Project: Soulmate

Prompt 1: Eye See What You Did There

Prompt 1: AU where your vision is shades of your soulmate's eye color so if they have blue eyes you see shades of blue until you meet them-via the internet/Tumblr images

"Liz!" my mom yelled.  "We need to go!"  I pulled my earbuds out and left the room, shutting the door so that no one could mess with my stuff.  I hurried down the stairs, grabbing my jacket on the way.  Completely by accident, if I might add.  It fell onto my head when I bumped into the railing.  I ran into my mom, who was waiting by the door.

She sighed, and suddenly I felt 12 again.  I'd begun dealing with this problem at the same time everyone else had.  When I hit age 10, same as everyone else in my class, my vision gradually changed to match the color of my soulmate's eyes.  But unlike everyone else, I gave people a huge scare because they had thought I'd gone blind.  But we found out that, no, I wasn't blind, my soulmate just had extremely light-colored blue eyes.  It had taken me a long time to adjust to my almost-not-there vision.  In fact, at age 23, I still wasn't as used to it as I'd like to be.

It wasn't just the fact that it was extremely hard for me to make out shapes with my minimal vision, made worse by my propensity for nearsightedness.  It was the fact that that inhibited me from doing anything a normal 23-year-old girl should be able to do.  I couldn't drive.  I couldn't function without my dog, Charlie.  I couldn't get an apartment.  I could only do like, 3 jobs, the least boring of which was testing audio clips for a birthday card company.

But all that is going to change today, I smiled as Charlie led me out the door behind Mom.  She started the car and I got in slowly.  Charlie hopped up and licked my face excitedly; he loved being in the car.  Mom backed up and began driving.  After a minute of silence, I turned to try and look at her.  She noticed the movement and let out an "mm" that probably translated to "I'm paying half attention to you but still need to focus on driving, proceed to speak".

"Can we turn on the radio?"

There was a long pause.  "Are you sure?"  Normally, the radio was banned in the car because I was supposed to be focusing on the road and "practicing my vision skills".

I shrugged, attempting to seem nonchalant.  "Today is a day of change."

Mom laughed.  "Sure, throw away all the rules."  I hold my breath.  "Why not?"  She turned on the radio and a pop song I didn't know (big surprise) began to play at a low volume.  Today is a day of change, I thought happily and let Charlie lick my face.

After a while, Mom parks.  I climb out slowly and let Charlie lead the way.  We go inside and take a seat.  A feeling of anxiety begins to well up inside me and I'm not quite sure why.  The worst that could happen is that we get told no, right?  That we get told no, again...  I'm not sure how much more rejection Mom can take.

"Liz Ford?" I head the receptionist.  I stand and follow Charlie and Mom back into a room.  The woman directed me to sit on a chair, so I sat.  She told me to wait, so I waited.  Unhappy about all of this, I began to hum the pop song the radio had been playing.  I turned and saw the faintest outline of Mom's dark frizz.  She seemed about just as anxious as I was.  I could hear the clock on the wall ticking like it was a bomb about to go off.

Finally, finally, someone entered the room.  There was a black bar across his face-I assumed they were sunglasses-and he began whistling along with me without realizing.  When he did, we both laughed.  "So," he said.  I was surprised; he was a lot younger than he seemed.  "What can I do for you, Liz?"  I could tell he was smiling; I liked him.

"Well," my mom piped up unhelpfully.  "We were hoping to get her some sort of contact lens or some kind of glasses that helped her be able to see until she finds her soulmate."