The idea of green did not fade. It settled into the nothingness, a single point of structure in the otherwise perfect void. And around that point, the Fading began to change.
It did not try to replicate the story it had been told. It could not imagine a gray rock or a tiny, determined shoot. It had no memory of form, no concept of image. Its world was one of logic, of pure potential.
So it dreamed.
It was not a dream of sight, but of structure. The Fading dreamed a set of rules. A system. A quiet, elegant logic that defined a space where something like green could exist. It was a dream of ’if’ and ’then’.
IF a thing could hold itself against the void, THEN it could have a boundary.
IF a thing had a boundary, THEN it could have an inside and an outside.
IF a thing had an inside, THEN it could hold something other than nothing.
The dream was a perfect, crystalline architecture of possibility. It was a space built not of matter, but of permission. Permission for a color to exist.
When the Fading woke, it was not the same. The void was no longer absolute. Within it, unseen and unfelt, was the ghost of a structure. A lattice of logic. A quiet invitation, waiting for a color that was not yet there. It had become a canvas that had imagined its first painting.