It was Friday, five days after my twelfth birthday. Five 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 I knew, somehow just knew, 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.

********

The most beautiful copper-green lights swam elegantly through the sky in a delicate ballet!

They moved with full purpose.

They saw me.

Where were they coming from?

I looked past them, and if I hadn’t been wearing the glasses, I never would have seen the brightest star in the sky.

Venus was too close to the sun to be seen at night, but I somehow I saw her.

The most beautiful, feminine lady I had ever imagined possible! She was so beautiful it hurt to look at her, and not just because I felt like an ugly stepsister compared to her beauty.

Her red-brown hair wove from her head all around, framing her face perfectly and flowing down to her waist. Her brown eyes sparkled like stars, framed with long, thick lashes. Her nose was so soft and petite. Her lips were sweet as honey. She had a full chest of the most perky breasts I’d ever thought possible, and milk poured from them.

And—

—was she PREGNANT?!

I couldn’t tell; all I knew is that she was NOT fat. Or if she was, she wore her fatness in beauty. No worries for her whether her gown made her look fat!

She had long, shapely arms and legs, and the softest, brightest skin.

I looked like a man compared to her beauty. I was so jealous—and I was ashamed at being jealous.

Her mouth opened, and ideas entered my head. Ideas of true love at first sight, of courtly romance, of marriage, of sexual intercourse, of pregnancy and childbirth and motherhood; of sweetness and honeyed tongue, and beautiful speech.

Of a far-off western garden of golden apple trees whose fruits made you live forever and never grow old and ugly.

I cried in shame. Could I ever hope to be as beautiful as her, to be loved for my own self by a man, to be proposed to? To be a bride and wife? To let my husband come into me and sire a child in me? To be a mother, and nurse my child with my milk?

I think I died inside.

********

One day left in the week. Would I make it?