I was a baby born royal blue. Not the sickly kind of blue that would require tubes stuffed in my mouth, a glass box to sleep in. Royal blue. Like I’d been painted from head to toe. The doctors gave me oxygen anyway. I breathed fine. The blue remained. Vitals came next. I was perfectly healthy. When my belly was tickled, I laughed, and my peanut sized heart beat strong. Should I be held overnight? A few nurses gossiped in the hallway. No, no it’s no use. Here in the hills, our people stay in their skin.

I wasn’t the first blue baby. My father was born a shiny turquoise, and turned sky blue over time. My mother, who just happened to be my father’s third cousin, was born indigo. They weren’t the first either. A knot of a family tree combined with a fear of traveling has gradually made this little town into a kind of demented rainbow. Cobalt is most common. I feel lucky to be royal.

We live off a combination of smuggled goods and our own inventions. There are stone floors and sound tin roofs. Easily-fooled fish in nearby lakes. Light green berries that don’t make you throw up, and dark red berries that do. Little nonsense shops where you can buy glittery things that do nothing. We made our own money, from sun-dried leaves and paste. Sometimes we barter--my basket of fresh eggs for your pressed herb. Our books are numerous, taking up mantles and baskets. We aren’t a self contained people, but it’s understood that when we do leave, it is only to steal. Grab sculptures and languages, pretend they were ours all along. There is something about the valley that swallows you up. Chokes you. Makes you into something new. I’ve got a baby now. He’s kelp green in the hands and face. His belly, a perfect newborn pink. The doctors made little grunting noises when they handed him to me. It’s strange, but not too strange. He is a miracle, but only mine. A few people here are fully pink now. Evolution, maybe. Or witchcraft. They can go to the city and buy bread without any weird looks. When it gets cold though, their fingers and lips betray them. Aquamarine fingernails put my baby in a blanket. All through the night, he coughs. He tries to breathe and gets stuck, again and again. I hold him to my chest. A little symphony.

They say he’s free to go in the morning. His fingers grab. His eyes twitch. All the things little boys are supposed to do, he attempts. They say he’s not so good at frowning. We crack jokes about that. One nurse even suggests naming him Smiley. My baby coughs halfway through the final round of tests, and I sit on my hands. Maybe they’ll make us stay one more night. I can’t do one more night. But they give me a bottle and a few more blankets, and they say it’ll be alright.

I watch a green bunch of limbs turn into a green little man. I love him like I know him. A box of crayons gives my baby a name: Fern. It’s on the nose, but it sticks. Fern grows, despite himself. I feed him bread, beans and soda pop. It doesn’t help. Every night ends like we’re still hooked to tubes. His skull on my chest. Half-breaths mirroring inhales. I think that even if I were a thousand miles away I would still hear him. That little symphony.

The mornings are more or less the same. They say not to keep the baby in your bed, but he wakes up on my shoulder anyway. Bits of drool and last night’s formula decorate my neck and arms. They always do. Gobs of yellow and brown. Sometimes I struggle to hold him. There’s so much flesh, so many little limbs. Garbled speech. He doesn’t talk yet - not in ways I’m meant to understand. But Fern runs and Fern screams. A fighter in a much too compact frame. Other times, I struggle to let him leave. My baby is all of my fears, stretched out and rearranged. My own vocal chords restrung, resting safely in some familiar body. He trips and I see the scars on my temple. Will his skin dry up like mine?

We have cereal for breakfast. Cinnamon toast crunch sometimes, Cheerios most of the time. He likes to grab the box down from the shelf. No one told me babies could grab. He has pencil arms and wrestler fists. I go to clinics and they tell me with raised eyebrows and shrugs, that there is nothing to do. I get it. At least in my mind, I get it. There was nothing but blue when I was born. I have always been like this, and so have they. Rooted in pigment. We talk about quality of life. Green babies, they tell me, cannot have good quality of life. Too sick, too unstable. They say this with blue eyelids, patches of sky on their wrists.

Where he used to live, Fern tells me, there was nothing but green. His first words.

Beanpole green? I ask. Clover green? Tell me more. I have questions and I have cough medicine that doesn’t work.

Green like me, he says. They’re all like me.