Zara came from a purple planet.
Not a little bit purple.
Entirely, magnificently, top-to-bottom purple.
Purple sky. Purple soil. Purple trees with purple leaves. Purple rain that tasted of something sweet.
Zara loved her purple planet.
So when her spaceship landed on Earth for a visit, Zara looked around and thought:
This is very green.
And very blue.
And not purple at all.
“I want to go home,” said Zara. 👽
🚀 Earth Is Very Strange
Everything on Earth was different.
The sky was blue. Blue. Like cold. Like distance. Like not-home.
The trees were green, which Zara admitted was nice but was not purple.
Animals made very loud noises for no reason she could understand.
Moo. Woof. Meow. Tweet tweet TWEET.
Zara sat on a wall and felt extremely far from home.
“Why does purple planet have purple trees?” asked Jack, who had found her on the wall.
“Because the sun is different there,” said Zara. “Our sun is small and pinkish. It makes everything purple.”
“That sounds beautiful,” said Jack.
“It is,” said Zara, and her eyes went very far away.
👽 One Thing
“Is there nothing on Earth you like?” said Jack.
Zara thought about it very seriously.
She had been so busy missing purple that she hadn’t looked properly.
She looked now.
The sky was blue. Actually — actually quite extraordinary blue, the kind of blue her purple planet had never managed.
The rain was clear and cold and tasted of nothing, which was very strange, but when it landed on your face —
Oh.
That was nice.
And the sunset.
Nobody had told her about the sunset.
Orange and pink and gold and a thin line of purple at the very edge of the horizon.
Purple.
“There,” said Zara, pointing. “Right there at the edge. There’s some.”
💛 Watching the Sunset Together
Jack sat next to Zara on the wall and they watched the purple stripe at the bottom of the sky grow and fade.
“It’s not much,” said Jack.
“It’s enough,” said Zara. “For tonight.”
She still missed home.
She would always miss home a little.
But one small stripe of purple at the edge of an Earth sunset was something to come back for.
And that was enough to make her stay — just a little longer. 👽