Blended. Molten.

How is this blue so blue?

I'm on a palette, somewhere between green and  turquoise in a whirlpool of no particular colour. So I can take my pick. I can choose to be passionate magenta dabbed with yellow. Or earthy brown with a hint of cyan. I stretch my hand and dip a hesitant finger into the vortex, spinning all the colours just a wee bit more. Like ribbons and bunting bundled into old brown bags after a fete. A lone wisp of red escapes the blending, falls out of the bundle and onto the freshly-mowed lawn, startling a millipede into faster, more fluid movement.

Grass, trees, roads, people, traffic. A page in a book. A roll of film.

A blur.

Twenty-four.

The paint is creamy - soft, multi-hued ripples collapsing in on themselves, melting into one gigantic drop of being.

Voices meld into each other, competing to be heard; some striving to hide. They coalesce into one confused babble - the opening bars of Hey There Delilah, a semi-familiar 'Hey!', echoes not entirely identifiable, and the click-tick-tock of a fan overhead. Voices and faces that match, and others that don't. And so there are two worlds operating in parallel timezones, in twin realities. Living, breathing, walking noisily, busily by. Finishing unfinished business. All of it in soft focus. Like sunshine filtering in through foliage.

Like creamy, multicoloured dollops of paint. Dollops that fall onto paper with a convincing plod. Plod. Like a raindrop on a leaf.

Tilting lazily towards the tip. Elongating to cover distances, shrinking back to move forward. Like quicksilver, or a snowflake. Dancing along serrated edges; a cascade or a shower, all in one drop. Off the leaf, into a puddle below, in a ripple that melts into one gigantic drop of being.

Twenty-four.

Strange. The ripples swirl and disappear. Like mildly acrid wisps of smoke from a candle just blown out. Allowed to drip into a bowl of water, the freshly molten wax shows up as miniature pearls. Creamy white, convex, flawless.

Flawless, unending, perfect, clear. Just the same as an April sky. Or the colour of a baby's eyes. Like rivers and oceans in kindergarten finger-paintings. Like bell-shaped Majorelle flowers that are hard to tell from butterflies.

How is this blue so blue?

I lift my finger out of the palette and rub the paint into my palm. Decidedly smudged. No colour in particular. Then I dip my finger into the wayward wisp of red and dab on some of that, too.

Twenty-four.

"Yes, Ma'am". I sit up straight.