White, the absence of all color.

Colors can be painted over it, smeared above it, but never created from it. White does not exist, it is a meaningless oblivion, devoid of life, and, above all, color. For years, I can remember tutor after tutor drilling that into me day after day when I was younger until I had it memorized word for word: “White is the absence of all color. White is the absence of all color. White...” But not once did I understand it.

I had been younger then, and not of much use to my parents at the inn. During those days, before I grew old enough to attend to the menial labor demanded of by the hostess of an inn for wandering travelers, I had attended lessons with the children of wealthy merchants and nobles whose pale, fair, uncalloused skin did not know the meaning of hard work. It had been almost four entire seasons since I had left the tutelage to work at the inn, and still I can repeat that specious saying over and over:

“White is the absence of all color...” but after awhile, I lost interest in what my tutors told me, and I began telling others the truth, “White is the presence of all color... white...”

A dreamer, one of my tutors called me, one who walks in the world of substance, but who looks into the world of illusion. Out of all the words I have been labeled, perhaps that is the closest one to the truth. I saw the world as others could not, white was not the absence, but the presence of all color. An explosion of color, a brilliant light that beckoned many with its prisms of color. A color that sung in the sweetest melody and shone with the light of life and warmth. But of color most of all.

Of course, there were many times when my insight blinded my real sight. Another popular axiom that had been pounded into me was: “Black is the sum all colors. Black is the sum all colors. Black...” is the color of darkness and death, the very opposite of white. It was an empty void that swallowed all light and life into its gaping maw. A dismal hole where no color could survive. Others saw black with ease, they saw it in the shadows, the night, the darkness, the uncertain. I was blinded to it, blinded by the brightness of white.

A dreamer, I had been called. One who saw the world through glimpses and distorted visions and believed it to be the whole picture. Someone who understood the surreal, and yet never saw it face to face, only in the safety of imagination.

One bright, beautiful, white summer, a summer full of life and color, that changed. I met the darkness, the psuedo-color black, the corporeal shadow with no dreamworld as a guard.

It was the summer of the wild rose, whose thorns scare away many an admirer until the flower blooms in full and beauty overcomes pain and fear. It was to be my twelfth midsummer, when on midsummer’s eve, the day before my Turning, my entire world came crashing down around me, and I finally began to blossom in full and understand completely white, the color of white.