***
“You look tired.” Rohanna said when I returned to my new group of comrades for dinner. “How was your first day, sweetheart?”
I shook my head slightly, watching as Sylvie strutted into the room and sat down with her friends, a wide grin on her face and some serious pep in her step. The girls in her group converged on her, and together, they looked how I imagined the old-world high-school cliques my mom used to talk about would look. They were talking quietly, and, in a pattern that never changed, their heads would turn one at a time to look at James, who was standing with a group of guards, keeping watch over the room. He seemed oblivious to them, though whether or not he was faking it, I didn’t know.
“Isn’t she awful?” Yumi asked me, “Sylvie?”
“Ugh…” I said, though I had vowed that, for the sake of my self-preservation, I would not say a negative word about her. What if Rohanna, Yumi, Jason, and Rael were secretly her friends, and they would run back and tell her what I said? What if my perceptions about her and James’s relationship were wrong, and he really did care about her, and if he found out that I had talked about her negatively, he would punish me? I remembered the public lashings in town, how the person being lashed would sometimes start out strong, but by the end, they would be screaming and begging just like everyone else. I knew that I wouldn’t even start out strongly. I would be screaming, crying, and begging through it all.
Still, I found myself saying, “She’s the worst,” to which they all chuckled softly.
“She’s dangerous.” Rohanna warned me, “She’s gotten many a good man and good woman killed by spreading lies.”
“How is she still alive?”
“Because she is Commander Maxwell’s gopher, of course.” Rael replied, “Even if he does not care a smidge about her, which I know he does not, because I have seen into his heart, she is still technically claimed by him. No one can harm her without a full-scale investigation into it being launched, and if that happens, they will most certainly find the perpetrator of the crime.”
“You read into his heart?”
“Of course, my dear.” He said kindly, “It is my power. And in here, I am not forbidden from exercising it. That is why I am here, you know. I refused to live by their laws that outlawed my gift. It is mine, given to me by the true One God. They will not take it from me. They will not make me ashamed of who I am. Well, not to mention, I refused to divorce my husband and my wife.”
Oh. So he was of the polyamorous sort, as well. The bisexual sort. The whatever-the-hell sort.
“I sense that you are mildly disturbed.” He said, but his kind, slight smile did not falter.
“No!” I said quickly, nearly choking on the slop that I had quickly taken a bite of after he had told me about having a husband and a wife. “No, not at all. I’m…”
“It’s alright.” He said, “I read it in your heart, darling girl, and it is alright. It will take some time. Perhaps you will find yourself still as boggled by my way of life, but hopefully, in time you will not. Still, regardless of the outcome, be it that you remain the same in your views on me and others like me, or you change completely, the choice will take time.”
“I have no problem with it. I don’t. Really, Rael, I don’t. It’s just…” The others were talking amongst themselves, and Rael, despite his massive size (six-eight, hugely muscular) and strange but not off-putting look (long dreadlocks that hung down to his butt and eyes that remained red), I knew, by instinct, that I could be completely honest with him. Perhaps he was using his “power,” as he called it, to manipulate my heart into feeling so comfortable that I could be open with him. Perhaps he wanted to know my deepest feelings, on him and everyone around me, but my instincts told me that I could trust him. Not my heart. My instincts, which I hadn’t even known I had.
“All of this…” I said softly, with a very slight gesture that was supposed to be all-encompassing of the room, “I’m surrounded by people who have committed every crime, from blasphemy to petty theft to rape to murder; I’m sharing a cell with a psychopath, her very rude friend, and her girlfriend; I’m working for a man who is… I don’t know, broken, and yet so strong that he could rip me in half if he wanted to, and on top of all of that, I am seeing things in here that I never thought that I would see. My mother and father raised me to love everyone, even when they were telling us in church that we couldn’t…” I stopped, not knowing how far I could go.
“Please.” He said, “Keep going. I can feel your inner burden lifting, and I know that you can feel it, as well. Keep going, Grace.”
“I just… They said we couldn’t love people like you, because the One God doesn’t love people like you. If the One God sees fit to deem you all Irredeemable, and an Offense, how can we love an Offense? Anyone who strays from his laws must be taken away from those who abide by the laws, and here we are, away from the law-abiding people. But… I don’t know why I brought the church thing up, because I never believed in it, anyway. I faked it, and so did my mom and dad. I don’t know, Rael. Even though I don’t hate you like they said I’m supposed to hate you, I just have to get used to seeing things they told me for so long were the absolute worst things.”
“Yes.” He said, and he leaned forward so he could whisper in a jocularly conspiratorial tone, “And that is alright. Regardless of what my old friend, Brynna, says. Regardless of what any of them say. I have absolute faith that you will adjust, more quickly than you think that you will. I can see in you now that you do not believe what they believe, and that you were able to pretend for so long is amazing. You do not give yourself nearly as much credit as you deserve. I know that you are afraid; I can see that in your heart. But you are also strong. You are brave. You are your mother and father’s child. In every sense.”
I smiled. For the first time since arriving, my smile stretched to its farthest reaches, and I was filled with a warm glow of pride. Tears flowed into my eyes, but I wiped them away quickly. Rael was smiling too, and his eyes were not red anymore but a very light brown instead.
“You are going to be just fine.” He told me, “My instincts are spot-on, as they say. And those instincts tell me that you will be a first-year survivor. You will survive long past the first year, actually. Never fear, young one; you are stronger than you think, and that strength will give you great purpose, and great pride. Now, let’s eat.”