Morning Sparkles

Ziggy Zeta-bot rolled across the crystal floor of his favorite room in Crystal Cloud Castle. His blue lines glowed softly as he spun his upper torso to look at the morning rainbows dancing on the walls.

"Good morning, beautiful colors!" Ziggy chirped to himself.

But something looked different today. The red stripe in the nearest rainbow seemed pale. Ziggy rolled closer to the tall window and pressed his spherical body against the cool glass.

"That's odd," he muttered. "Yesterday this rainbow was much brighter."

He rotated to check another rainbow streaming through a different crystal. The orange band looked faded too. Ziggy's circuits buzzed with curiosity as he noticed more rainbows throughout the room had lost their usual brilliant glow.

The Colorless Pool

Ziggy rolled toward the castle's main corridor, his circuits humming with worry. He needed to find Castle Keeper Melody, the wise woman who maintained all the crystal systems.

"Melody!" Ziggy called out as he spotted her short silver hair near the central crystal chamber. She was kneeling beside a puddle of strange, colorless water that had pooled around the base of the largest rainbow crystal.

"Oh my," Melody said, touching the clear liquid with her finger. "This water appeared overnight. It's completely drained of color."

Ziggy's blue lines flickered brighter as he examined the puddle. Above them, the great crystal that usually cast brilliant rainbows across the entire castle now produced only pale, washed-out streaks of light.

"Something is stealing the colors right from our crystals," Melody whispered.