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Circle should never have gotten his hopes up. While other objects like Backpack, and Scenty had tried desperately to get themselves eliminated, Circle had tried everything to stay, to win.
Anything other than going back.
It wasn’t his first time on a show like this. Except Airy never gave a countdown like the Host Circle did. He’d always be forced to wait, praying to anyone that it wouldn’t be his time.
And then it was over. One moment he was looking around at the greens and blues and reds things he’d never seen before, he’d looked towards Moldy, and then back to white. Nothing, hopelessness, and no sense of uniqueness.
He’d barely moved as soon as he’d arrived, just felt any hope he’d built up be overcome with disappointment. It was over.
Eventually the obnoxious clapping stops, and he lays silently on the floor peering up at the sky. It’s as white as the floor. His gaze is interrupted by the face of another circle. It’s mouth neither a smile, nor a frown, no eyebrows and certainly no unique mole.
“I wondered where you’d gone.”
Circle squints at it, “I can’t tell you apart from any of the other Circles.”
“I’m the host of course.” The Host answers, his voice has a hint of annoyance but as usual his face shows no such emotion. “And you ‘Circle with a Mole’ have been moping about since you’ve arrived. Did you not come back to celebrate Circle’s win?”
Circle sits upright to glare at him. As if this was somehow his fault, maybe it was. He never seemed to have liked Circle with a mole. He hugs his arms around his legs.
“It’s not fair, why show me freedom just to wrench it all away like it had never existed? Our world has no flowers, or even colour. It’s nothing but a white plane.”
“Is this freedom where you went to? Describe this thing you call flowers.”
He pokes at the ground trying to think of a way to describe something that didn’t exist.
“It’s like this thing that sprouts from the ground, it’s split into petals, it’s soft but colourful. We don’t have colour, it’s not like white or grey or black, it’s bright. Like orange, it looks like warmth.”
He figures it must sound too confusing to make sense of. The host stares at the ground, then suddenly out of the ground sprouts a thin plantlike structure. It doesn’t look like the bright yellow dandelions that started to grow once the grass started to get unkempt in the plane but it looks like a flower.
It’s split into four square petals, but miraculously it isn’t white. It’s a very pale almost grey blue.
He carefully puts his hands around it, picking it up from the ground. The Host stands expectantly beside him.
“Like that?”
“You- you can do that? Yes! Yes this is a flower, they were like these. You see this colour? There were brighter shades of blue, the entire sky was this colour.”
The Host glances at the sky, Circle almost thinks he looks curious for a second. A rare sense of emotion. He looks back down at Circle’s flower.
“It just looks like a weird grey.”
OK expecting him to understand colour that fast, was his own fault.
He twirls the flower around in his hand.
“Could you create more?”
The Host in response stiffly waves hand his over the ground and suddenly an array of the same ‘flowers’ start to sprout. Each identical in shape and colour, much to Circle’s disappointment.
The Host pauses slightly and then seems to concentrate further. This time a new flower emerges. Still the same thin four petals, but it’s a brighter blue. It reminds him of the water he’d seen.
He finds himself laughing, hands around the delicate creation like he’s just found water in a desert. It’s about the equivalent.
Could he really still have what he’d lost?
“Is that what the sky looked like?”
He hadn’t noticed at first but the Host stood staring blankly at the sky. It was still a bit too grey for the type of blues he was used to.
“Not exactly, it was brighter. And not just one shade, some of it was more white, and other parts a deeper blue. There were other colours, the best part was there was almost no white anywhere.”
“Incredible.”
He’d left Circle alone after that. He’d sat there for hours, staring at the blue petals trying his best not to forget the way other colours had looked. Sometimes other circles popped up, they seemed confused more than interested.
For all he knows one of the Circle’s could have been the host. He never could differentiate Circles like the others could. Part of him thinks they couldn’t either.
Days after the Host reappears. He knows the Circle is the host because he’s holding new flowers. They, as before, are four-petaled, but this time there were all sorts of blue.
He invites himself to sit right next to Circle, and pushes the bundle of flowers into his hands. Pointing at the sky. “Like these?”
He seems to really have struck an interest in the white orb. He sorts through the shades then picks out his two favourites. The first one is bright and unlike most of the others isn’t at all an offset of grey.
He gives it back to the host who stares at it.
He wonders what the Host is thinking, because his face never gave him away.
The other flower had captured his interest because it wasn’t blue. It was green! He taps the host to return his attention to the flower. And explains to him how everywhere on the floor was this colour.
He holds out a hand, and Circle gives him the flower. He then without word or warning gets up and leaves with the two plants in hand. Leaving Circle alone again.
Circle finds himself getting used to visits from the Host. Once an object he almost considered an enemy, he now wonders if the Host thinks of him as a friend too. It’d taken some explaining but eventually The Host had realised that the plant's petals and shape could change. He’d created bushes, flowers that were more spherical, and flowers with hundreds of little petals, or one with a pair of large petals.
He’d made the spot where the flowers grew green for Circle. Reminding him of the soft grass, and strangely somehow he’d made a chunk of the sky directly above it blue, until you stepped off the green and the sky was white again.
He’d finally created yellow, and then from yellow Circle had described Orange and then Red. From there he was able to visually show the Host by mixing colours together. Never had the Host’s expression changed but he’d listen so intently and return so frequently that Circle had really no conclusion to come to but know the Host was fascinated.
One day Circle returns to his garden to find the host already there among the flowers. Each new try and variation had the plants looking more and more like the plants he’d seen on the plane. He’d even been able to create things he’d only heard described to by Moldy. Like the tree that hung over their patch of land, or his favourite of all, butterflies. Stick-like creatures that could raise themselves off the ground by flapping their wings.
The Host is sat silently, covered in said creatures. They startle into the sky once Circle comes too close. “Look at this.” The Host says as soon as he notices him.
He shows him a new flower, blue and irregular in shape.
“I don’t remember describing you that one.”
“Made it myself, neat isn’t it?”
“I don’t think I ever thanked you for creating all this.”
The Host drops the flower upon Circle’s head, it flops off his face. Circle turns and gapes. Because there the Host didn’t have his usual blank expression, but a smile. A smile! A real genuine smile.
“I think I should thank you too. For showing it to me.”