Shades Of Black And White

• Georgina Ray, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2019

Shades of Black and White
Our earliest memories were times of white. Your hand in mine, we would race out of the broken back gate and explore our three-block world. It was a world that was an ocean to us, though; our hull was wherever our feet touched the ground, our destination was however far we could run, and our dreams filled our glittering white sails. We could see almost nothing else but each other and our happy, selfish, white filled days.
But, as we soon discovered, where there is light there is darkness. Where there is white, there is also black. The blackness did not come straight away. It took its time. But when it did finally come, it tore through our white with the frightful force of a hurricane, bringing tides of black with it: Sadness, pain, anger, and insufferably hard days.
The blackness came in many forms; it came in the tears you shed, it came in the cuts and bruises on your arms and the grief they brought me, in the words I was too afraid to speak and all the emotions that churned, twisted, and knotted within me, as our little boat was tossed on the ocean that was now an endless, violent, black mass.
We were sure it would kill us. That it was only a matter of time before it would break our minds and tear our bodies to shreds. And so it might have if the darkness had not also taught us something else; the fear of losing the other to the monsters lurking in the shadows. It was an intense and powerful fear that we had never felt before and, sometimes, it is the powerful feelings that can make extraordinary things happen. I looked at you, and you looked at me, and we both came to realise how the darkness was pulling us away until we would both be truly alone.
We clutched each other’s hands desperately, as though thorny shadows might reach out from the blackness and pull one of us down, deeper into the abyss, and in that simple action, we discovered something we did not expect: A faint whiteness spilling from our hands. It was the white that existed within us. Slowly we began to look closer and saw that differing shades resided within us too, not just around us.
Inconsistent shades fluttered, wilted, disappeared, and then reappeared in no order or pattern. Black existed around us and inside us, and at times it’s impossible not to be overwhelmed by it. What we didn’t understand at first, was that we couldn’t always tap into the white within us. Sometimes, you needed someone else to bring it out for you. Someone who would care enough to bring out that almost forgotten shade of white: You; my best friend, my better half, the white to my blackness and vice versa.
Two such flames made the choice to wander through life together, two flickering but strong flames in the shifting shades of black and white.