The festival? Our village used to thrive on it.

Normally, we had dull green forests and grass. Dull brown mud huts and soil. Dull grey rainy skies and streets. Every farmer had dull eyes.

Ah, the festival. When I was a lad, we lived on that day. Laughter, chasing, eating fresh meat, listening to the crackling fat, watching the fire under the spit, dancing with all the grown-ups. Oh, and how the skirts used to twirl, the finery shake and shout on the men, each always trying to look flashier than the next…

But I woke up one year. I eagerly looked out the window.

Nothing.

Imagine a village without color; you might think black-and-white. Nope. Even black and white were colors, though odd ones. Even they were all gone.

I don’t know how to explain it without going to the cities and finding some egghead, but here goes: The world looked like a sketch, only we walked through it. No surfaces, just lines everywhere. Everything which had been… well, drained, I suppose… had nothing between you and whatever was inside. It was like walking through an X-ray.

We walked in a daze.

“What’s happening, Rich?” Julie followed me out the door. “What’s happening!?”

“It’s aliens,” said Old Bill. “Them’s aliens invading!”

“No, you old fool,” said George the blacksmith. “It’s Judgement Day. The Lord’s here to pack up Creation!”

“Don’t be daft,” said Maisy the grocer. “It must be government, pollutin’ our village with nucular waste…”

Yet as I watched, the people became frames. One moment, I saw Julie, and Old Bill, and George, and Maisy. The next, I saw… four frames. They were human-shaped, but not human. Like they’d been switched off.

They spoke, but now it was just waves and numbers in the air. That was what sent me running from the village. I could see through their heads, into a mass of lines – their brains, I think – and I could see words being built. I could see their thoughts, like clockwork.

The festival wasn’t there. No bunting, no children, no spit-roasts, no dances. Just lines.

I ran as far as I could. The hill nearby turned to lines as I rushed, and then: I saw it! The colors rushing away like water. I fell to my knees, shocked. Aliens, spirits, demons, something even crazier?

But I thought of Julie, reduced to lines and numbers. That moment, I found my courage. If there was the slightest chance I could stop this…

I followed the colors. They ran uphill and into a cave that wasn’t there yesterday. I crept inside.

I saw… I’m not insane. What I saw was a dragon.

Or maybe not. Color rushed around it, leaving lines. Then it all shot up like a waterfall going backwards, rushed into its snout, rushed into its fanged mouth.

I stared.

It spotted me. That grin…

“Color wasn’t meant to exist,” it said. “Color has no place in reality.”

“Says who?” I said before I could stop myself. I was dead. Whatever I did, I knew I was dead.

“Your kind has probed reality from the furthest stars deep in the sky, to the strangest particles in the heart of an atom. Where in all those equations of yours can… color exist?”

“Well, it… it exists in our heads, right?”

“Ha! There is no color there. You delude yourselves! Color is just a primitive delusion! It breeds ill thoughts. It sickens you.”

“I can’t let you do this.”

“Let me? [i]Let me!?[/i] Ignorant ape!”

It leapt right at me, crashing through the cave. I felt its hot breath, only going away from my skin. I saw the color leaving my arms…

But that’s the thing about color. It’s the pigment of imagination.

I thought I was going to die. I thought desperately of the old festival colors, of the laughter that had its own ineffable quality, of the rosy hue of my wife Julie’s cheek on the pillow –

Then the dragon screamed. All the color in its body trembled. I think now it was trying to obey my mind.

It tore the dragon apart.

And that was how I brought color back into our village. No one can take color from your mind unless you let them. Let nobody say that they’re not real. Color makes you [i]you[/i].

No, I ain’t had too much to drink, you cheeky monkey! Your old man could do with another pint, though! If Julie hasn’t hidden the bottles yet…