A Chat Story

There was once a girl who locks herself from the rest of the world.

She wore a grey dress which she loved so much.

Every time she would wear it, she felt invincible, as if nothing in this world could harm her.

The dress was old. It was prim and proper with a pleated skirt. The material was rough to the skin and the color of a cloudy morning.

She was walking to her class one day with her pleated skirt billowing behind her. She hung her head down because although it was her favorite dress, kids at school bully her for wearing it.

They say it smells of mothballs, of the musty scent of an old woman. They tell her to put it back to whatever old attic she got it from or just burn it. But she didn’t seem to hear any of it.

“Why do you keep on wearing such a rag? Don’t you have other clothes to wear? Loser,” bullies would tell her. On the other hand, the girl would just remain quiet. Her eyes even lit up at times which made the bullies in school even more unnerved.

Amelia was always found in the library. She spends hours and hours reading the weirdest books: from 18th century horticulture to Amazon tribal recipe favorites. One night, she fell asleep on her books. A boy was eyeing her from the far shelves.

The boy was bespectacled. Just like the girl, he frequented the library, but not really for the purpose of reading books. He would stay there on the corner beside the window, and with his sketchpad, he would draw the sky.

And now that it was dusk, the sky was dark grey, growing darker. The boy noticed something peculiar about Amelia’s grey dress at that moment.

Then he started to draw…