Chapter 1
The studio always smelled of old paint oil and damp wood.
Even after months of being untouched, the scent of turpentine still lingered in the air like something refusing to die.
Elias sat in front of the canvas.
Or at least, he thought it was a canvas.
The white haze in his eyes made the world look like a shadow that had forgotten its own shape. Light still existed. Faint outlines still moved in the distance. But color—the thing he once trusted most—was slowly disappearing from his life.
His hand searched across the table until it found a brush.
Cold.
He gripped it too tightly.
One line appeared across the canvas. Then another. Then another.
No shape. No life.
Elias’s breathing grew heavier.
With a rough motion, he swept the table beside him.
Paint bottles crashed to the floor one after another. Thick liquid spread across the ground like wounds too exhausted to bleed.
“Pointless…” he muttered.
The brush slipped from his hand.
Rain whispered faintly beyond the window.
Once, Elias could paint rain after looking at the sky for only a few seconds.
Now even light felt like mockery.
Tok.
Tok tok.
A small knock echoed at the studio door.
“Go away,” he said flatly.
No answer.
Only the sound of something brushing against the wood.
Then a child’s voice:
“Are you hungry?”
Elias let out a long sigh.
“I said go away.”
The door opened slightly.
A thin strip of evening light slipped through the gap.
And there stood a little girl with messy hair and a tall glass in her hands.
Orange.
It was the only color Elias could still recognize these days.
“I made it myself,” the girl said proudly.
“Mora?”
The little girl stepped inside without waiting for permission.
“My dad says carrots are good for your eyes.”
“And your dad probably said not to walk into strangers’ houses.”
“This is a studio, not a house.”
She placed the glass on the table.
The sound of glass touching wood felt strangely clean in Elias’s ears.
“Drink.”
“I’m not a rabbit.”
“I’m not a doctor either.”
The answer came too quickly for someone her age.
Elias almost threw her out again. But the faint sweetness of carrot juice slowly filled the studio air that was usually cold and old.
Mora looked at the paint spilled across the floor.
“All the colors fell down.”
“They don’t matter anymore.”
“Why?”
Elias laughed quietly.
“Because I can’t see them anymore.”
Silence lingered for a few seconds.
Usually people apologized after hearing that.
But Mora simply walked closer to his canvas.
“You’re lying.”
Elias frowned.
“What?”
“You can still see.”
“I’m almost blind.”
“Yeah. But not empty.”
Elias wanted to get angry.
Really.
But the little girl stood in front of the canvas, tilting her head as if she were thinking about something very important.
Then she said softly:
“If you really couldn’t see anymore… you wouldn’t be sad about losing colors.”
Mora came again the next day.
And the day after that.
Always with the sound of small footsteps in the wooden hallway and the clinking of glass bottles inside her cloth bag.
Sometimes carrot juice. Sometimes orange juice. Once, a strange mixture that tasted like tomatoes being punished too harshly.
“It’s healthy,” Mora insisted.
“It’s a crime,” Elias replied.
The studio slowly began to change.
Not much.
The dust was still there. Old paints still dried at the corners of the table. And Elias still spent long hours sitting in front of empty canvases.
But now there were other sounds in the room.
The sound of Mora talking to herself. The sound of paper being cut unevenly. The sound of tiny footsteps running toward the window whenever it rained.
Sometimes Elias felt annoyed.
Sometimes he secretly waited for it.
—
“What color is the sky today?”
The question slipped out one afternoon without warning.
Mora turned toward him immediately.
“You’re asking me?”
“No. I’m talking to the cabinet.”
Mora giggled.
“Today…” She thought hard. “It’s the color of soup with too much water.”
“That’s not a color.”
“But it feels like one.”
“Feels like what?”
“Tired.”
Elias fell silent.
Strange.
The description made no sense—yet somehow it felt closer than ordinary color names.
“What about the grass?”
“Cold.”
“That’s not a color either.”
“But the grass feels cold today.”
For years Elias had studied color theory, composition, and light.
Yet this little girl described the world as if everything had feelings.
And somehow—
he was beginning to understand.
That night, after Mora went home, Elias sat alone in front of the canvas.
His fingers brushed across the old palette beside him.
Its surface was rough and cracked. Once full of colors. Now everything felt the same.
Dead.
He picked up a little paint.
For the first time in a long while, he did not try to remember what the color looked like.
He tried to remember what it felt like.
“Cold grass…” he murmured.
The brush moved.
Slowly. Hesitantly.
But alive.
He mixed sand into the paint.
The texture changed.
Rough.
His fingers touched the surface of the canvas carefully.
And suddenly—
he could feel the painting.
Not see it.
Feel it.
The days that followed became a strange routine.
Mora came carrying pieces of the world with her.
She described the sky like food left cooking too long. Rain like tiny nails falling from the clouds. Evening sunlight like warm soup.
And Elias began to paint again.
But not like before.
No more realistic faces or perfect details.
Now his canvases were filled with:
rough textures,
thick layers of paint,
broken lines,
shapes that felt more than they looked.
And always—always—there was orange.
Sometimes only in the corner. Sometimes just a thin line.
But it was always there.
One day Mora arrived carrying a large plastic bag.
“I brought supplies.”
“You sound like you’re preparing for war.”
“This is more important than war.”
She pulled out:
sand,
pieces of fabric,
sawdust,
dry leaves,
eggshells.
“That’s garbage,” Elias said.
“That’s texture.”
Mora walked toward one of his paintings and touched its surface.
“This one feels like angry rain.”
“That’s not rain.”
“But it feels like it.”
Elias said nothing.
Mora touched the rough paint again.
“So people can see with their hands too, huh?”
That simple sentence stayed in Elias’s mind for a long time.
As the days passed, Elias realized something.
He was no longer taking colors from his wooden palette.
He was taking them from Mora.
From the way she saw the world.
From her voice. Her laughter. Her strange descriptions that somehow always felt true.
The old palette slowly became untouched.
Meanwhile, without realizing it, Mora began choosing colors for him, opening paint tubes, placing brushes into his hands.
Without either of them noticing, the role of the palette had slowly changed.
Then one day, Mora didn’t come.
The studio became quiet again.
Too quiet.
Elias sat in front of the canvas for hours without moving.
No clinking glass bottles. No tiny footsteps. No one describing the sky as tired or the rain as cold.
He tried to paint.
The brush moved.
Then stopped.
Empty.
When Mora finally returned the next day, her face looked troubled.
“My parents said I come here too often.”
Silence fell across the studio.
“They’re right,” Elias said softly.
Mora looked up immediately.
“You want me to stop coming?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it sounded like it.”
Elias lowered his head.
Because part of him was afraid.
Afraid of getting too used to her presence. Afraid the studio would die again if Mora disappeared.
He tried to paint again.
But his hands trembled.
“I can’t do this alone,” he admitted at last.
The words escaped before he could stop them.
Mora stepped closer and gently placed something into his hand.
A paint tube.
“This one,” she said softly.
“Orange?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Mora thought for a moment before answering:
“Because it was the first color that made you want to live again.”
A few weeks later, Mora came with another idea.
“We should hold an exhibition.”
“I never said I wanted one.”
“But you have so many paintings.”
Mora made a poster with large messy letters:
AN EXHIBITION MEANT TO BE TOUCHED
LOOKING ONLY IS FORBIDDEN
The preparations were chaotic.
But the studio slowly transformed.
Dust was cleaned away. Windows were opened. Canvases were arranged.
And for the first time in years, Elias was no longer afraid of the sound of morning.
The exhibition day arrived beneath a cloudy sky.
At first only a few people came.
But slowly the studio filled with footsteps and quiet whispers.
People touched the paintings carefully.
Some closed their eyes.
Others cried silently without understanding why.
“The surface feels warm…”
“This one gives me chills.”
“It feels like waiting for someone to come home.”
And for the first time in his life, Elias heard people feeling his paintings instead of merely judging them.
An old artist who used to exhibit alongside him stepped closer.
“This doesn’t even look like painting anymore.”
Once, words like that would have destroyed him.
Now Elias only answered calmly:
“I know.”
Before the man could speak again, an elderly woman touched one of the canvases and whispered softly:
“This painting reminds me of my son.”
The studio suddenly fell silent.
And in that moment, Elias finally understood something.
He had not failed as a painter.
He had only stopped being the painter he used to be.
That night after the exhibition, the studio became quiet once more.
Mora sat exhausted on the floor.
“We did it,” she whispered.
Elias smiled faintly.
“We almost started three fires.”
“But we did it.”
A comfortable silence settled between them.
Then Mora asked:
“Are you happy now?”
Elias stayed quiet for a long time.
His eyes were still clouded. The world was still blurred.
But now he also:
waited for mornings,
opened the windows,
listened to the rain,
and painted again.
“…I don’t know,” he answered softly. “But the world doesn’t feel finished anymore.”
Mora smiled a little.
“That’s almost the same thing.”
Mora left not long after that.
The studio became quiet again.
But now silence and loneliness no longer felt like the same thing.
Elias sat alone before the final painting.
Mora’s painting.
His fingers touched the wet paint.
Rough in some places. Warm in others.
Even though he no longer knew exactly what the color looked like.
Inside his head, Mora’s voice still echoed softly:
“Carrots are good for your eyes.”
He looked faintly toward the canvas in front of him.
Not perfect. Not finished.
But alive.
In the corner of the canvas, painted in orange slightly thicker than the rest, was a single small word:
PALETTE
