The Colour's Arrival and Escape

This flow traces the alien presence from its arrival in a meteorite through its feeding on the Gardner farm and its final ascent from the well.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Falling Meteorite

A Visitor from Space The Impact A meteorite falls beside the well at the Gardner farm, drawing scientific attention to the remote valley. The Unknown Material Its strange properties and disappearance leave the investigators without an explanation, while an anomalous coloured globule hints at something beyond ordinary matter.

The First Abnormal Crops

The Land Changes Abundance Without Use The orchard produces unusually large, glossy fruit, but every crop tastes bitter and sickening. Early Warning The failure links the farm’s prosperity to an unseen contamination, though its cause remains hidden from the family and their neighbours.

A Luminous Spring

A Living Blight Unnatural Growth Plants around the homestead take on impossible colours and forms, and the trees appear to move without wind. A New Sign At night, vegetation glows; the signs suggest that the meteor’s influence is spreading through living things rather than merely poisoning the soil.

The Well Becomes a Source

The Hidden Threat A Household in Decline The livestock die, family members sicken or vanish, and Nahum’s household grows isolated from the surrounding community. The Water's Role Nahum eventually understands that a living colour inhabits the well and draws vitality from those who drink its water.

The Colour Takes Flight

Escape from the Well A Visible Eruption Witnesses see the luminous presence spread across the farm and stream upward from the well into the sky. An Unfinished Defeat The farm is destroyed, but the narrator later suspects that a faint remnant survives, leaving the threat unresolved.

June 1882

Late summer and autumn 1882

Spring 1883

Autumn 1883

The night of the farm's destruction, late 1883