The Truth of Two Eyes

She had one green eye and one blue eye.
It was a unique feature regardless of what they allowed her to do.
She'd known all her life that she was different. From the first time she could remember people would do a double take when they realized that her eyes were two different colors. This added moment of deep eye contact allowed them to feel inquisitive and it allowed her the moment that she needed to see into the person's soul.
The first time she remembers it happening was with her mother. It was bedtime, the lights were dim and because her mother was so comfortable making eye contact with her the vision lasted a long time. Bethany stared into her mother's eyes and with one side of her brain she saw fear about the future, despair over their financial situation and a frustration with the fact that they were being wronged. With the other eye she saw the truth that her mother loved her more than she could ever know, that her mother had confidence in their family's ability to always make do with what they had and that she truly trusted in the good of others.
This stark contradiction of emotions puzzled the young Bethany the first time she felt, or rather saw, it. However as she grew, this hot/cold, truth/fear, good/evil became part of her everyday. She learned to quiet it some, but any time there was prolonged eye contact, she couldn't help but see the emotions of the person she was speaking with. It was truly disturbing so she'd also learned to look as close to someones eyes as possible without actually looking into their pupils. Most people hated that, it was disturbing.
Bethany began to see her gift as a super power. She promised herself early on that she would use her "power" for good, not evil. It was quite a burden to bear and often she would just sit in a public place with her eyes closed. She loved summer, when she could wear dark sunglasses and have what she considered "normal" conversations. But for those times when she couldn't avoid making eye contact, she did her best to weave the truth side of her seeing into the fear portion of the person's life.


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