A Moment

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It wasn't water.
It was a bead of Cerulean Blue, thick and glossy, smelling faintly of linseed oil and wildflowers.
I blinked, reaching out a finger to touch the pigment. Before I could process the impossibility of it, another drop fell—a splatter of Cadmium Yellow that sizzled against the stone path. Then came the deluge.
The sky began to pour. It wasn't a mixture or a muddy brown mess; the colors fell in distinct, shimmering ribbons. Thick globs of Alizarin Crimson streaked through the air like meteors. Spirals of Titanium White drifted down like heavy, wet sand.
Panic should have set in, but I felt a sudden, frantic electricity in my veins. I didn't run for the hotel. Instead, I grabbed my largest palette knife.
As the colors fell, I began to move. I caught a stream of Emerald Green in mid-air, sweeping it across the linen. I danced around the easel, allowing the sky to dictate the composition. A heavy glob of Ultramarine hit the top right corner, and I dragged it downward, creating a pool that looked more real than the water beneath I feet.
The landscape was transforming. The cerulean sea was being paved over by ripples of metallic silver and copper. The jagged rocks were being softened by layers of violet "rain" that filled the crevices like thick frosting.
I was drenched. My silk was a canvas of its own, my hair matted with sunset oranges and deep forest greens. I started laughing—a loud, booming sound that was swallowed by the viscous rhythm of the storm. For the first time in a decade, I wasn't drawing lines. I was feeling the weight of the world’s color.
The storm lasted exactly twenty minutes.As quickly as it began, the "rain" tapered off into a fine, iridescent mist. The heavy clouds thinned, revealing a pale, clean sun that caught the island in a state of impossible brilliance.
Skye was no longer green and brown. It was a masterpiece. The cliffs looked as though they had been sculpted by a giant's brush, the colors still wet and tacky, reflecting the light in ways physics couldn't explain. I looked down at my canvas. It was a beautiful thing—a chaotic, swirling vortex of the Isle, captured not as it appeared to the eye, but as it felt to the soul.
By the time I returned to the castle, the islands had returned to their natural hues, washed clean by the standard, watery Santorini rain. When I got back to the realm and looked at the sky and wondered what color it would be if the sky ever decided to speak again.