The Color That Waited: story transcript
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The Color That Waited
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At the family Easter picnic, Ada held up a plain wooden egg. "I want to give Grandpa a color nobody has named," she said. Grandpa adjusted his spectacles. "I shall test every proposal." An orange butterfly flashed past the picnic blanket. Ada followed.
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It settled inside an apple blossom. Up close, the white petals held a blush so faint Ada had to shade them with her hand. "Almost-Sneeze Pink," she whispered. Grandpa studied the blossom from three angles. "Accurate," he said, "but perhaps already sneeze-adjacent."
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The butterfly lifted off, leading them between the orchard trees. A patch of sunlight slipped through leaves onto a dandelion, turning its yellow crown nearly green. "Pickle-Sunshine!" Ada declared. Grandpa peered over his spectacles. "A promising name. Unfortunate on toast."
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At the orchard's edge, the butterfly visited a bluebell. Ada crouched close enough to see rainwater caught in its tiny cup. The blue deepened where the water touched. "Puddle-Bell Blue," she said. Grandpa nodded once. "Excellent. But the bell may have heard it first."
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Out in the meadow, the butterfly skimmed a clover flower, then returned to one small petal. Ada found a stripe of purple finer than a pencil line. "Secret-Sock Purple!" Grandpa took the testing seriously. "Whose sock?" "A bee's," said Ada. "Impossibly small," he ruled.
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The butterfly disappeared behind a buttercup. Ada circled it, searching for the next color. Instead she found Grandpa's face shining gold in the petal, upside down and round as a plum. He straightened his spectacles. "Do not name that," he said. Ada laughed too hard to answer.
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Then the butterfly climbed into the sunlight. Its wings looked orange, until they closed: brown as toasted sugar. They opened again, and a copper glint ran along the edges. Ada opened her notebook. Every name she tried stayed still on the page. The wings would not.
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Grandpa sat beside her in the grass. "A difficult specimen," he said. Ada looked from her egg to the butterfly, which was now a bright fleck above the meadow. "Maybe I don't need to catch its color," she said. She took out her pencils.
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Ada drew the places it had landed: a pale blossom, a sunlit dandelion, a bluebell cup, a clover stripe. She left a thin path of bare wood winding through them. When Grandpa turned the egg, each color seemed to chase the next. "Your verdict?" she asked.
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Grandpa turned the egg once more, slowly. "I've never seen that color before," he said. Ada placed it in his palm. "It's called Following-You," she told him. The butterfly came back through the orchard. Grandpa closed his fingers gently around the egg and looked up.
