You have a very vivid imagination darling

Rainy L. 9th - Baltimore, MD
There is a world that exists in the cracks between sidewalks, the space behind your sofa, that part behind your ear that you never clean.

It is immeasurable, timeless, and it knows no bounds. Its people are colorful, and wear clothes made of thin paper. The color is pure and shared. Nine beings rule over the rest of the land, and each have a seat in the High Council.

On the High Council, there is Rubrum, and there is Auran, and there is Pirum, and there is Virid, and there is Corelius, there is Uva, there is Ilex, and there is Niveus, and there is Nox. They are the never ending, the immortal, the ancient. The Council existed when the Land was only a spectrum in the eye of man. They were not known as the Council then, only as those who inhabit the Land.

It’s people are created from the Council. They are chips from the Council’s pointed heads and cylindrical bodies, shaped in the Council’s waxy hands and wrapped in paper from the Council’s own coverings.

The Council discovered early on their ability to make new beings. When the Land was first created, it was empty and colorless. You could not imagine it. The way is stolen from your mind, taken at a young age by the Council to keep you from the horror they felt when they first laid eyes upon the Land, void of anything at all.

In their haste to bring color to the Land, the Council dropped pieces of itself all over, all different colors. When they’d done all they could, they looked around and saw the little chips doing their part to bring color to the Land, and the Council was happy. They scooped the chips up and held them gently in their hands.

From the touch of the Council, the chips were given life. They were given one mission from the Council: Make the Land colorful. The chips agreed, happily bounding off to carve their own spaces in the Land.

Some of the Council scooped up different colored chips in their palms, and when these chips were given life, they fused together and made new shades the High Council had never seen before. These new colors were revered as strange and beautiful; soon, they too, were bouncing off to bring their color to the Land.

The High Council has an innate knowledge of this: A being who makes their home in the Land should not be excluded, they are allowed to roam free and share their colors.

The Land was created to serve you. It does so happily -- it lives in peace with you.

When you are young, you ignore those beings created by Ilex, and by Niveus, and by Nox. You wear down and break those created by Corelius, and by Rubrum, and by Virid.

You do not mean to hurt the Land. In truth, you are special. It is you, out of everyone in your world, that can see the Land and use the colors the Land has. You tell your elders of the wonder of the world you find behind the sofa, under your bed, and they pat your head. They say, you have a very vivid imagination, darling.

You are taught to see the Land in your early dreams, when you have only existed in your world for half a human year. The way is whispered into your dreams as you sleep, and when you wake, it is as if you were born with the knowledge.

When you age, you lose touch with the Land. Oh, you can still see the colors the Land brings to your world, you still know the names by which humans call them, but you forget the adventures you had with the beings created by Rubrum and by Corelius. And they forget about you, too. They cannot remember your name, or which of their people gave your eyes their beauty.

The people are not saddened by this. Nor are you. You cannot miss that which you do not remember. And there will always be more of you to bring the Land’s color into yours, and there will always be those people in the Land who are there for you to use. The Land will exist for as long as yours will, and perhaps even longer, for the use of the beings that come after you.

This is the beauty, my children, of the Land of Crayon.