Work Text:
And every color that would be seen, was first seen at the first sea. The beginning of all beginnings, where all things were born to be.
The pink of a peony, the living heat of grass. The black of ebony, the faint blue of glass.
And a thousand thousand thousand more roiled in a choir of discordant hum. In this chaos, did some colors, seek more than just to become.
They would be called Gods, those things that colors woven together made. And at the end of a river of haze, was a God of many colors unnamed.
We would call her camel-brown, though her forms were aplenty.
We would name it passion-red, the art of life she constantly bled.
She would only call that shame, the fact that she reached but never caught. So many brush strokes on the canvas, to her, all for naught.
That burden-guilt she would self-blame, the fact that despite her bleeding, her art was mundane, and screamed for her conceding.
Though it seemed her own blood might drown her pursuit for proof-of-existence, tougher than steel was her resolve, even as contradictions refused her heart's call.
For though she hated herself and her myriad creations, she hated more to not be; her greatest resistance.
For she was Ena, she was pink, she was the ocean's wavering edge. That thing that always changed but could never be called dead.
So it was, and so she was, pushed around by world's evolution. And for a time she was alone, until that moment of revolution.
A color she could not place, she saw in the distance. No saturation, no hue, just quiet nonexistence.
She approached, though carefully, with her pen and brush. And with a hush, a gentle touch, to the thing that was not much.
But suddenly, at contact, it was, all bright and ever pink. And blue and white and as if that body was always there, one would think.
That body that called herself Mizuki, who a cloak so sparkling bore. And, though hidden, masks and layers of armor, as if waiting for a war.
A God's friendship was not light, the forced mixing of clashing domains. But step by step, each other's words, they explored, until only intimacy remained.
Mizuki knew Ena for those loud pinks and reds, yes, but so too did she see the quiet palette of her dress.
That blind-spot of every artist, when they put their heart to the page. Those things they had no choice but to love, but to rage.
Unknowing, part of her palette was a thousand smiles of different shapes. One when Mizuki teased, her mouth slightly more agape.
One when she felt she was heading in the right direction. The kind Mizuki hoped was not her internal misdirection.
And that strange one that she bore when she made eye contact with her. One that seemed to set fire, to make Mizuki's skin burn.
Ena knew Mizuki for those quiet pinks and blues, yes, but so too did she see the screaming colors behind her jests.
The colors that bore weight too heavy for one to ignore. The colors one could never let go lest the world break under its maw.
The interruption of a sentence mid-way, when she was too scared to simply say. The hundred smiles she used to hide, conceal away.
And one day, much like that day of revolution. She saw Mizuki as she was, all the layers peeled away, no more protection.
Well, it was hard to say that Ena truly did see, for all there was before her was a color too scared to be.
Too scared to smile in that way Ena found familiar. Like when they wore the same dress and the distance between them shrank in that similar.
Too scared to want in that way Ena found familiar. Like when they both brushed against each other and the world felt off kilter.
Too scared to breathe in that way Ena found familiar. As if Mizuki thought if she was too loud, it would kill her.
Nothing, no blue, no white, no pink.
A touch, first, she makes, and yet still no response. A broken empty shell, no candle lit in the sconce.
Anger next, but even then, the nothingness remains. It would not have been unfitting to play some grim refrain.
And Ena looks at Mizuki's palette, empty down to the white plastic. A God with no colors, not even that favorite sarcastic.
And so Ena looked, for the first time, at the wastewater. The liquid left after painting was over.
It was muddied, yes, but no matter, Ena thought. She could not repaint Mizuki, but something similar, she could make wrought.
A little blue from the corner of a tea they both shared. The fragrance of a cafe, to forget, they would never dare.
Some pink she had borrowed from Mizuki one day. For in all the world's oceans none could match her style's way.
The way that she was, the way that she wasn't. Ena saw both what was shown, and a bit of what lied past the chasm.
The chasm of Mizuki's heart bore a color too in that pain. And Ena soon realizes it was the color she bled, the same.
So she paints around Mizuki, with colors not quite right. Save for the smile she could never forget, and the refusal to die, both their might.
A God's intimacy was not light. Ena would leverage this until, she prayed, life.
And though the painting was long, for a color snuffed out was hard to relight, the wick and the wax did not disappear, and there was no such thing as an eternal night.
The pink of a hair bow, the living heat of one's hands. The black of contradiction, the fragile blue of glass.
And so there were, two gods of many colors. Some different, some desaturated like a day gone dour.
But some colors the same, for past all the flames that had been smothered, was the simple fact that Mizuki and Ena were made of each other.