“Ah… colours. Well in it’s basic definition, colour is one of the elements that make up something, or someone. Some people call it your consciousness, some call it your soul. But at it’s core, it’s your spiritual identity, just like how you look, but on the inside. It’s all your core memories, what important choices you’ve made and will make, and your essential thoughts about you and everything around you. So if even a little bit of your colour is taken away from you, it could make you go insane, since a part of your inner spiritual identity is now gone. Basically, you don’t know who you are anymore, and you will be under the control of whoever now has that part of you, which is usually whoever took it away from you. This is how Motnja corrupts and controls his host!

-sips tea-

*chokes* *cough cough* *clears throat*

However, with the proper training, and if you know that your colour is going to or might be taken away, you can avoid going completely insane, and possibly have enough identity and will left to fight against the mind control. But if all your colour is taken away, this is impossible. Colour can also repair or create someone/something! If a part of someone’s colour is taken away, you can repaint it with the appropriate colour. This will not give the old identity back, but it will replace it with new identity and memories, thereby patching up their spiritual identity. You can also paint new life and new identities, or you just paint the structure of something, without giving it a spiritual identity. Depending on your skill and quality of your paintbrush, your painted constructs will last from 5 seconds to 10 minutes. Aside from the earth and all that lives on it, there has never been any recorded painted construct that has lasted more than 10 minutes! Doesn’t mean it’s impossible though! I painted tons of tools with my personal paintbrush to carve out the tree!” Hermit finished his tea, looking satisfied, but evidently weary from all the explaining.

I couldn’t blame him!

“So what about my paintbrush?”

“Ahh, yes. The paintbrush in your hands is Tsara. I couldn’t miss it.”

“What? But my last name is Blou, not Gray!”

“Well, often times, your last name comes from your dad, not your mom.”

“Well that explains it!” I exclaimed, excited that my paintbrush was so powerful. “But I can’t misuse it. Or my mother would have given it to the wrong person.” I thought, the excited grin on my face now a tone more serious.

“Ok so how do I use this?” I inquired.

“Well, that has to do with those wooden figures on the shelf just behind you.”

I turned around. I knew those were important!

“There are many different types of colours, but for now, we’ll focus on the three primary colours, Blue, red, and yellow. The figures on the top shelf are the basic movements for Blue, the ones in the middle for yellow, and the bottom shelf is for Red movements. A set of movements is called a Chroma Ritual. By practising Chroma Rituals, you will gain the basic forms to summon and paint one of the primary colours! Each colour has a different style. Simply put, Blue is fluid and interchangeable from defence to offence or vice versa, Yellow quick and evasive, and Red powerful and offensive. Painting trainees start by learning what primary colour they are most connected with, and start practising the style of that colour. A surefire way to do this is to know what colour you see first when holding a fairly high quality paintbrush. So tell me, when holding Tsara, what looked out of the ordinary for you?”

“Well, the river that runs near this tree always looked different from everything else when I held Tsara. It still looked natural, but not really normal.” I thought aloud.

“It looks like we got ourselves a Blue specialized painter on our hands here!” Hermit cheerily announced.

“Blue eh? Nice!”

“It’s almost the evening now, you should probably get back to town. I’ll pack up a few of the Blue movement figures for you, study them well when you get back home, and tomorrow we start your training! Now shoo! I’m done for the day!” Hermit tiredly instructed.

Shoot! All this time and I had forgotten about my dad at home! Well it’s not too bad, sometimes I do come home late. But I would have to hurry!

“From the tree, just follow the river upstream, and you should be back to your village in about 5 minutes!” he told me, handing me a sturdy cloth bag with three figures inside. "I would pat you on the back for sitting through my lectures, but i'm not that tall!" Hermit laughed merrily. Man! He talked so human-like I almost forgot he was a crab!

“Kay, bye! Thanks for everything!” I shouted back at him as I left. He smiled back. 

As I came closer and closer to the town, I saw the two apples I had stolen. Not wanting my work to go to waste, I picked them up and washed them in the river. The blue river. 

I smiled.

I had learned a lot today.