Edge Of Desire 1

Rae's sun has travelled between the tropics 27 times. Blythe's 28 times. So it's all kind of legal, even if they can't have kids. As long as they don't preach, right?

The Dome Protects.

Rae woke to the warm hum of the dome shielding New Manhattan from the upper radiation currents. Her sheets were twisted around her hips, one leg thrown out, the other curled tight. Morning light poured in through the Firmaglass window, blue-tinted and pure, the exact hue of her own eyes--her mother used to say she had Firmament eyes, like a good child of the Disc.

She blinked against the light, one hand flat on her chest, fingers splayed lightly across her small breasts. Her nipples were still hard. Maybe from a dream. Maybe from the faint vibration that always started just before the Citywide Magnetline powered up. Or maybe from memory.

Her other hand was already between her legs. Not fucking herself--just resting there, pressed against the soft stubble that had come in yesterday. She never shaved on Edge Days. There was something honest about stubble. Something animal. She liked the way it rasped under her fingers, caught sweat, remembered scent.

She slipped two fingers down slowly, just brushing the lips, not pushing in. There was slickness, sure. But this wasn't about getting off. Not yet.

It was about being.

The skin of her belly was warm to the touch, the lightest freckling across her left hip where the burn from a faulty UV screen had never fully faded. Her ribs were visible if she twisted right. Her thighs were long, coltish, a little bruised from yesterday's cart ride back from the observatory archives--some flathead tourist had bumped her hard getting off at Disc Center.

She exhaled. Let her hand drift up again. A slow drag over the ribcage. Thumb brushing the underside of her breast. Her pulse thudded up through the heel of her palm.

"Still alive," she whispered to the ceiling.

Her room smelled like Firmament Toothpaste and All-Disc Deodorant and last night's noodles. The kind that came in a VacSeal tub with "Brought To You By The Infinite Plane" stamped in white across the lid.

She rolled out of bed, bare feet on cold tile. The floor was printed with concentric latitude rings. Her dad had laid them when she was six--told her she could always find her way back to true center, no matter where she stood. That was before the sea took him. Or the Firmament drones. Depends who you ask.

In the bathroom, the light adjusted to her face. Auto-refraction, 112° curvature rejection. She leaned forward over the sink, studied herself.

Hair: brown, flat against her head from sleep. Eyes: still the color of domeglass.

"I'm going," she told the mirror. "All the way."

The mirror didn't respond, but the DomeClock on her wall pulsed three soft chimes. Time to prep. If she was going to catch the Edge Rail, she'd need to leave within the hour.

She dressed slow. Layered underarmor first--standard for high-radiant zones--then her slate-grey travel jumpsuit. The sleeves were stitched with tiny silver threads, supposed to repel magnetite dust. A joke, probably. Nothing stopped the dust this close to the Belt.

As she packed, she kept her movements slow. Deliberate. She was thinking of Blythe. Again.

The East Discrail Station pulsed with movement--trolleys humming, magnet tracks whining, static halos crackling as the departure gates cycled open and closed. Rae stood near the end of Platform Two, the soles of her boots vibrating faintly as the rail prepped for launch. She sipped her coffee--Edgebrew™, extra bitter, same as every Edge Day--and kept her thoughts close.

It was always like this. Quiet before the stretch. The ride from New Manhattan to the Ice Wall took nine hours, and it was better to begin soft, internal. Let the world fall away a little. And it was already falling--had been since she woke.

Her eyes drifted past the edge of the dome shield, where the artificial blue met the haze of upper radiation. She didn't look at the Dome directly. Not here. Not now. Instead, she stared into the coffee's rising steam and thought about the flower shop.

It had been near Curvature Square, on the old magnetic fault line where the Disc itself groaned sometimes during equinox tide shift. Tourists loved that. Took selfies under the UNTRUE GRAVITY mural, said they could "feel the lies hum beneath their feet."

But Rae wasn't a tourist. She was on her way to the old records vault that day, tired, sweaty, her jumpsuit sticking to the curve of her spine.

And then: Blythe.

Standing just outside the flower shop. One boot resting on the window ledge, elbow perched on her knee, lips parted like she'd just said something funny to the woman inside. She held a bouquet of tilt-roses--genetically designed to grow flat against the soil, heads canted sideways like they were listening to the stars.

The sun was retreating then, visibly drawing back on its track toward the central Disc Ring. The sky didn't darken so much as fade. Colors dulled. Shadows stretched sideways, distorted--not long, not low. Just...weird. Dim phase always felt like a held breath, like the world was pausing to check its balance.

That's how Rae saw her: paused.

A curl of hair tucked behind one ear. Brown-red, not unlike Rae's own, but with golden edges that caught the firmalight just right. Her jacket was half-zipped, a gleam of sweat on her collarbone. She laughed--not loud, not big, but full. Whole.

Rae had stopped walking.

Had just stopped.

The flowers. The jawline. The sudden bolt in Rae's lower gut like the world had turned, just a little, against all doctrine.

Blythe had looked over.

Noticed her.

Smiled.

That was the beginning.

Not the kisses. Not the lectures or the long talks under domeglow. Not the trip to the North Edge Dome where they watched meteors slam against the outer shell.

No.

Just that smile. That cocky, amused smile from a woman holding engineered flowers under a false sky, daring Rae not to want her.

The Discrail shifted beneath Rae's feet, pulling her back to the now.

She blinked. Finished her coffee. The train hissed open. She stepped on board and found her seat in Car Seven, stowed her pack beneath the seat with the "For Your Safety, Trust the Edge" slogan half-worn off. The lights overhead buzzed. A steward moved past selling DomeSnax and Flat Fizz in tall cans shaped like the sun's daily track curve.

Outside the window, the last sliver of the city curved out of view.

Rae leaned her head back. Closed her eyes.

And smiled.

That cocky, amused smile.

The train picked up speed.

Outside, the world flattened into motion blur--rows of crop squares, aquafields stitched like quilts into the Disc, sunrigs gleaming overhead as the artificial light pulled tighter on its spiral. Somewhere above, the solar rail spun slowly, angling the false sun inward for its dim cycle. The light went gold, then sallow.

Rae sat with her legs curled up beneath her, knees to the window, chin on the back of one hand. Her other hand traced idle lines over the condensation forming on the inner pane.

Each mile took her further from Dome jurisdiction. Further from comfort. Further from Blythe.

The conductor's voice warbled from the overhead speakers: "Now departing the Central Ring. Next stop: Radius Six Township. Keep your arms and beliefs inside the car."

Across from her, a pair of old women in high-collared domecoats were sharing a thermos of something steaming and sharp. One of them had inked stars across her scalp--six-pointed, domeshape outlines. The other wore a pendant shaped like a cross-section of the Disc, oceans skimming the rim, mountains at center. The glyph for "true up" hung below.

"They used to think it was a ball," the star-scalp woman said, voice soft but insistent. "Can you imagine? Just spinning through darkness, no tether. No anchor."

"Floating," said the other, "in space." She spat the word like it tasted sour. "Globe Religion. They worshipped it."

"Worshipped, yes. Orb priests. NASA cults. Told people the sun didn't move. That it was we spinning. Madness."

"They say ships sailed over the edge back then."

"They say no one ever found the edge."

They both laughed. It was a quiet, tinny sound, muffled by the hiss of the track beneath them.

"Before Times," murmured the first. "Mist-choked and full of liars. They taught curvature in schools."

Rae kept her eyes on the glass. She knew that tone. Reverent. Rehearsed. It wasn't just memory. It was catechism.

She'd grown up with versions of it herself. Her mother's voice, telling bedtime stories about the Rise of the Truth and the Burning of the Globebooks. About the Great Flattening, when the Archons severed the false satellites and revealed the dome in full. She remembered praying not to fall up into space.

The funny thing was: she almost missed the fear.

Fear had borders. Rules. Blythe never played by them.

The train slowed as it entered Radius Six. One of the old women pulled a cord and stood, brushing crumbs from her coat. Her pendant caught the light.

"You coming?" she asked the other.

"I'm riding to the Edge," the second said, and glanced at Rae. "You too?"

Rae hesitated.

Then nodded. "Yeah."

"Good," the woman said. "It's a holy thing, isn't it? To stand at the limit of all this and not fall."

She shuffled off, boots clicking down the aisle.

Rae watched her go. Her throat felt tight.

Outside, the light continued to dim. The sun now a shrinking glow, more suggestion than heat. Night didn't fall on the Disc. It faded in, slow and spectral, as the sun retreated up the spiral to recharge.

It was her favorite time to remember.

The train rumbled past Radius Six.

Beyond the windows, the croplands gave way to windfarms and dead fields, scrub-flat and buzzed with insects drawn to the heat-leak from the rail's undercarriage. They called this the Leanlands, where the Dome's glow was thinner and the air sometimes shimmered with edge-light interference. Even now, the horizon began to twitch--just faintly, like the surface of water disturbed by breath.

Inside Car Seven, Rae pulled her knees up and hugged them. Her pack shifted beside her, heavy with notes, field journals, two hard rations, and a box of candied tilt-rose petals that she might give to Blythe. Or not.

She let her cheek press against the cool of the window.

And there it was again.

That first time.

They were both pretending to study.

The Radiant Library, Level Minus Two. The Stack Archives, where access was discouraged unless you had the right clearance or enough nerve to forge it. Rae had both. Blythe had charm. That was enough.

They sat across from one another, knees almost touching beneath the brass-lit desk, their breath low in the hush that only old knowledge could make.

Outside, the Dome was in dimcycle. Inside, it was warmer than expected.

Rae had been flipping through a banned Globe-era text--The Cartographic Heresies of Magellan. Blythe leaned close, one hand resting on the edge of the page, her thumb brushing the map's cursed lines, all those impossible curves.

"I don't believe in curves," she murmured, her voice low and amused. "But I do believe in friction."

Rae looked up. "That's not scientific."

"I know." Blythe smiled.

Their hands touched.

Not deliberately. Not at first. Just skin grazing skin, a tremor down the middle of the desk. Fingertips brushing. The electric hush between contact and contact-confirmed.

And then Blythe pressed. Soft but definite. Her palm against Rae's. Her fingers lacing slow, one by one.

It felt like a second sun had clicked on somewhere inside Rae's chest.

She inhaled too sharply.

Blythe didn't move.

"Dome," Rae whispered. "That feels good."

Blythe's eyes gleamed, firmalight catching in their edges. "You're not supposed to say that yet," she said.

"You mean 'not supposed to feel it'?"

"I mean not supposed to say Dome like that," she teased, but her voice had thickened. Her thumb brushed Rae's again. "People will think you're blaspheming."

"It's not blasphemy if it's true."

And it was true.

That warm press of another human. That hand, that pressure, that certainty. Rae had spent her whole life orbiting things she wasn't allowed to want. But here, in a room sealed tight with doctrine and dust, she wanted.

Not sinfully. Not hungrily. Just... truthfully.

Like the edge of the world was just a line she could cross, barefoot, if Blythe was waiting on the other side.

Back on the train, Rae opened her eyes. Her fingers were curled slightly in her lap, as if still holding that memory.

The sun had all but vanished now. The sky above the Disc went a strange pewter-blue, the first stars appearing--projected, of course, onto the Dome's underglass. Each one calibrated for psychological comfort and celestial tradition.

But Rae looked past them. Toward the black between.

Where the Dome cracked. Where the real stars waited. Maybe.

She flexed her fingers.

The next stop would be the Observatory Bastion. After that, only Ice. Only the Edge.

And maybe, Blythe.

This memory comes in hot, jagged, a blade between kisses.

The Observatory's upper platform wasn't technically open to junior researchers.

But Rae never asked permission. Not when it came to truth.

She'd scaled the central lens tower with boot magnets and grit, sat cross-legged on the solar-grooved plating, the Dome so close it felt like it might lower and kiss her skull. The projected constellations blinked and wheeled overhead, maintaining their calculated drift.

It was beautiful. And false. And sacred. And she hated that she couldn't tell which part mattered more.

Blythe found her an hour later.

She climbed in silence--no words, no warnings. Just that tight, clipped step she used when her jaw was locked and her hands were fists.

"You're not authorized to be up here," she snapped.

"I know," Rae said, not turning. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Dome," Blythe swore. "You're impossible."

Now Rae did turn. Hair whipped in the platform wind. "No. I'm curious. You remember that word? We used to value it."

"Don't start."

"I already started," Rae said, standing. "Back in the Stacks. Back when we touched a little too long and lied about it with our eyes. Back when you told me you thought the stars were angels' eyes, but now you won't even admit the Dome glitches."

"That was a poetic metaphor, Rae."

"You're full of poetic metaphors when they keep you safe. But if I so much as ask what's beneath the Ice--"

"There's nothing beneath! That's the point! That's the foundation of Disc science!"

"You don't know that," Rae hissed, stepping in close, eyes wild and gleaming. "You're just scared. Of what happens if the Disc has a bottom. Or a top. Or--Dome forbid--a curve."

Blythe grabbed her wrist.

Hard.

"Don't say curve like that," she said, voice shaking. "Not to me."

Rae's breath caught. Their bodies were inches apart now, heat flaring between them in spite of the wind, the height, the doctrine cracking like glass around them.

"Then stop me," Rae whispered.

Silence.

Tension. A quiver in Blythe's throat. Rae's lips parted, ready to hurl one more challenge--

But Blythe's mouth was already on hers.

It wasn't gentle.

It wasn't sweet.

It was collision.

Teeth. Tongue. Hands scrambling, gripping the backs of each other's coats, pulling too hard. Rae gasped into it. Blythe answered with a growl. Their hips pressed together, two bodies finding shape in defiance, in fire, in no more pretending.

Rae tore away first, panting.

"Dome," she breathed. "You hate me."

"No," Blythe said, eyes black with want. "I just hate how much you matter."

And then she kissed her again, like a woman praying into a void.

Blythe said it. Said it like it was gospel.

"They say two women lying together is how the cracks begin. That desire like ours weakens the firmament." It was a lie. It had to be. Rae felt only one thing cracking, and it was faith.

Back on the train, Rae opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Let the motion of the car rock her deeper into the memory. Into the kiss. Into the impossible contradiction of loving someone who couldn't bear the truth--but couldn't let Rae chase it alone, either.

They were almost at the Bastion.

And after that?

Only the Edge.

And maybe the end of belief.

Or its beginning.

It was so cold at the Edge that her lashes froze together when she blinked.

Even beneath her thermal hood and radiant-core coat, Rae felt the wind like a rebuke--like the Disc itself didn't want her here. She'd stepped off the final transport only minutes ago, but already her bones ached. The low gravity at this latitude made her steps strange, too long and too light, like she was about to float. But she didn't. The Dome held her down. Always.

She crossed the metal platform toward the observation tier. Each step left a faint print that iced over seconds later. Not many people came this far, the guards had told her. "Only pilgrims. Or madwomen."

She wasn't sure which she was. She didn't care.

The Archonic Projectors stood tall ahead--twelve crystalline pylons arranged in a ring, like cathedral spires carved from pure Firmaglass. They spun in perfect synchronicity, humming low, their tips casting beams of light upward. The false constellations wheeled above her in response--Orbis Prime, The Infinite Shepherd, The Flattened Lamb.

It was beautiful.

It was holy.

And it was wrong.

Because Rae couldn't stop looking past the projections. Past the soft blue shimmer of the Dome. She wanted to see it--what came after. The black. The spill. The impossible down. Her whole life they'd told her it was nothing. And maybe that was true.

But her chest ached with maybe not.

She walked to the edge of the platform. Gripped the cold railing with bare fingers until her knuckles burned.

Below, the Ice Wall stretched into forever. A vertical plain of pale, rippled light, sculpted by endless wind. Beyond that: the void. She couldn't see it, not really. But the way the stars stopped just there, the way the Dome itself faded into shadow near the perimeter--it felt like a lie too big to live inside anymore.

She swallowed.

And then saw it.

A single candied tilt-rosepetal. Frozen to the deck.

Delicate, pale pink. Rimmed with frost. It looked like a kiss held too long on cold lips. It looked like something dropped in a hurry.

Rae's breath caught in her throat.

Blythe.

Was she here? Still? Had she stood on this very platform, holding that same little tin Rae had brought all the way from New Manhattan--nervous, unsure, waiting?

Or had she already stepped away--walked back into safety, into dogma, into warmth and denial?

Rae didn't know.

She didn't dare know.

Hope was dangerous at the Edge. It could slip. It could fall.

But still--she crouched. She reached. She touched the petal.

It cracked beneath her glove.

And then--

"Rae," came a voice behind her. Quiet. Breathless. Like it had traveled the whole Disc to reach her.

She turned.

And there she was.

Blythe.

Wrapped in Institute thermals. Eyes rimmed red from wind and more than wind. Lips trembling not from cold but from the weight of everything they hadn't said.

"You came," Rae whispered.

Blythe nodded. Her voice cracked. "Dome help me--I always come back to you."

And for one long, sacred second, neither of them moved.

Above them, the stars turned.

And somewhere, just beneath the threshold of sound, the Dome sang.

The wind screamed across the Edge platform, rising in a sharp gust that made Rae brace herself against the railing. Blythe stood a few feet away, her hood down now, hair lashing her face, the dark lines under her eyes stark in the frigid glow of the rotating projectors.