Hey guys! I hope you’re not getting tired of contest entry posts. 😦 I’ll hopefully do a photography post tomorrow. (I still have WAY too many photos to show you!)

Anywho,  I’m participating in Misty’s really fun writing challenge, Aspiring Authors Writing Challenge, or AAWC for short. (Read about it here.) (And see my other entries here.) The word prompt for this challenge was “Broken.” I can collect two extra points for my team if I work my team mascot (I’m on Team Swan) into the story, so I did! (Although I just mentioned it a little bit – does that still count, Misty?)

I took a photo of my friend’s eye recently and super-edited it. I included it because it fits perfectly with the story. In fact, the photo was kind of like an extra prompt for me.

And now, I present…

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Blue Eyes

I am Nadia. I am average – average height, average weight, average everything – except for my eyes. They are blue. Blue like the sky of long ago, my grandparents tell me. And that is why I leave tomorrow.

Mati and Pati, my grandparents, often tell us an old legend about our land back when it was bursting with color…

Our land was once beautiful and bountiful, the envy of every kingdom for miles around. But then the storm came. This was no puny rain shower; this was a storm. Dark gray clouds swept furiously across the sky, rumbling and grumbling with every step forward. They ripped themselves apart and drenched the land with their angry tears. It rained for days, then weeks, a long gray drizzle. Finally it stopped. Everyone rushed outside into the dimness, waiting for the sun to break through at last and turn the darkness into dancing, shining, living color again. But it never happened. The sun came out, true, but it was pale and peaked as if it had been through a long illness. It did not bring color with it. The storm had killed the color, crushed it, and shattered it. Ever since there has been no color in our land.

Besides the blue of my eyes, these are the only colors I know: black like midnight without stars, white like the swan that eats our breadcrumbs tossed into the lake, and the infinite shades and tints of gray in between. My eyes are the only spots of color in our otherwise colorless land. Our world is broken and no one can fix it.

Except for… me.

My grandparents always tell me at the end of their story, “You are the only one who can mend our broken land with your blue, blue eyes. You are the only one who can keep color alive.”

So I leave tomorrow, after I turn ten years old. I will make the long journey over the gray mountains alone, and I will bring color home. I remember exactly what I must do: I must fill my cupped hands to overflowing with color, and carry my precious burden carefully homeward, sustaining the color and keeping it alive with occasional glances from my blue eyes through the colorless grayness. I must bring healthy color home, and lay it gently on the ground. Then, Mati and Pati say that the color will take root like a flower, and grow and spread throughout the land until at last, there will be dancing, shining, living color again.

That is my mission: to mend my broken land with my blue, blue eyes. And I will carry it out.

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I am terribly glad that our world is not like Nadia’s! Wouldn’t it be so sad if God hadn’t made our world colorful? (Well, of course we wouldn’t know any better then, but still…)

I hope you enjoyed reading this! Have a colorful day!

***Allison***