The Little Fish Looking for the Colour of Sleep

Pippo the little fish lived in an indigo sea cave.

He knew the colours of the day: turquoise water, yellow sand, red coral, green seaweed. But bedtime had a colour too, and he wanted to find it.

“What colour is sleep?” he asked.

The shrimp said, “Dark.”

The jellyfish said, “Silver.”

The crab said, “Whatever colour your eyes make when they close.”

Pippo was not satisfied.

That evening he swam toward the calmest waves, the ones that barely moved near the mouth of the cave. Between one wave and the next he saw a colour he had never noticed.

It was not blue, not purple, not grey. It was all of them softened together.

“Is that sleep?”

The wave answered, “Almost.”

Pippo followed the colour deeper into the cave. It rested on the smooth stones, on the shells, on the fins of the fish already dreaming. Wherever it passed, movements slowed.

Pippo tried to catch it, but it slipped away.

“You cannot catch the colour of sleep,” said Grandmother Turtle. “You let it settle.”

So Pippo prepared himself: he brushed sand from his little sleeping place, said goodnight to the seaweed, let one bubble go, then stayed still.

The hidden colour came closer.

It touched his tail first, then his fins, then his eyes.

Pippo understood. Sleep was not a colour to find outside. It was a colour the night painted on him when he stopped swimming.

From then on, every evening he looked for indigo, silver, soft grey, and quiet blue.

And when those colours gathered, Pippo knew the sea was saying: now rest.