Violet Is The Color [request]

    A silvery full moon hung in the drapery of twinkling stars over the pitch-black night sky. The moon emitted a faint light - a mix of silver, gold, and a tint of violet that covered the Island in its entirety. It was the middle of a warm summer, with every day starting with the radiant sun spreading muggy heat across the atmosphere, but nightfall brought with it a cool sea-breeze from the ocean; not too hot, not too cold. Perfect for a good rest after a day of baking in the sun.

    Inside the berths of Tidmouth Sheds, something was stirring about. Something... peculiar. The normal sounds of sleep were shallower than usual. That was because two engines were not asleep, unlike the rest.

    They were wide awake. And they were not where they were supposed to be.

    In a quaint grassy clearing amidst Henry’s Forest, one could note two blurs between the trees. Two blurs of color; red and blue. Upon closer inspection, they revealed to be the two engines absent from Tidmouth Sheds that night.

    “So,” the blue one said, “this is the same place…”

    He stopped, hesitating what to say next, but a voice interrupted his thoughts.

    “Where you found me, wasn’t it?” The red one whispered, smiling affectionately.

    The blue one compressed his lips together and turned his eyes away from the red one. He felt like it was hard to accept the truth that lay before them. “I-I’d rather not bring it up… here…”

    The red one whirled his eyes in a full circle. “Heh,” he smirked, “it’s going to be fine. I promise, Eddie.” The blue one let out a heavy sigh and glanced up towards the sky, thinking of a way to change the subject of their little conversation.

    “Look at the stars, James. Have you ever wondered… if there’s life out there?”

    “Of... of course I have! We’re not alone, obviously. Theoretically, it’s impossible for life to exist on another planet, but it seems odd.”

    Edward raised an eyebrow curiously. “What’s odd?”

    “It seems odd that, well, if the universe is infinite, then it’s highly possible we aren’t alone, right? And with all the evidence -- videos, pictures -- they fit together,” said James. He turned his look away from the sky above. “Well, we’re alone now, aren’t we?”

    The blue engine tittered quietly, gazing at the red engine. Sky-blue irises, twinkling from the reflections of every star, met with fiery scarlet ones.

    “Yes, we’re quite alone,” he remarked, “unless someone would dare to... eavesdrop on this moment.” His cheeks turned redder than his counterpart’s paintwork.

    “They wouldn’t dare at all, or else they would have been dead by now! I would have killed them. Interrupting my time with you gets them dead as a doornail, no doubt!” James exclaimed with an excited tone in his voice. Then, his manner became serious, and Edward even sensed fear in his eyes. “And that does bring me to a point. If someone were to find out we were-”
    
    The red engine didn’t utter another word until he knew Edward understood his feelings. "I-I guess we shouldn’t worry about that now, huh?” He laughed sheepishly, while the blue engine moved a bit closer, steam billowing from his funnel.

    “I do worry about that sometimes, but I... it’s not that big of a deal until it happens. You have to be careful, though.”

    “I’m a very careful engine, Edward! I know what I’m doing!” retorted the red engine, but Edward decided that it was best not to argue back. He knew that James had no intentions of an argument. It was a playful statement; toying around with his emotions. Sometimes he just pondered if James's emotional intelligence was just simply too low, and that the boastful splendid engine just didn’t know how to interact with others properly, with all the preposterous things he said at times.

    “Yes, very careful indeed.”

    Finishing the last word in the sentence, Edward had moved so close to James that the clink! of their buffers meeting rang out in distant echoes across the forest. The sound broke the empty silence. "It's not every day that we get to talk like this, you know. Seems like we're just too busy nowadays that we just go to sleep and don't bother to say anything anymore... at all. We're just too exhausted all the time."

    “True. You could say that again.”

    An awkward silence followed, accompanied by only the chirping of the midnight crickets, until James was able to break it again.

    “M-Might I ask you a question... Edward?”

    “You just asked me one!”

    James tried to hide his outburst of laughter, but it was clear to the older blue engine, who pulled his lips into a slight smirk at his own success of a joke.

    “I'd bet this is the most brainless question ever, but, oh well, here goes: What color do you get when you mix blue and red? You know, when those painters mix different colors of paint on their palettes.”

   “Uh, violet? Purple? Periwinkle?”

    James smiled, then broke out into a hearty chuckle.

    “Violet sounds a lot better than purple," he mused, "and I don’t like periwinkle, so we could say... that violet is the color of our: no, I wouldn’t say love. Too cheesy. How about… feelings! Makes sense! Or, at least to me it kind of does. Maybe it does to you, maybe it doesn't. I really don't know.”

    The blue engine laughed along with him. Sometimes, these comments made it all worthwhile. He pecked the red engine on the lips so quickly that he almost didn’t feel it at all. James pouted and groaned in disappointment, and pushed forward against Edward’s buffers. He tried again, letting loose pent-up steam that embraced James as if it were a hot muggy blanket. He met James's soft, warm lips and as he let open a small crevice between his mouth, allowing the blue engine to explore further, their tongues became entwined together and they fell in a sort of trance. They let all of their woes and troubles flow carelessly out of them with the passionate kiss.

    They gazed deeply into one another's eyes, nuzzling closer and closer to each other's radiating warmth as they dreamily dusted away all those years of worry, until James gently bit down in a seconding motion for their trance to end.

    Something feels... not right.

    Reality... is coming back... to me...

    I can't... I remember...

   The blue engine's eyes were fixed wide open, pupils flitting in panic. He backed away and gave James a look of pure sadness, his twinkling blue eyes sparkling with teardrops developing in them.

    “What -”

    “I-I'm so sorry, James,” he muttered, his voice trembling.

    “Wait, what is going on?!”

    “I just can't do this anymore. I'm so... I'm so sorry I made you do this!” he cried, and dashed out of the clearing in a flash. James was in terrifying shock at what Edward just said as he gasped between heart-breaking sobs. He had no idea what was happening. Scrambling up what remained of his courage, he pursued the runaway.

    “Wait! Can't you explain?! Edward! EDWARD!”

     But he was gone.

     His cry dispersed across the whole island, and Edward heard it loud and clear as he pounded the cold rails to Arlesdale End, the tears streaming out of his eyes like watery ribbons, all the while telling himself to never come back. He didn't respond to anyone, no cheerful whistle or greeting at him, no matter who it was. He left James with the crickets, jaw hanging, confounded, lost, speechless. He opened his mouth to call again, but his throat was so stiff with a mix of anger and surprise that no sound barely came out.

    And then he suddenly understood what it meant. It struck him painfully. He understood what it meant. For his own being.

    For both him and his Edward. He cried, soaking the ground for his foolishness.

    I should have known.

    I can't believe... what I have just done.