It was a time of darkness, when the people slept beneath fear’s inky thumb, and hope hardened in the mud. Still, there was freedom in small things, and there were those who knew how to use it, weakened as they were. One woman held the taste of red in her mouth, let it dissolve like sunset over the sea. The sharp spice of it, the heat of it, burned the shackles of her tongue, freed it like a long sleeping serpent awakened to wings. Her tongue became a bird with crimson wings and fiery tailfeathers writing incantations on the clouds, poetry on old hills and trees. Others around her woke in a blue funk, tasting stone and cold oatmeal. Their world flat and monochrome, a faded photo where they were forever trapped in a gray landscape, muffled mouse sounds and rusty water plinking in caves. They longed for lemons—the sunrise scent, sharp juice to curl the tongue, but could not remember yellow, not even green, and so that freshness passed them by, left them in the dust. Overhead, the woman circled, sang in scarlet tones—spells of freedom, spells of flight, then streaked to the horizon still singing, singing, waking tender blades of grass to sprout in rocky soil. The others, their ears stuffed with shed fur and dead leaves, never saw her go.
