Poppy and the Missing Colors

Sunfield was the sort of village that seemed to have been painted by the morning itself. Each roof and fence and garden brimmed with color as if someone had tucked rainbows into every corner overnight. Children chased one another between rows of bright houses, and the bakery door was always a warm, cinnamon-yellow that shone like a slice of the sun. Poppy, a small rabbit with soft gray fur and a knot of ribbons tied round one ear, loved those colors most of all. She collected scraps of ribbon and ribbon-bits that fluttered like tiny flags in the drawer beside her bed. Each dawn she chose one ribbon to wear, and each ribbon matched something she meant to notice that day: a blue one for cloud-watching, a green one for watching seed leaves, a red one for the apples on Mr. Rook’s stall. It made her feel as if she carried a little promise of brightness wherever she went.

On the morning everything would begin to change, Poppy woke to a kind of hush she had never known. The air still smelled of warm bread, and the dew still clung to the grasses, but the color in Sunfield felt thin and distant, like someone had turned a page in a book and left the pictures pale. The sky was a soft, tired blue, and the roses on Madam Wren’s fence looked as if someone had washed them in clear water one more time than was necessary. Poppy reached to the drawer for her favorite ribbon, the one stitched with tiny painted strawberries, and it seemed as though the red had been caught in a gentle rain and pulled faint. Her heart made a small, quick hop of surprise.

She slid her foot from the bed and padded to the window. Across the lane, the patchwork of gardens that always looked as if they had been sewn by careful hands was dimmer. Mr. Rook’s apples, which usually shone like polished coins, were dull as pebbles. Even the bell that hung from the bakery swung as if it were a little sleepy. For a moment Poppy thought the world had only tilted its face the other way, and color would tip back soon enough. She tied her ribbon, feeling its small softness, and went outside to see if anyone else had noticed. The road was strewn with a few fallen petals that had lost their bright edges. A cat blinked slowly by the fence and seemed to have lost some of the proud orange in her fur. As Poppy walked, a thin, puzzled feeling grew in her chest, like a button someone had missed when sewing a coat together.