Years ago, Serenanede had planted dozens of slender blue flowers outside the palace in Seeu's garden. When he'd asked why, she'd laughed and said that they went so well with his hair that how could they have any other color?

He hadn't understood what made her think that the gentle blue flower matched with his bright red hair, so he'd gone to the library to read. Eventually he'd found it, in a very simple book on weaving and dyeing: a reference to complementary colors. Even though they were so radically different, the book said, these colors provided a contrast that was pleasing to the eye and created a sense of balance in the onlooker.

After reading that passage, Seeu suspected he understood. Serenanede had planted the flowers there so that when she looked at him, the solitary prince wouldn't seem quite so awkward against the backdrop of the white-washed world.

It didn't stop him from feeling awkward. Everyone assured him that he was an individual, that he was different, that he was special; he didn't want to stand out. Wasn't it enough that he had to live sealed within layer upon layer of veils, protected from the outside world by being smothered in the last safe haven in Asu? If it had been his choice, Seeu would have blended, indistinguishable from any other person -- he would rather have known touch, and to be capable of touching others, even if it meant that he would die.

But he was different, alone, standing out brilliantly crimson before a garden of blue flowers, and he would always be different.

When Take had come, he had been the only person willing to come near Seeu's palace without wearing the reinforced suit that the guards assumed to be necessary to ensure his safety. Seeu had grown so used to seeing people through countless veils of plastic and strong fibers that he had almost forgotten that other people had colors too.

Take had color: pinks and creams and the darknesses of a winter wood. Seeu hadn't understood it, at the time, but he had enjoyed watching Take. He looked alive.

One time, he and Take had walked through the garden; or at least, Take had walked through the garden, and Seeu had trailed behind him in the holographic projector, watching the world Take lived in like a ghost, never touching and never touched by anything within it.

The sun set, and Take watched it paint the garden in a thousand shades of fire. "It's beautiful," he murmured.

"Why do you say that?" Seeu asked him immediately. His concept of beauty was limited; he understood that things could be aesthetically pleasing if they were arranged correctly or if they had a natural form. He had never liked sunset, when everything soaked in the gory reds and broken oranges. It made him think of blood, the blood of billions spreading across the world like an inexorable, unstoppable tidal wave -- something he had no power over, and yet his people turned to him, hopefully, trusting that their clever, too clever prince would find a way to turn the tide.

But Take hadn't known, then; he didn't understand about the disease that would destroy the entire planet, the disease from which only Seeu was safe, the disease that would kill him. With perfect ignorance he had said, "Because it shows you how strong even the simple things are. Look."

Seeu watched, through the fuzzy barriers of the hologram, as Take knelt by the blue flowers that Serenanede had planted years before the day when Take's good fortune had deserted him, and brought him to Asu.

"See this?" the older man had asked, looking infinitely foreign in Seeu's static-clouded vision. "This plant, do you know what it is?"

"I do not recognize it," Seeu admitted.

"It's called a forget-me-not." The words sounded foreign, although Seeu's chip translated them easily. "This flower isn't big and showy like some of the others in the garden, but it's always there, even if you don't see it. Even though it's small and fragile in appearance, it's a very strong flower." And he pointed, apparently at the roots of the plant.

The young prince stared, watching as if he expected something to happen; the roots to pry themselves loose and walk away with the flower as he stared, perhaps. It was only after a very long silence did the focus of his eyes change, and he noticed with some surprise that the gentle, mild blue of the flower was untouched by the red of sunset. Turning his head, he could see that the whole garden of forget-me-nots looked vibrantly blue against the glow of red sunset.

Take beamed, proudly, at his wide-eyed reaction. "That's why I think the name 'forget-me-not' suits it. It's such an insignificant flower, but it's more than anyone would think at first glance. Even though the color at first looks so weak that you'd almost believe a heavy rain could wash it away, at this time of day it's the only flower that holds its own."

The blue looked beautiful against the stained-red that surrounded it. "You have a way with words, Take," Seeu murmured, and almost wanted to smile when the man stammered his embarrassed disclaimers.

Serenanede had planted them, the delicate blue forget-me-not flowers, but she was not the one Seeu associated with them. She had given him the roses, the ones that bloomed in the center of her father's garden, roses that -- although he didn't know it then -- would bloom forever, long after everything else had died. Fake roses.

The forget-me-nots were Take's, would always be Take's, and when they had withered and died Seeu had realized, for the first time, that Take was going to die.

He had been sixteen when he realized. There were only a handful of people left on Asu by that time and all of them were sickly and weak; Take himself, despite being otherwise fine, had developed a shortness of breath that nearly crippled him when he tried to do any work. The first symptoms of the disease that had been dormant within him all along.

Seeu couldn't even begin to fathom the strange twisting pain in his chest or the itchy burning in his eyes when he tried to face the fact that Take would die of the disease just like all the others that Seeu had failed. Those sensations weren't in any of the books he had read, not even in the least clinical of the studies in the library. Take would die, and the books had no help for Seeu.

At least he had the consolation that he would not live much longer. But he did not tell that to Take, who surely did not need the added burdens.

They both knew that the research had failed, that there was nothing to do but wait, but Take still came every day to sit by the veil and talk to him. Seeu found himself reaching out more often than usual to touch the barrier that separated them, so very thin and yet so insurmountable. Take's smile was so sad, his eyes so old, and they made Seeu feel in a way that disturbed him.

"The forget-me-nots are gone," he said quietly one day, dreading the response. He didn't understand why he'd asked.

"You still remember them, don't you?" Take murmured to the obscenely clear sky. "That's enough, then."

Seeu didn't understand that answer, either. It seemed like he didn't understand much anymore. "But they're dead," he said simply. "All that strength was an illusion."

Didn't that change things? he wanted to say. Didn't it change everything?

Take smiled at him, sweet and content and wounding the prince deeply. "As long as you remember," he corrected, "that strength will always be there. Remember? That's the meaning of forget-me-not."

On Asu's last night, when Seeu was left all alone, he sealed away the sorrow that he couldn't name. He closed it up, locking it all in a prison no less binding than the one he had lived in all his life: the grief of having lost what he never had, the self-loathing of having failed to save what was important to him, the agony of never really understanding and all the hopelessness and despair and fear and incomprehensible emotions that accompanied that.

And he made himself forget. It was easier that way, and Seeu had never been strong.

By Kay Willow.