18 Rainbow

She dances on air. Colours swirling beneath her. Above her. In her head. She is in a tunnel of light of a million wavelengths.

She had spent a hundred years crying. And another hundred years in a dark room with no exits. Every day she could hear the villagers’ voices from outside.

She burst out of her confinement in a frenzy, froth and blood dripping from her mouth. Her nails ripping and tearing everything within reach. Including herself. Her strength spent, she lapsed into forgetfulness and went somewhere else for a while. Somewhere with green grass and a warm summer sun. A place where there was always enough to eat and where the water was clean.

But then one day she was back at the village, and the wells were polluted with corpses.

The smell reached out for her. Grabbed her by the throat and made her eyes water. Faces surrounded her. Faces of strangers, although some seemed vaguely familiar. She clawed at them, threatened them, implored them to leave her be. She tried to run, but every time she slept, she was brought back to the very same place. Every day it looked the same, smelled the same and there was no one alive but her.

Then the colours raced across the sky and she had somewhere to go again. The colours led her away and after a while they came down from the sky to her. She mounted her Bifrost carefully. Perhaps she was too slow. Before she got far something gripped her, and her path was changed once more. She ended up in another village, this time with live people. And the colours followed her there.

She congratulated the villagers for their luck to have such wonderful colours lighting up their village. And also for their clean wells. And their life.

After a while the colours seemed to dim. She rushed around the village, trying to find out where they were going. Then she found out. They were rising into the air again. She climbed onto a roof. Something tried to tug her down, but she made it let go, and there was a thump somewhere below her. Then the villagers shouted at her and at once she was back in the dark room.

It felt even darker now that she had seen the colours. She banged at the walls and asked the colours to come back. Just for a little while.

After millennia, she saw the sun again. It glinted through the branches of a tree, and there was a rope.

Then at last the colours returned to her.

She dances on air.

Colours swirling.