The one child who saw the sky as red

I had the original idea for this story some time ago, in the form of "What if there was someone for whom our sky appeared to be yellow instead of blue? That such was really their truth? And they found it so astonishingly beautiful they wanted to tell the world?" I then promptly forgot about it until today's prompt.

It was much harder writing this than I thought it would be, and after coming back to it throughout the day and spending over three and a half hours on it, I haven't gotten very far, but at least it is now the beginning of a story, or an outline for one, and not just an idea I had and forgot...

On the planet of Qoutoqutue there was an issue, it seemed, that would never be fully resolved: Was the sky yellow, or was it red? Those with a dominant rubrum gene, who for all intents and purposes were otherwise identical in all ways to their cospawn, saw the sky as red. But to those with the dominant flavum gene, which for many years now had been the majority of the population, the sky was definitely yellow and anyone who said otherwise was at best outcast from society and at worst executed - hung in the public square as a heretic or burned at the stake as a witch. Yellow was the Creator's palate, while red belonged to the Destroyer.

It had not always been this way. There was a time before the Flavumin had come to power when the color of the sky was not really a matter of religious zeal, when citizens could enjoy open discussion of the differences they saw, artists had been free to paint sunsets repleat with blues and greens as opposed to the pink, purple and gold of the Flavumin paintings. Set-designers could use red skies for a normal scene, not just a fantastical one, and poets could describe a sunset in colors that might arouse different feelings in their readers than the what would become the more traditional Flavumin descriptions. But as fewer of the Rubricim - as those without the dominant flavum gene came to be called - as fewer of the Rubricim were born, and the Flavumin rose to power in all areas of society, from business to artistic endeavors to politics and religion, the Flavumin began to insisted the sky was Yellow - that it always had been Yellow, always would be Yellow, and must be referred to that way. Those citizens not having the dominant flavum gene came to be labeled as "deficient" by the majority, and if they continued to insist the sky was red they were forced to undergo surgery receiving ocular implants that at least partially "corrected" their vision. This led to some of the "corrected" going mad, going so far as to blind themselves, or even tearing out their eyes or taking their lives out of despair. And so for generations, those who truly saw the beauty of the red sky, in all its mottled hues, learned from an early age to call it yellow even though they saw something very different from those with the flavum gene.

Of couse the leading scientists tried (and failed) to identify why some citizens were born deficient. Gene counseling was first available, then prescribed for all who sought to procreate within the law, but nothing could be identified specifically as the root cause of flavum deficiency. More puzzling, a Rubricim child might be born to Flavumin parents at any time - even those in a long line of Flavumin. And while testing of fetuses in utero might possibly serve to identify a strong rubrum gene prior to birth, thus allowing the parents to abort the pregnancy if they chose, as often as not such testing was inconclusive at best and the flavum or rubrum gene dominance did not present fully until early child development, sometimes even much later. Almost every Rubricim child born to Flavumin parents knew well enough just from their culture that they could not say anything to anyone - even if the red sky was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen and filled them with such overwhelming happiness that they only wanted to share that beauty and joy with everyone around them - especially with those who could not see it for themselves. Doroquin was one such child.

— Zachary