dismal-looking place. 

The brambles and vines and thorns from the path and the hanging branches of trees tangling together are so thick now that Vira has to push them away so they don’t tear (too much) at her sleeves or her wings, or at Ozzy’s clothes. In the gaps she creates, Ozzy peers through the fog—and he thinks that, a short distance away, he can see something like a brick facade. 

“What is…?” he starts to ask, then stops.

Vira doesn’t say anything. She just leads him deeper and deeper into the thicket with its twisted vines and sparkling berries, closer and closer to the building.

“Ahhh…” 

The sound, like a breath on the wind, startles Ozzy. He jumps, whipping his head around frantically in search of something—anything—in the darkness. “Wh-what was that?!”

“What was what?” Vira asks.

“You are a long way from home, little Neopet…”

“Th-that!” Ozzy shrieks. “That voice! Who—what—?!”

“I have been waiting for you, Grey One. For someone who can wield my power…”

Ozzy keeps looking around, loosening himself from Vira’s grasp and spinning in place, as though he can find the source of that low, gentle, crooning voice whispering to him. Styx’s bowl falls from his hand, and he clutches at his ears. 

“I—I—I don’t care about that!” he yells out into the gnarled and wretched canopy. “I just want to find my friend!” 

“Your friend?” The voice speaks with dull surprise. “Ah, you must mean the Petpet who abandoned you…”

A part of Ozzy wants to say that Styx didn’t abandon him. What comes out instead is a shrill and desperate question: “D-do you know where he is?”  

A sigh, little more than a frigid breeze cutting through the trees, brushes past him. “I cannot help you find your friend. But…”

Ozzy tugs on his ears again, tears in his eyes. “B-but…?”

“But I can make it so you never lose anyone again.” 

The wind picks up. Vira braces herself against it, one hand up to obscure the lower half of her face. 

“I can make all of Neopia understand how you have suffered…” 

The hanging tree branches part before them, and so too do the brambles and vines around their feet slither out of the way. In their place is a wrought-iron gate, its black paint peeling to reveal grey metal underneath. Vira walks toward it, facing away from Ozzy, and Ozzy reaches out to stop her—

But she just keeps going, leaving him behind.

He scrambles to follow after her. And there, just beyond the gateway…

The room is a yawning, open space. Curling vines dotted with those strange, sparkling berries sparsely line the wall, leaking in through the cracks in the grey brick facade. Ozzy hardly notices them at all, though, because what’s taking up his attention is the small set of stairs in the centre of the room, leading up to a stone plinth. From the ground, thorns and vines weave around the stairs and sprout from the plinth, wrapping around something glowing with a strange, shimmering, monochrome oil-slick light.

A Paint Brush.

A Grey one.

Suddenly, it’s as if all the air in the room is sucked out of it, fleeing with a rattling gust of wind that sounds like rasping, echoing laughter. It grates against Ozzy’s ears, but something about it feels… soothing, almost. It doesn’t make him want to curl up and cover his eyes or ears like it did before. 

Now…

“Take it, Grey One,” the voice in the wind coaxes. “With the power of the Acrimonious Paint Brush, you can make all of Neopia grey, as well.” 

Ozzy wrings his hands together. Belatedly, he realises they’re empty, no longer holding Styx’s cereal bowl; but that thought is almost a distant whisper in his mind now. All he can see is that strange Paint Brush, and Vira walking toward it.

At the base of the stairs, she turns around to face him.

Then, slowly, she raises her hand. 

Vira’s teeth are sharp when she smiles. 

“Do it, Ozzy,” she tells him. “Take it. You can make Neopia a better place for Neopets like us. You can get your revenge on everyone who left you. You can make them see what you see every day. What we see.” 

Ozzy swallows. His foot shifts forward—not a step, not yet. But Vira stretches her hand out more insistently, and her red, red eyes are alight with fervour, with desperation. But her smile…

Her smile falters, like she can’t keep it up. Like some great emotion is trying to seep in through the cracks, just like the vines and berries through the grey brick wall. “Once everyone’s an outcast like us,” she says, “once everyone is grey and gloomy and ugly and twisted—then no one will ever have to be lonely again, Ozzy. No one.”

Lonely. There’s that word—the one he hates so much. The one that Vira had said to him, once, the first time he’d made tea for her, and he’d made it so weak she said she couldn’t even taste it. He had thought, back then, that she was talking about how lonely he was, but now, looking at her wavering smile…

She wants him to take the Paint Brush. She thinks it will help him—help them. His only friend left in the whole wide world is asking him to take it, to help paint a world for them where they’ll feel more at home. Where they’ll belong.

And she would never, ever lead him astray.

With a deep breath, and with all the courage he has left in him, Ozzy takes Vira’s hand. 

Together, they walk up the steps to the plinth. 

Together, they come to a stop before the Paint Brush.

“It might hurt a bit,” Vira says, gazing at the vines as she unlaces their hands and pats Ozzy’s shoulder encouragingly, “but I know you can do it.” 

Ozzy nods. He doesn’t look at her. He just looks at the Paint Brush, and its grey kaleidoscope shimmer, and the thorns and vines surrounding it.

He reaches through them. The barbs stick in his sleeve; the thorns tear at his fur and sink to the skin beneath. They’re sharp, and Vira’s right: it does hurt, but each prickle is a reminder to Ozzy of how much everything has always hurt. 

How much it hurt when he and Nyx lost their parents.

How much it hurt when his bullies tormented him.

How much it hurt when Nyx left.

How much it hurt when people would pass by him day after day, acting like he didn’t exist.

How much it hurt when Styx left. 

How much it hurt when he abandoned Ozzy, too. 

Just like everyone else.

Compared to that, the vines are nothing. Compared to Ozzy’s anger, billowing up inside him again and again and blossoming into something that finally, finally feels like purpose, nothing feels like it can ever hurt him again.

He takes hold of the Paint Brush, and for a moment, all the pain disappears. The vines and brambles surrounding him and digging into his flesh wither and fall away, crumbling into grey ashes on the dusty ground. And with them, so too does Ozzy fall away.

All that remains now is the Grey Painter.