Sketches.

Stooped over winded at the end of a long run, through a tunnel of lines and graphite shadows.

Clutching at salvation but still afraid. Darkness flees light but here it injures first.

Standing, huddled into themselves. The walls shifting sketched lines, this whole world sketched in scrawled gray pencil.

The haunts gather, swooping, dragging, drifting. Contorted faces of fear, anger, stares.

Black and white lines, inky shadows, empty white eyes and wide open mouths creeping closer.

The figure’s scribbled frame, oversized jacket, and gaunt, pleading, hopeless face will do nothing to keep away the shadows that seek to drown.

Clenched within the cowering figure’s folds is light, a sharp edged prism radiating warmth and color, happiness.

Its rainbow shines against the corner, pushing back the shadows only just.

Its warmth doesn’t penetrate it’s keeper’s desperation, claimed and created by the shadows’ world.

They know the prism is precious, necessary, to fight back but can’t access its power, can’t feel the warmth.

They haven’t ever see the worlds outside this dark frightening one, where the colors glow and the people do too. Where they’re not alone with the shadows.

Rainbows.

Other walking worlds occasionally bump into each other. Where the rainbows radiate from each other. Sometimes a rainbow world can see a black sketched one.

Some rainbows have the power to share, to power sketched prisms, tiny and feeble in their light, surrounded by shadows.

Some rainbows can see the shadows and part them. Some rainbows shine away the shadows unseen from distances not recognized.

Those rainbows shine, beacons for others to find their way into colorful, warm worlds.

Shadows.

Consume all they find.

Darkness that could be warm and comforting, instead filled with spikes, bitter cold, pain, and loneliness.

Swarmed with those shrieking haunts and silence when it’s most unwanted.

These shadows burn away, fade, and shrink against light and warmth accepted. But nip at the heels of weak, guttering lights, consuming a little more each instant.

They haunt this figure consumed with fear, unable to find the key to the prism they hold.

This prism is for maintaining light, and the flood of shadows overwhelms.

Prisms.

Rainbows hold prisms unless the shadows take them. Then they shatter.

Rainbows in light worlds can hold many or few. Maintaining, creating, sharing, energizing, and powering the light in these worlds, sharing it with others.

Prisms can only be bombarded with shadows for so long before they’re taken.

Now.

Rainbows have bumped into Sketch and could do nothing.

Today, Rainbow shines to sketch.

Prism shines back, thriving finally.

Shadows burned, chased, and shrunk to miniature.

Now the darkness doesn’t stab when rest is needed.

Sketch can understand the key.

Now takes seconds, instants, years or months. Everything together meshed powerfully. Apart is fallen to shadows.

There is no fall for this now.