“What does blue feel like?”

Mica marked her page and closed her book. She marvelled, once more, that her little brother always knew where to find her and could approach ever so silently despite his blindness.

“I’m sorry Luc, I was reading and didn’t catch that. Could you say it again?”

“What does blue feel like?” he repeated, carefully lowering himself down to sit next to her on the front steps of the house.

“Now that’s an interesting question, little brother. I don’t know, but I will think about it. As soon as I find out, you’ll be the first one to know!”

That seemed to satisfy him, and they sat quietly for a while. It was the middle of the afternoon, the sun was softly warming their skin, the wind bringing noises and smells from the nearby community garden.

“The wind” said Luc, with a serious look on his face, “smells like living, growing things. You know, like grass and insects and carrots.”

Mica thought about that statement for a minute, then answered: “green. That would be the smell of a tender green. And forests smell like a darker, deeper green, with all the older growing things like trees and mushrooms and moss.”

“What about bananas?” asked Luc, his eyes wide open and full of mischief despite the milky veil covering them. They were green, the green of young grass in a sunny morning, and Mica would often get lost in them.

“Bananas? Let me see… Pink. Definitely pink. Like a soft, pastel pink. That’s what they taste like.”

“Green wind and pink bananas. Okay.”

His serious tone made her laugh. Like most children, Luc had so much curiosity, and treated every subject with equal seriousness, be it the taste of pink or the correct way to write “spectacle”.

“Do you know, your laugh sounds like a very bright, intense purple to me” said Mica, a huge smile on her face. She was having fun, trying to explain colors to her brother, and he seemed so happy that she just couldn’t stop.

And so the afternoon turned into evening, while brown was defined as the smell of Luc’s favorite meal: meat and potatoes cooked together in the oven. They discovered that red tastes like a strawberry/chocolate milkshake, and that the purring of a cat felt, most definitely, deep orange.

After dinner, as their parents put them to bed, Mica whispered in her brother’s ear, as softly as she could: “water. Blue feels like water. Good night, little brother”.

And for the very first time that night, Luc’s dreams were filled with colors.