Far beyond the boundaries of the sheltering mountains which encircle the Basin of Life, there is a narrow valley, ringed in by rocky ridges and dense thickets ranged by ferocious creatures. As with most places outside the Basin, the devastations of the Elder Wars left it ravaged and broken. Nothing clings to life there, save the hardiest of beings.

So few creatures and plants dwell there, that by a curious coincidence, each type of plant or animal only is seen in one colour, and each colour seen only in that plant or animal. For instance, the small lizard with poison breath that creeps across the tents is the only purple thing, and the thorn-spiked berry-bushes from which the tribesfolk take their sustenance is the only place they see the colour yellow.

The small tribe that dwells there, and has for countless generations, has its own language; and in this language, the word that means "purple" also means "poison lizard", because everything that is purple is a poison lizard, and everything that is a poison lizard is purple. Why have two separate words? Similarly, the same word means both "yellow" and "berry-bush", and the same is true for all the other words that mean colours.

What no one in the tribe knew is that all the men there are colour-blind; they see only shades of grey. No one knew, because the men are just as good as the women at telling purple from yellow, since even a colour-blind man can see the shape of a poison-breathing lizard or a thorny berry bush.

Life there is hard; there are more things which eat the tribesfolk than which they eat, and the harsh terrain means few have ever even tried to leave their valley, of which none have returned.

One day, lightning struck the twisted briar-thicket to one side of the valley, and much of the forest burned, opening a path, still dangerous but for the first time passable, to another land. A half-dozen of the tribe's bravest hunters took up spears and, by the light of the moon, crept forth into the smouldering ruins, seeking new hunting grounds beyond the formerly impassable thicket.

After several days, they crossed a river, barely more than a muddy trickle, into a grassy meadow, where one of their group was struck dumb with wonder. She, the only woman in their group, stared in amazement. There before them was what you or I would call a thorn-bush bearing plump purple fruit.

The men asked her what was wrong, and she exclaimed how there was something which was both a bush and a lizard, or as she might have said it, both yellow and purple! And when the men looked, they saw nothing unusual. This bush looked different from the bushes they knew, but it was clearly still a bush. It was clearly still yellow.

What madness had struck the woman? How can something be both yellow and purple? Did she think the bush was about to crawl across their tents and breath poison? How absurd!

Yet no matter how much the men insisted that the woman must have gone mad, she knew what she saw. She could not explain it. They had no words in their language to describe in what way the bush was purple. There was no way to let the men see what she saw.

In time, the woman learned to keep her observations to herself, so that the men would not laugh at her, and think her unfit for the hunt. When they returned to the valley, laden with meat and hides, the men did not speak to the rest of the tribe of how the woman had gone mad, except in whispers, on the darkest of nights.

But deep within the folds of her hides, she saved the skin of a purple bush-fruit, waiting until the day was right to see if there were any others who saw what she saw.