It was so bright.
I squinted my eyes shut, unable to look at everything around me.
“I…I can’t see!” Elonyah said from near by. She sneezed, then sneezed again.
“Me either! It’s so…bright!”
I stood in the waist-high water, eyes slowly cracking open.
When it was finally bearable to open my eyes fully, I took a look around me.
There was so much color. My underused eyes could barely take it in.
“Elonyah! Look! What…what is this place?”
“Ceceleah, I think this is the world.” El’s voice was solemn.
I couldn’t help a laugh. “Yeah. I think it is.”
We squelched out way out of the water, eyes wide.
I suddenly turned and studied Elonyah. I could see her, see her features. She was dripping wet, her arms wrapped around a grey mat and clothing bundle. Her hair was a dark brown, clinging to the sides of her face. Her eyes met mine, wide with wonder. Her skin…was a pale, almost sickly white, revealing veins and dark circles under her eyes. Her lips? A purplish-blue tint.
I looked down at my own arms. My skin was the same color as hers. Purple and blue veins crawled up the inside of my arms. “We look…strange.”
“Yeah.”
Our eyes met again.
Voices rang out from nearby. “Hello there! Are you lost?”
I whirled around. My eyes were weak and struggled to focus. I finally located the source of the sound. “Um. Hello. We aren’t lost, exactly. We are…new here though.”
A half dozen people made their way toward us. They looked…different. Healthier. Their skin wasn’t the sickly cream color ours was. It was more of a tanned color. They were…rosier. Pinks and reds instead of blues and purples.
They stopped a few paces away from us, staring. “Where do you hail from?”
I glanced at Elonyah. She shrugged.
“We come from the caves.”
“Those caves?” someone asked, pointing behind us to the cavernous opening the river ran through.
“Yes. We…didn’t know there was a world out here. We didn’t know there was such a thing as light.”
They stared at us longer. “You’ve never left that cave? Do you at least have fire?”
Elonyah looked at me. “Fire?” She tested the word.
They gawped at us.
“How do you see?” a girl about our age asked.
“We…don’t.” I shuffled my feet, still cold, but the brightness was somehow warming me up. “It’s so warm and bright,” I said to Elonyah.
The people from outside seemed hung up on the fact that we had no light.
“I can’t believe it! Why wouldn’t you go explore, see if there is more to the world?” a skeptical man said, arms crossed.
“We live in the safest part of the world. There is nothing else. We stay here for our own good,” Elonyah and I recited in unison.
“At least,” Elonyah added, “that’s what the Leaders say.”
“And we did explore. Here we are now,” I gestured to the wide colorful world around me.
“You look like you’ve never seen the sun,” another commented. “I’ve never seen skin so pale.”
I looked down at my arms again. “Does sun change your colors?”
Someone chuckled. “The sun is the light in the sky. It does sort of change your color, at least from that white to something…healthier.”
I glanced up. There was so much to learn about this world.
* * *
I lay outside, staring up at the stars. A fire crackled a few paces away from me. It was hot and orange and bright. It was amazing.
Once the people managed to accept that we were, indeed, from a lost cave tribe, they ushered us to their village and showed us the world. There were windows, animals, hot food, fire, plants that grew in the sunlight.
It was all so much.
I rolled over and faced Elonyah, reveling in the fact that I could see her face. “El?”
“Hm.” She was laying on her back, arms crossed behind her head.
“Sorry I got upset with you earlier. This is…” I couldn’t find words to explain.
“Incredible,” Elonyah supplied.
I nodded. Just hours ago, we hadn’t known what a nod was, leaving us confused when people answered us like that.
After further clarification, though, we had both adopted the form. It felt…rebellious somehow. Like an act of defiance against the Leaders who had lied to us for so many years. Who had killed our parents because we dared to question.
“I’m never going back,” Elonyah burst out.
I laughed. “Me, either.”
The End of Part IV
