It was Tuesday, two days after my twelfth birthday. Two days after I’d gotten the magic glasses from my fairy godmother—er, fairy great-aunt. By marriage.

Only on that day had I put them on in the daytime. I hadn’t dared to do so the previous day, and not just because they made me look like an old lady and I didn’t want the other girls to laugh at me.

It was because of what the king of the sun had said: that these glasses and their power were not for my human like. That only a dispensation from on high allowed me to wear them at all—that otherwise I must never put them on again, and hand them over to an appropriate authority to destroy them.

But last night I had known, somehow just known, that I was to put on the glasses every night that week.

I was afraid, not of what I would see, but of what would see me.

What was already seeing me.

After lights out, I put on the magic glasses and looked out my window.

********

At first I wanted to take the glasses off immediately: I saw what looked like giant blades raining down!

Blades? No, they were too natural to be blades. Trees? But that was ridiculous—even given that they had no roots, they seemed to be made of iron. Red iron. Was it rust or blood? I didn’t know if I wanted to know.

But soon I knew that they were more like trees than like blades: they were alive. They were moving, by their own power. They were marching to a silent drumbeat, soldiers in a war that made me feel smaller than an ant.

And they saw me.

The only thing that lessened my fear was that, somehow, I knew that I was not the Enemy they sought.

Where were they coming from? Not the moon.

I looked past them, and if I hadn’t been wearing the glasses, all I would have seen was a tiny star that didn’t twinkle—

—a red star.

Mars?

Before I had time to wonder, I saw him. It looked like a man at Mars.

In Mars? On Mars? Behind Mars? Who knew?

He scared me. He was very tall, and very brawny, with very wide shoulders and a hairy body. His red beard was thick and full. He wore an iron suit of armor, which looked red. He held a spear in one hand and a string of beads in the other.

The silent drum beat ideas into my mind: ideas of earth, of green, of trees and fruit, of blacksmiths, of rust, of blood, of war and honor and chivalry. Of rhythm and numbers and arithmetic. Of manliness.

Manliness—even though he was fully dressed in armor, I was sure I had seen his erect manhood.

And he knew I had seen it.

My face flushed. I had never seen a man’s prick before, not in real life! Try as I might, I couldn’t stop my hormones. I felt very horny—and then I came.

I wasn’t naked, but I might as well have been.

His eyes bore holes into me. But he removed his helmet and bowed.

Don’t ask me how he did it—I never saw him move—but he kissed my hand. As if I were his queen.

I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.

His voice made me tremble. I had done wrong in looking at his manhood, but I was weak and couldn’t help myself completely. He forgave me. So did his King.

But his King was not the lord of the sun I had met on my birthday.

********

I don’t know how I didn’t have a wet dream that night.