Scarlet paint dripped from his brush, drying onto his palette. He'd made a mess of the canvas. So much so that he wasn't even sure what he had drawn.

First he had tried painting home. Such a blurry place, the memory draped in the cerulean fog of the Silence. But the memory became too faint, and he splattered it away with black and silver. The image had become one he was familiar with now— a starscape.

Rhys decided to give home one last shot. He swirled together a planet, veiled in the silence's fog. Just how he was veiled from seeing his home again.

His heart became heavy, his stomach bitter. He dipped into that red paint and splattered it in great, angry, electric bolts around the planet. As if the place was enveloped in a massive, fierce storm with scarlet lightning.

Rhys leaned back in his chair, and frowned at the paint that had gotten into his long black hair. Down the row, other children both older and younger than him worked at their easels, many of the former as painted as their canvases.

"Very good, Rhys."

Rhys jumped in his seat, then turned and strained his neck to look up at the ginger-haired man behind him.

"Your work is... imaginative," he said, eyes narrowed, scratching his chin.

Rhys set down his paintbrush. "Thank you, Sir Jon."

Jon patted him on the back, and continued on down the row.

He slumped, and glanced back to the painting, transfixed by the hostile colors.

Horror grew deep in his gut, rising up through his throat, gripping him. He stood so fast that his chair knocked over behind him.

The room turned to look at him, Sir Jon last. Something flickered in the gray eyes of the square-jawed man.

Rhys quickly righted his chair. "... May I return to my quarters, Sir?"

Jon's eyes remained dark, but he nodded and smiled. "You may."

With a dip of his head, Rhys turned and made for the door.

Nausea settled in as he trotted through the door and down the corridor. Figures wrapped in dark cloths glared down at him as he passed. Perhaps it was just his ill feeling, but he could have sworn their eyes followed him more than usual.

Relief ebbed at him as his own dark metal door came into view. It opened for him as he approached, and immediately he collapsed on the bed.

He remembered being terrified of this room five years ago. Small, dark, with only a few of eternal night. Rhys had cried through the nights, begging for Mum and Dad.

Now he took comfort in the small, dark space, and the view gave him hope.

It was strange to think that he had been in space since he was eight.

And in this wing since he was nine.

His mother had cried more than when she was killed. His father had been proud. He'd painted the picture of saying goodbye so many times in so many different forms. At first, they'd been angry and blatant-- hopes that they'd send him back, or he'd die from sheer sadness.

That had never quite left him. He left notes of it in his paintings. Yet it was always small. A wilted daisy in the corner of the canvas. A great forest-- and a sparrow's egg nestled in the emerald grass, fallen from the nest, to be born alone and short lived.

The wall across from his bed flashed.

The screen remained dark, all but the five words, stark white against the dark.

WE'VE CHOSEN YOU.

-SIR JON