It was years since Brian had seen a rainbow.

Some days he doubted whether she had ever existed. Every child had imaginary friends. His best friend used to hang out with Pinky, a giant blue abominable snowman, so what made his Rainbow so incredible? A blonde girl who rode a horse through the sky- it wasn’t like he was so original.

But he knew that she was real, if only by her absence. He saw color begin to creep out of things. The blue shirt he’d worn as a boy, and all his clothes, he thought that maybe they had faded because it had been washed so many times. He thought that the grey in his mother’s hair came from age, and that he grew pale from the many hours he spent indoors.

He thought that maybe it was just his eyesight going bad early, why the trees looked less green and the sunsets less bright. He always expected to see Rainbow during the sunset, even though he’d never seen her there before.

And then one day the winter came, and it never left. But it wasn’t an ordinary winter, with snow and harsh, beautiful blue skies, aurora borealis, skiing and laughter. There were no golden ciders or multicolored lights. There was just the cold, and even the snow was grey. Everything was murky, and dismal.

He recognized the signs, because once when he was a child, something like this had happened. The spring had taken too long to alive, because Rainbow’s friend Stormy, in charge of the cold, wind, and- imagine- storms, had gotten carried away. The colors too, had faded before, when Rainbow was struggling against evil to make them all stick in the world. But things had always gotten fixed, and Rainbow had always come around, flying down from her Rainbow to assure him that everything was going to be all right on earth.

But it had now been three years of winter, and eight since he last saw Rainbow. Between then and now, he’d changed from a boy into a young man, as silly as that phrase sounded to him. He’d had one too many cold nights, seen one too many frostbite cases, see one too many neighbors go mad from the lack of joy that remained in the world to be the same person.

He was beginning to accept that he and Earth were alone.

And then, one day, the sky broke and a rainbow tore through the fog down towards his front lawn. His he felt too frozen, and he just now he realized- angry and betrayed to be truly happy, to have much hope. But around where the rainbow touched the ground the snow began to melt and reveal fresh, green grass underneath.

He heard the faint pattering of Starlite’s hooves, and he saw Rainbow dismount gracefully from her horse as she came into his site. She looked the same; she hadn’t aged the way he had. He didn’t know what he was expecting if he ever saw her again- a teenaged Rainbow, like himself, perhaps? But he supposed that if she was to be the guardian of colors for all time, it couldn’t really work that way. Still, it seemed cruel that she should remain a child with all that wisdom behind her eyes, and it made him wonder how old she’d been when they’d met as children.

“Where have you been?” He’d meant to embrace her, to tell her that he was just glad she was alive and okay after all this time, but he found his feet rooted to the spot. She was his hero, and she’d failed him.

Rainbow, who looked seemed to glow, backlit by the rainbows beams as she made her way towards him, sounded much weaker when she spoke, “Hello Brian.” She said, sounding tired, “I’m sorry it took me so long. I wanted you to be the first to know that your world is going to be okay, that I’m fixing it.”

He remained motionless, years of thoughts spinning through his head. She reached out, meeting him eye to eye held above ground by the rainbow, and her blue eyes stared into his as she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.

Warmth spread through him, and he felt himself have color once again. He realized his was weeping, and looked down as the color spread from his out through the rest of his yard, and into the streets.

And then he looked up, and Rainbow was gone.