George the Greytown Wizard

Travellers took the long way around Wannabe on their way to do interesting
things in more colourful places. It was the most unpopular town in the whole
country.
But with the passing of the days, as is usually the case, time softened the
anguish of the residents of Wannabe. In time the people became used to being
grey. They forgot about trying to blame the wizard, God or the Mayor for their
colourless situation. People even gave up asking “Why?” They never thought
for a minute that it might have been their greed and apathy that had brought
on the grey disease. They had forgotten to love their town, so it turned grey
like a dying plant that has not been watered. The people were not yet prepared
to consider that the answer to the ʻwhy?ʼ question lay within themselves.
Rhiannon
There was a young couple who stayed in Wannabe because they loved
the town more than they hated being grey. They had a nine year old daughter
named Rhiannon. When she was old enough to hold a pencil, she drew pictures
on every piece of paper that came into the house. Her drawings could turn
the most ordinary things into works of art that had a magic of their own, even
if it was all in greys. Her destiny was to become an artist.
Her job was to help her parents around the house and to weed the grey
vegetable gardens. She was a good little girl and did her work willingly. But
she was always anxious to get back to her art work, which she did on the
either at the kitchen table, or on the floor in her bedroom.
One day Rhiannon asked her father, “Why is this town all grey and the other
towns all coloured?”
“I donʼt know. Itʼs a real mystery,” he replied. “A year ago this town was just like
any other town, and then after the full moon on the winterʼs night, everything
turned to grey. Itʼs been that way ever since.”
It was a story Rhiannon had heard before. Then one day she had another
question. “When I buy coloured pencil in the coloured town down the road,
all the pencils are coloured, but when I bring them home they turn to grey.
Why does this happen?”
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