momebie | The truth is, you should lie with me.

Original fiction.
862 words.

Mattie so desperately wanted the Radiance to be a trick of the light.

The woman was standing at the crosswalk and waiting for the light to change. She had her back to the coffee shop where Mattie was sitting, hunched over a journal, trying busily to knit together a single story from several different threads of thought. The outside precipitation, for its part, was coming down in light mists that swirled in the wind. Its separate particles could be seen so clearly under the street lamps that Mattie was sure that what she was seeing was the reflection of the lights bouncing off the scattered water particles in the air.

The light changed. The woman moved on. Her halo moved with her.

Mattie was so startled by the realization that the reddish-gold nimbus perched above the woman's head was an actual Radiance that she jumped and knocked over her coffee. The liquid seeped into the pages of her journal, dyeing them brown and obscuring some of the words entirely as the fresh ink spread and explored the new avenues created for it by the puddles. As the woman moved away the halo perched above her head glided through space. It was a ghost, an echo of a memory Mattie had spent fifteen years trying to repress. It took up space, but it didn't have any affect on that space.

* * *

When children are taught the first Rules of Radiances they are taught that they are non-negotiable.

1. The local deity of each dome marks every child with a Radiance not long after his/her birth.
2. Each Radiance corresponds with the Radiance of another child, and when their frequencies meet they will glow.
3. If a person sees another person's Radiance then they are obligated to tell the other person.
4. If both parties can see the Radiance of the Other then the two must join together in partnership.

Mattie had copied those words down onto her paper along with every other child in the classroom. She felt that they were wise, true words. Two weeks later she saw her first Radiance.

It was an unusual event in two ways. First, children weren't supposed to be able to see people's Radiances until they were fifteen at the very least, and Mattie was eight. Second, you were only supposed to see the Radiances of people of the opposite gender, and the one Mattie had seen had definitely belonged to a girl. She asked her parents about it and they told her to stop telling stories. Didn't she know she was going to embarrass the whole family? She asked her teachers about it and they told her she was queer and unusual, but not to worry because she would probably grow out of it. The local deity must be trying to teach her something, or a neighbor deity could be playing a prank on her, as they sometimes did. She asked the Diviners about it and they suggested that she should consider a place in the priestesshood. Girls who saw the Radiances of other girls were often searching for the Great Mother of all gods, and could be easily chosen to do her work, despite the wait list.

Mattie didn't really consider any of these options fair, so she stopped asking about it. Eventually the girl's family moved to another dome and she didn't have to think about it anymore.

Throughout her teens she would stare extra hard at the boys in her classes and clubs in the desperate hope of seeing one of them shine.

* * *

When Mattie looked down again she realized there was a waiter crouched at the edge of her table trying to wipe the coffee off the floor. “Diviner's Hands, I'm sorry,” she said, and picked up her napkin to try and blot some of the coffee out of her journal.

“It's no problem,” the waiter said. “It's a slow night, so I'm just happy for something to do. You seem to have gotten quite a fright, though. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” She had to tell the woman what she'd seen. Mattie was obligated by law to tell the woman what she'd seen. Her stomach lurched. What if the woman could see hers too? They'd be sent into the priestesshood together. Mattie had so much to do before that could happen. Still, she had to say something.

She looked down at the waiter, who was still crouched by her table and looking up at her, concern plainly draped over his handsome face. She squinted her eyes a moment and then reached forward to touch his cheek with her coffee damp fingers. “I can see your Radiance,” she lied.

The waiter reached up and grabbed her fingers, enveloping them in his. “I can see yours, too.”

She was sure it was also a lie, but she didn't care. It was likely a small lie of kindness, punishable by nothing more than a written warning. And she couldn't be held responsible for the rules other people broke. Not when the rules that she broke left so much more on the line.

This entirely transparent piece of fiction that I'm blaming on