Black Pearls

"I wonder if a black oyster can culture a black pearl, its pitch black outer shell hinged to another such shell, and tightly contained within them are its slimy innards and a now bullet-hard pellet shaped into a tiny sphere whereupon all the seas and lands mapped upon it are as black as each other..."

He took a few moments to catch breath between the poetic ruminations with which he sometimes tried to impress me, before continuing...

"That was my dream, to cultivate and market black pearls, thus to provide necklaces for everyone's sweethearts to show up on their fair-skinned necks. But then one day they told me I could not do this as it would be seen to conflict with the social norms of tolerance and inclusivity. Everything needed to be available to everyone, to show up on every skin."

I nodded knowingly. I was an oyster-catcher of the first water and he was a half-breeder open for my wares. I poked a finger into my purse and brought out for his inspection the most perfect pearl I had as a lucky keepsake. One I had not been able to sell. It was no colour at all, yes, a colourless pearl like a drop of water. I offered it to him with my voice...

"This is the only pearl of its kind but I now have the methodology to re-create it, given your investment to catch other oysters the same colour as water. Think of it, a necklace of pearls like beads of sweat, or gentle perspiration - each pearl fused to the skin without the need for a thread or Miller's string. Such pearls have the attractiveness of glowing upon the skin and no laws are contravened. Even mermaids can wear them, say, like a belly-dancing delight just above where their skin ends and the tails begin."

He looked at me as if I were mad, but decided to trust me. I had helped him before to discover dust that did not need dusting, food that did not need excreting, see-through hats, clothes that made one thinner than the body otherwise made possible, and false moustaches for women.

"Ah ha," he had said, "aren't you contravening the rules of universal availability by offering false moustaches for women? They need to be available to men, too."

We had always come to an agreement - always a compromise.

"Black pearls," I said, "have always been a difficult choice, both to cultivate and to fulfil social justice strictures. Normally, I found, black oysters produced pearl-coloured pearls just as pearl-coloured oysters did, too. Each producing a pearl that I see as a rich pinky white that glows like Heaven's light, and with an imagined soul of utter perfection emanating from within. But others see that colour and soul differently. And none of us can really know what the others see."

I matched my poetics with his. I smiled, before continuing...

"After all, God is colourless, see-through, and sometimes comes down as a certain kind of rain, and is neither man nor woman."

We were now speechless, the whiteness of our eyes a faint Botticelli pink. Silent together, at least before that moment when we left together hand in hand.