Gray. All I can see is gray, the second my eyes flutter open. Where am I? Is this the utopia that these people–my people–were blindly infatuated with? 

Was this my future?

Mother used to say that the future would hold so many possibilities, so many colors, so much life; but the sight in front of me dares to prove her wrong.

It's as if the dry, insipid color seeped through the earth and absorbed into where the lively, bright colors once were. The former blue sky was now stained by the dense smoke and fog. The only thing anyone can see is the scarce shine of the sun, barely peeking out of the angry clouds.

Dark concrete runs throughout the city, and the one morsel of Sun’s light quickly gets absorbed in the rocky pathways having nowhere else to go, thus making the air unbearably hot. Over the roads tower the dull silver skyscrapers (occasional muted blue ones– if you were lucky enough to see them), the tall architecture intimidates the tiny people below. Though the sun was beginning to fall from the blackening sky, signaling the time of rest, there were no signs of colored lights, as you would imagine in a flourishing city; no red flashes from shadowed buildings, no yellow-ish fluorescent lights shining through the box windows, and the street lamps were rather dim, like there hadn’t been a single maintenance worker there to fix them.

Though it hasn’t rained in over a month, according to the eight-year-old girl who stopped her skipping down the street to compliment my band shirt, the atmosphere smells damp, like wet wood, despite the lack of nature. The humid scent and heat of the city on my arms twists my stomach.

“Would you believe that I am from the past? Or that I know what the colors you learn about in school actually look like?” The child raises her eyebrows and her head tilts in slight confusion, but the beam in her eyes never leaves.

“Sure, Miss Time-Traveler.” Then, a beat of silence.

“Why are you so happy?” I ask the smiling child, my expression the complete opposite, “Don’t you wish you could’ve lived in a world that was more…alive?” My pupils glance around the morbid city. I hear her softly giggle before answering.

“How do you know that it can’t become that way?”

There was an ancient river, the Atlantis River, that flowed through our city. It’s said to have been here since the age of the Roman Empire, dried up and revived due to droughts and many other natural disasters throughout the centuries. Now, I see it tear through old Evelight Street, a small bridge perched above the violently cracked concrete.

“The real name is Atlantis River, Miss Time-Traveler,” Smiling Child explains, and I nod like I hadn’t known, “but the big kids renamed it Blue River, as a symbol of hope.” I look out at the small river, seeing the opposite of the name: gray ripples, swaying with the wind. Occasional white foam would froth at the bank, but even the small suds would wash back into the calm river, becoming dark once again.

Smiling Child suddenly grabs my hand with her soft one, tugging me along in her trail, her signature skip taking consuming her body automatically. Her thumb rubs over my calloused knuckles, her index finger occasionally brushing against my smooth nails that were covered in polish only I would know the color of.

“Come on, Miss! My city tour is almost over, you just need to see my house! Mama’s home, and she’d love to meet you. You look a lot like her, especially your eyes,” Smiling Child rambles on.

We trudge along the cracked sidewalks, walking an oh-so-familiar route as deja-vu consumes me. I know the streets we walk on– the little pothole that I always tripped over, the large willow tree that hadn’t changed one bit except for the drained color– all of them connect in my brain as they trail into a path that I could feel on the tip of my brain but not quite remember what it was. Smiling Child tugs me onto Creek Avenue, and my brain unfreezes, freeing me from my inability to remember. This was my street.

My hands start to tremble as she leads me across the path the school bus would drop me off, where I would walk until I reached the white, wooden house whose walls were stained with the grass’s dye, and now, only dark spots show. My eyes frantically scan my house, seeing that the old Easter wreath tossed next to the bushes, next to the staircase that leads to the tinted front door.

“Why did you bring me here? I thought you were bringing me to your house, so I could meet your mother?” Smiling Child tilts her head at my question and softly laughs.

“This is my house.” A breath catches in my throat.

“What?” the question barely leaves my lips before Smiling Child bangs on the door.

I only wait a few excruciating seconds before it swings open, revealing a middle-aged woman, about forty years old. Her eyes are swollen red, like she just finished crying mere moments ago. Her eyes immediately lock onto me.

Her hair falls down until the small of her back, matching my same wavy hair, although less unkempt than how I was wearing it. And her eyes––her pupils expand as she scans my face, one of her eyes seeming lighter than the other one. Exactly like mine.

I look at the woman, myself, as she stares back at me, a knowing glint in her eyes and a soft smile adorning her lips.

“Mama, this is Miss Time-Traveler!” Smiling Child, my child, introduces me as she climbs one more step to stand next to her mother.

“I know, darling,” the woman smiles, her gaze locked onto me. She looks at me as she is about to cry if I were to utter even a sound. Seconds and minutes pass like the wind as I do nothing but look at my older self, wondering if this was a dream and wanting so badly for it to be so.

“Miss Time-Traveler,” Smiling Child gasps, abruptly tugging on my shirt, and her eyes shine more than they usually do as they glance behind me, “I was right.” Warm heat blankets my back and calves, my goosebumps immediately softening down. 

Heat?

Slowly, the grass turns green and the dark buildings become lighter hues of brown and teal behind Smiling Child, my shadow blanketing over her. The sky’s gray color fades into a light blue, and the clouds turn back into pure white. I move to the side, watching gold slowly paint over her face, finally seeing my smiling child’s eyes– one green, one brown; just like mine. I whip around, my mind greedy and desperate to see the dear colors that have been extinct since I’ve arrived. I swallow a breath as I admire the sight in front of me.

There it is.

Golden sunlight–and then, the blue Blue River.

“Looks just like how I remembered it,” I hear a soft voice from behind me. I don’t have to look back to know who it was. I simply nod, a smile stretching across my face and salty water welling up in my heterochromic eyes as they burn from the sunlight.