The Colour Blue [ON HOLD]

Chapter 2

Blue grinned suddenly. "What... like this?" he said, springing to the side and tackling a squealing Yve to the bed.

"Get off me!" she shrieked, giggling and screaming at the same time with typical eight-year-old precision. She squirmed and wriggled in her brothers grasp, eventually managing to kick him rather viciously in the stomach, causing Blue to reel back in defeat.

"Ow, watch it..." he muttered, and Yve sat cross-legged and folded-armed on the bed with a smug, satisfied expression, which changed dramatically to a silver-eyed glare in response to a very similar one belonging to Blue.

"No. They don't do that," Yve said matter-of-factly, her long, black hair pooling in her lap and her arms still folded proudly. If Blue had bothered to read the Harry Potter series, she probably would have reminded him of Hermione. He frowned, taking a moment to realise she was still talking about Dementors. "They kiss you. Sort of," she continued, before her eyes narrowed and her glare became more concentrated. "But don't you dare try that..."

Blue rolled his eyes and smiled. "Don't worry, I draw the line there," he laughed affectionately. "I'm not gonna sort-of kiss you," he added, before standing up and dropping a kiss on top of his little sister's head, causing her to squirm.

"Hey!" she pouted as Blue picked up his shoes and made his way out of her room. "You said you wouldn't-"

"Yeah, yeah... at least I didn't suck out your all your happiness, right?" he smirked, shutting the door behind him and ignoring Yve's indignant cries of "yes you did!"

Finally escaping the tight grips of family greetings, Blue hurried into his own room, collapsed on his bed and stared at the ceiling, the crumbling cracks in the plaster and the dim bedroom light staring back at him. Blinking, he dropped his shoes beside the bed and sat up again, relaxing in the comforting relief that the first day of term was finally over. And not as bad as he initially thought it would be either. He sighed deeply.

Wrenching off his tie, Blue walked over to the window, beside which was a slim, deep brown accoustic guitar. The one thing in the entire world (or at least his entire room) that he wouldn't let anyone so much as go near to, let alone touch, and most certainly not play. Yve had found that out the hard way, Blue remembered as he picked it up, smirking at the memory. Sitting back down on the bed heavily, he strummed out a few chords with a dark, mottled green guitar pic. The sound echoed around the room, vibrantly bouncing off the walls before fading to a distant hum. He grimaced, twisted the ebony tuning pegs until the chord moulded itself into shape. Happy with the sound, Blue strummed it again, the chords sliding into eachother and fitting like pieces of a puzzle.

After a moment he stopped, pausing and letting the sound ring out, before digging deep in his pocket and fumbling around until his fingers found the crushed, crumpled piece of paper he was looking for, smudged with graphite and torn around the edges. He smoothed it out carefully, and grey, barely readable words made an appearance. Lyrics.

It was kind of a hobby of his, though not exactly one he would boast about. In fact, he didn't tell anyone about it, not even Katie. Maybe it was partly because it seemed a little embarassing- it did seem like such a girly kind of thing to do, after all (unless you were in a famous band, because somehow that made it cool), but mostly it was just... private. It was his thing, and just the idea of sharing it with anyone was completely unthinkable. Some people like painting or poetry, some people act or sing or dance. Others make things or draw or write stories. Blue... well, he wrote songs.

He couldn't remember how or why or even when he had started. Some time after he got his guitar, he supposed, which had been a present from his mum to cheer him up after they arrived here. Six years ago. The day after... no, he didn't want to think about that. He didn't need to anymore, he didn't have to tell anyone. He didn't care that Katie knew, she knew because she was the one who stopped him. And if she hadn't, he would never have known her. He was only ten at the time, for god's sake. He didn't need to think about that anymore. He didn't have to tell anyone.

He hummed a vauge melody, occasionally mouthing the words and strummed the chords written above the words more confidently, eventually singing so softly it was almost whispering. He wasn't the sweetest of singers, and if it weren't for the fact he wrote songs, he wouldn't sing at all,  but he could at least hold a tune, and that counted for something. From time to time he would stop and scribble out a word with a very blunt pencil he found lying beside the skirting board, adding in words, taking out things that didn't fit, changing chords. He chewed his lip, scrawling a few final lines to the end of the song.

"Something in your being,

Tells you to keep running,

No matter what you're seeing,

No matter where you run.

Your paper lips are tearing,

And you didn't see it coming,

But the nightmare you're declaring

Is whiter than the sun."

It was odd and abstract, and so maybe he didn't write the most cheerful songs in the world, but darker songs have so much more feeling, Blue thought. They're more compelling, they draw you in. You feed off them, you feel every single painful emotion that is conveyed and so much more, not in a way that makes despair, in a way that makes you catch your breath and fill with dizzying understanding, a way that makes you crave more.

Something about the last two lines puzzled Blue. He was sure he had seen them before somewhere, though off the top of his head he didn't know of any song that had these lines or words, but they rattled around his brain, chasing eachother in circles and demanding to be discovered. He frowned, pondering this for a while. He was sure he had made this up, so he couldn't be stealing someone elses lyrics, could he? Unless he did it without thinking. After a while he gave up thinking, placing his guitar back beside the window and clumsily shoving the lyrics back in his pocket, but the lyrics were printed clear and bold  on his interweving thoughts, puzzling Blue even more.

"But the nightmare you're declaring

Is whiter than the sun."

Hm.