Witch Begins
I'm going to tell you the story of how I became a witch.
Maybe nobody cares, but this is my diary, so I get to do whatever I want. Wait — nobody's reading this, right? I should probably put a spell on it. Something like: anyone who peeks at my diary becomes a nicer person. That way, at the very least, they can't go around talking behind my back.
Okay. Let's begin.
I was just a student.
The only slightly unusual thing about me was that I lived with three kittens I'd found on the street. My days were mostly the same, and over time the cats and I grew close. Sometimes I could swear we understood each other. I also loved sleeping — a truly unreasonable amount. By the time I opened my eyes, the sun was already high, and my three kittens and all the colorful drawings on my walls were there to greet me.
That morning felt off from the start.
The second I opened my eyes, I knew something was missing. It took me a while to figure out what. Every bit of green in my room was gone. My plant. The forest painting above my desk. All of it, a flat ashy gray.
I ran to the window. There was no green anywhere in the world. No green on the leaves, no green on the grass, no green on the street signs. At first I thought something was wrong with my eyes. But my family was shouting downstairs, and on TV the news anchor was talking about nothing else. Nobody knew why.
I scooped up my cats and held them. I was so relieved none of them were green.
Yellow went the next day. Sunflowers bloomed gray, and taxis lost their roofs to a dull nothing. Then blue. I sat at my window and watched the sky fade out, all the way down to the horizon, until it looked like a dirty dishcloth.
The day purple disappeared, I stood in front of my closet for a long time. My favorite purple hoodie was still hanging there, drained. When I touched it, it was still warm, still soft — but without the color, it was just fabric. Nothing. That was the first day I cried.
Within a week, only red was left.
Every sign on every street turned red. Rubies sold out. People started pulling red clothes out of their closets like they'd all gotten the same memo. The news kept asking, what happens if this one goes too? Nobody had an answer. Some people started hoarding red things in their basements. Like they were stockpiling color itself.
That night I drew a little red heart and taped it to my window. I held my cats close and climbed into bed. What happens tomorrow, if red goes too? I touched my own lips with my fingertip. Still warm. Still red.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. Green fields. A blue ocean. My lost purple hoodie. Where did all of it go? Who took it?
That was when something hit my window.
Thump. My desk shook. A picture frame tilted. And suddenly every red thing in my room — the paper heart, the edge of my blanket, the tag on a kitten's collar — started glowing. Like they'd been holding their breath, and they could finally exhale.
There was a dragon outside my window. The red gem set into his forehead was so bright it lit up my whole room. I screamed before I could stop myself.
"AHHH!" The dragon looked like he'd been screamed at before. He waited it out.
"I'm the last color left in the world," he said. His voice was calmer than I expected. "Maybe I'll disappear too, soon. There's a woman with a white face and a black cloak, and she's looking for me. She's already taken all my friends."
He paused. The light from the gem flickered, just a little. "I don't have any friends left. So — you're going to be my friend now."
"Hold on," I said. "We don't know each other at all. How can we just suddenly be friends?"
The dragon tilted his head. "Your cats go around telling everyone about it. How you make friends with every stray animal you meet on the street."
I had nothing to say to that. I turned around. All three of my cats were sitting in a perfect little row, staring at me with completely innocent faces.
I looked back at the dragon. Up close, I could see he was trembling, just a little. The gem on his forehead was dimming by the smallest amount — like his color, too, was starting to slip away.
I opened the window. I stepped up to him and wrapped my arms around him.
The second I held him, my hair turned red. There was a flash, and when I could see again, I was wearing a long black dress. My three cats were wearing small charms I'd never seen before, looking up at me like nothing unusual had happened.
The dragon called to me from outside. "Let's go. We're going to find all the colors you loved."
I put one foot on the windowsill and looked back. The gray room behind me, and my bright red hair, reflected together in the glass.
That's the night I became a witch.
