Alysson deMerel's Fiction

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The Morning Star

It was a peaceful night, and the stars shone down on the world from a moonless sky. Atop the mountain stood a lone figure, gazing across the world. Tall, and splendid the figure stood, his golden hair catching the starlight and reflecting it back a thousand-fold.

The figure almost radiated a bitter sadness in the velvet night. It was, he reflected, a melancholy night. A night that promised to be followed by a morning of golden sunlight and sadness. A movement in the distance caught his eye and, inclining his head as though in answer to an unheard word, he began walking slowly toward that place.

The night was full of secret life, but the dark-haired figure sat on the cliff top overlooking a lake didn't hear any of it. Her clothes were torn and crushed, and her dishevelled hair hung past a face sunken in misery.

She was thickset, and her face, barely visible under the light of the uncaring stars, was decidedly masculine. On a man, that face would have been homely at best, on a woman, it jarred. Her appearance was only made worse by the dark streaks left by the passage of make up laden tears across her cheeks.

Her tears were spent, and now she sat in that quiet pool of misery beyond mere grief. In her hand was a bottle of pills, which she now tipped out, onto her skirt

"I've tried, Lord, how I've tried..."

Her voice, deep and rasping, seemed to shatter the stillness of the night, even though her words were barely murmured.

She raised her eyes to the heavens, the wetness of her tears shining in the pale light of a thousand distant suns. A sharp-eyed observer may have been able to discern, under the disarrayed cosmetics, the spreading bruises and swelling of injuries but a few hours old.

The very way she sat spoke of painful bruises, and a few darker stains may have hinted at the presence of fresh blood in the shadowed darkness.

She raised her voice once more, the pain and anguish evident in her voice, the tortured strains of a throat abused by grief and injury.

"Lord, I have no idea why you made me as I am ... I have no idea why you gave me this hideous body, this masculine face. I have done what I can, but after tonight, no more. I am spent."

She dropped her gaze to the many-hued tablets in her lap. She had cleared out the medicine cabinet, not caring what she used, just so long as it ended her agony.

"I am empty, Lord. I have nothing left to give ..."

She took up a handful of the medicines and was about to swallow them dry when she felt, rather than heard, a presence behind her. She looked up.

She regarded the stranger for a moment, taking in the look of sadness in the bottomless pools of his eyes. His beautiful face like that of a woman, unlike her own.

"You too?" It was almost a statement. The golden-haired figure nodded.

"May I join you?" His voice was like liquid gold. She nodded and he sat.

He asked gently, "why, Pippa?"

She didn't notice his use of her name.

"I have run out of strength. I have run out of fight. I have nothing left. I intend to end it here. And beside -last night ..."

"Go on, you might as well tell me."

"Well, last night as I was going home from work. I wait tables in the evening. Well, anyway, a gang of drunks caught me. They tried to kill me, I think. When the police arrived they treated me like filth. I was taken to the hospital, and they treated me the same."

"Why is that, Pippa?"

"Can't you see it?" She demanded, "isn't it obvious to you? You'd have to be blind to miss the fact that I'm a God's Damned bloke in a skirt!"

The anger was close to the surface, now. He went on.

"I've been living as a woman for months, I'm trying to get reassignment surgery. My shrink is extremely supportive, but look at me, I look like a bloke in drag, and I can't afford the cost of cosmetic surgery to make things easier on myself.

"I'm an ugly so and so at best, but as a woman I'm just a joke. I know that inside, where it matters, I have the heart and soul of a woman, but on the outside ... well, everybody can see that I was born a male, and an ugly one at that.

I've got to go through another year or more looking like this before I can be a woman, and even then I will never be anything but an ugly bloke with a vagina!"

"I don't see that, Pippa. All I see is a woman who is hurting inside. A woman with a kind, caring heart, and a lot of love to give."

Pippa smiled wanly. "It's kind of you to say so, but the truth is the truth."

"What do you intend to do?"

"I wanted to take these pills, and to watch the sunrise for the last time as I died. I was about to start my breakfast when you arrived."

"The dawn is a while away yet. May I share my tale with you? And after I tell you my story we will watch the dawn together, and then, perhaps, we will spend eternity in sleep together."

Pippa looked at the man, his face shining ghostly pale in the starlight.

"I would like that. I didn't want to die alone, even though I've been alone for so many years ..."

"I know, but you don't need to die alone, and perhaps, after I finish my tale, you won't feel so driven to kill yourself."

Pippa started to speak, but was silenced by the man's words.

"No, Pippa, I'm not going to try to talk you out of killing yourself, I just hope that you'll reconsider when you hear my words. If you still want to die, I will help you, then your soul need not wander lost forever ..."

Pippa shuddered. All that had stood between her and death since last night was her fear of that final judgement, the eternal punishment due to all suicides.

"Thank you," she murmured, gladdened by the stranger's words. "Please go on?"

"Very well. You may feel that you should recognise me? Well, you probably know my younger brothers better. There's a whole host of us, Dad went in for a big family. I'm the eldest.

"Well, you and I are not so different, it's just that I'm still dressed for work at the moment. When I'm home I change into a dress or a skirt and like to do girl things. Well, that's what I really need to talk about, you see.

"Now, when I was younger I wanted to be a girl, but Dad's a real old fashioned sort and so he wouldn't hear of it. He wanted me to go into the family business with him, and as the eldest, it was up to me to set an example.

"Well Dad described me as his shining light, His hope for the future, but I'm afraid that my own desires and feelings got in the way of business. In the end we had a massive bust-up. I told him that I wanted to be a woman, and that if he didn't like it then he could just do the other thing, and he threw me out, telling me that no son of his was ever going to become a woman. He told me that I was a sick pervert and that I was evil incarnate.

"Anyway, the old codger disinherited me, cut me off without a bean, so I set up in competition with him. Well, the price of his services was always a little bit high, so I made my services more accessible to the common man, or woman.

"As the years have passed, I've been extremely successful in recruiting customers - I'm a little less choosy than Dad, and my margins are slimmer, but I have a better turnover. The only trouble is that I don't really like what I do for a living, and added to that, I have never found the opportunity to become the woman I know that I am - I've just been too busy."

He paused, lost in thought.

Pippa asked, "what is your line of business?"

The stranger smiled ruefully. "I buy options on futures and trade them for more immediate stocks. It isn't a very nice line of business, and people are so easily tempted out of their long-term investments for the sake of short-term benefits."

"So what has this to do with my sitting on this cliff-top trying to work up the courage to kill myself?" She was certain that there was a connection.

"Well, Pippa, I occasionally get so sick of myself that I have to go out and do something for somebody else, free and without charge. Without ant strings attached. Pro bono as the legal people say.

"And tonight, I'm afraid, you drew the short straw."

His grin was infectious. Pippa found herself giggling unselfconsciously.

"What did you say your name was, again?"

"I didn't, but my friends call me Nick."

Pippa considered her options. She took a breath and let it out.

"So why are you considering suicide, Nick?"

"For the self same reasons as you, Pippa. I want to be a woman, but society doesn't want me, and my family don't want me."

In the pre-dawn light, Pippa examined her companion's face.

"You have fine features, Nick. You could almost be a woman to look at you. You would pass in public with little enough effort."

"I know," he said miserably, "but my customers expect a male boss."

Pippa said a rude word and blushed.

"The world has moved on, Nick. and people are a lot more flexible than they were. Try it. If your business is as well received as you say, then your clients will understand. This is the twenty-first century, after all."

Nick looked dejected. "Tell me about it. The new century has been a disaster for me already, what with the developments in Internet businesses, easy global travel and scientific advances. I'm already struggling to keep up."

"Then liquidate your stock and get on with your life. Hell, if I were half as successful as you seem to have been, I wouldn't be sitting here with a lap-full of uneaten medication waiting to end my life."

A look of misery crossed the handsome man's face. "There is one other thing - my Father. I want to be accepted by my Father - more than anything in this world. I want him to be proud of his daughter. I want his forgiveness."

"Then ask for his forgiveness."

"I can't. He won't listen to me. Not then, not now, not ever. Besides, I have done some terrible things in the line of business - things that I cannot be forgiven for. I regret them all, but I am still guilty of those acts."

"Nick, I will speak to him for you, and for what little good it does, I forgive you for whatever you did."

The golden haired man smiled, and an expression of saintly rapture crossed his face. "Thank you Pippa. You are a good woman."

A comfortable silence followed, and Pippa watched the planet Venus rise above the horizon.

"Nick, what do you call her? Your feminine side, I mean?"

The other looked nonplussed. "I never thought about it, why?"

"Well, you can't become a woman unless you have a suitably feminine name. Nicholas or Nick is hardly femme, is it?"

He grinned. "No, I suppose it isn't. I'll tell you what, you chose my femme name."

Pippa gazed at him, and looked into the growing light.

"I'll name you after the planet that has just risen above the horizon, the Morning Star."

"What, Venus? It's a bit, I don't know, pretentious?"

"Yes, the planet, no the name. Venus is the herald of the dawn, Lucifer, it used to be called. Why not call yourself Lucy?"

The man laughed, a curiously melodious sound from such a masculine-seeming throat.

"I like it," he said, "It is so, me, I suppose. Yes, Pippa, Lucy I will be. Now as to the other thing - are you really willing to help?"

"Of course. I can always come back another night, can't I?"

Pippa realised that at some point during the past couple of hours, she had lost the desire to end her life.

"And besides," she continued, "if I'm helping you sort yourself out, I've got something to live for. How do I smooth things over with your father?"

He looked at her. "You'd really do that for me?"

Pippa nodded, a graceful gesture at odds with her appearance.

"Then use your mobile. Here's the number."

She keyed in the number, wondering how much a call to a sixteen-digit code was going to cost. She sighed and hit 'call,' reasoning that it would probably be worth it in any case.

"Hello?" The voice was mellifluous, urbane and sounded like a chorus of angels.

"Hi, this is Pippa. I'm calling on behalf of Nick?"

There was a pause. "Go on?"

"Yeah, it's just that, like, we're both in the same situation, and we got to talking... Anyway, I said that I'd call you up and tell you that you really should try to see his point of view - I mean, its so lonely being a woman born in a male body, and, like, the people you need most are your parents.

"I don't know what sort of things Nick has done in the past, but he, or she, has a whole lot of regrets about them. Hell, man, if I can forgive her, then I'm sure that as her father, you certainly can? You threw her out because she's transgendered? She had to survive.

"Oh, and by the way, when you next see her, call her Lucy - I named her after the Morning Star."

Pippa hung up angrily. She was furious. She was breathing heavily, her heart was pounding and she felt as though she had just scaled a mountain.

"By all that's Holy, I've never seen anyone tear a strip off of the Old Man like that before. If he doesn't take any notice then he's probably dead."

Nick laughed, a gentle sound like the song of the river and the wind in the trees.

"Come on, Pippa, let's go and get some breakfast, then we've got some girl things to do."

She giggled. "First thing, Nick, is a makeover for you, and then I need to meet Lucy."

Together they stood, and as they did so, the sun burst over the horizon bathing them both in His golden rays. As the light played over their forms, they felt the change, but didn't know what it meant.

"You know, there's this little boutique that stocks larger sizes just for people like you and me."

Lucy giggled, a sound like a mountain brook.

The two women watched the dawn for a while before turning and making their way down to where Pippa had parked her car. Two beautiful mortal women secure in their femininity and eager for life, swapping tales of their lives so far.

"Did I tell you that I was told to tempt Eve in a bid to kick-start humanity on the road to civilisation? No? Well, it happened like this ..."

And in the distance, a Father's laughter echoed quietly around the clifftops, as He finally understood his eldest son, the light of His dawn.