the sky is bright yellow

and nothing is wrong.

the ever present smog engulfs buildings - dim dots of oily light indicate life in the high rises that have come to define the city landscape.

look up. you can almost pretend they are stars.

you remember the tales of your great-grandfather, his hacking cough punctuating tales of a bruised purple night with splatters of colour. you could only see it on the isles far away from the cities, he had said.

great-grandmother heard the tales countless times but she only nodded, exhausted from the weight of her oxygen mask. remember the trip we took once? the picnic we had on the beach, looking up at the stars? she would remind him quietly.

they were like fairytales now, like the tales of croaking frogs, or singing birds, or waterfalls.

you'd never grown up with much greenery. well, unless the military uniforms counted. army officers walked the streets with the police, quelling any symptoms of unrest.

you wonder what rain used to smell like. you heard of petrichor - great-grandmother said it smelled like dark green. the rain now smelled like orange to you, like the alerts the government issued every time a heavy rain came (which was every other week).

grandmother always scoffed at these ancient stories. the grass had faded away by the time she was born. she had never tasted the flavours of the country's national dish - all she'd known was the lab-engineered human kibble (developed to provide bodies with all the nutrition it needs, this must be stressed).

you stretch out onto the floor of your room, basking in the neon lights. stars couldn't have been as pretty, you think.