“What is your name?”

They answered “Equality 7-2521” 

And we let out a breath, as if an immense weight had been pushing on our shoulders, due to the curiosity striking the mind of mine. We had never taken notice of men. For it is forbidden. They were tall, straight, and slim. For there are not many men who are six feet tall but it suited them. Equality 7-2521 stood out from the others. They were different but the kind of different that we desired to understand. 

Others may have seen Equality 7-2521 as an outlier, but we related as well. Despite the fact that we barely knew each other. We contained a mutual long-lasting feeling of interconnectedness. We knew they felt this way as well. We could feel it in the way they watched us. 

They were always on me, the eyes of Equality 7-2521. I felt them whenever they had been nearby. Working in furrows inside of the black field was tiresome. We sometimes made up scenarios in our head to keep our spirits lifted. But their eyes were dark and beautiful. We found peace when our attention was grasped by them. It pushed us through the rest of the day's work.

Before this debarred interaction, we tried to sustain not looking back in the following days, but the guilty pleasure was too extreme for us to resist. Eventually we needed to look. 

The sin of conversation with them had begun once we turned and met the eyes of Equality 7-2521, and we froze. We felt some sort of fatal attraction when we had connected our eyes, thus we could not smile or gesture anything toward Equality 7-2521, now we thought our connections were destroyed. Little did we know we would end up talking later. 

We stood looking upon their hands in wonder why they had wanted to speak to us. It was us they had chosen. 

Us?  

Why us?

What do they see in us? 

For the first time we felt appreciated, a feeling we had never known, a feeling so foreign that it lifted our spirits for the first time in a long time. 

They asked, “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” we said quietly. 

They looked at us with their long face. We were embarrassed, we knew they were thinking about how we were soon going to be sent to the Palace of Mating. We saw the Palace of Mating a disgraceful place, and hoped they knew we saw it in this way. Would the fact that we would be sent there end our chances with Equality 7-2521. We prayed it would not. 

We were confused, for they were not one of our brothers. Still without reason, we stood and felt a quiver in our stomachs like never before. The lips of Equality 7-2521 were drawn to ours, there was an unbidden force pulling the two of us together. 

The thoughts we were thinking were consuming the brain of mine, we were worried about the laws we were taught to follow from day one. 

We wanted to speak to Equality 7-2521 and tell them how we felt, but we were torn for some word we could not find. Swarming our heads were the possibilities of not being able to encounter Equality ever again. We had broken so many laws if the council or anyone were to find out, our associations would be cut off. We did not want this to happen.

So much is still to be learned about Equality 7-2521, but the idea of being caught is in the back of our head creeping up so frequently. 

We saw Equality 7-2521’s lips tighten. They cared for us, they did not take a liking to the idea of us having to go to the Palace of Mating. I came to the realization that at that moment it was confirmed that they had been feeling what we were. 

A sudden smile appeared on my face. It seemed as though Equality took note of this, we wanted them to. So we longed for Equality to say something, anything back, but they did not. 

So we took a pause and walked away. We thought to ourselves that we would not be complete, if we hadn't seen Equality again. We needed to see them, we wondered the next time we would encounter them. 

Equality 7-2521 was not like any other man we had taken notice of. Equality was like us, and we were like them. We both had theories, our own conspiracies, and ideas. We each desired to know why the unspeakable word was so prohibited. No men may hear or speak of this word, but we wanted to know. It is a sin to think words no others think. But we both together thought about it even when we were not supposed to. We wished to explore the Uncharted Forest, for it embodies the unknown. That is what we both love, the undiscovered parts of the world.

Together taking on the world was what we were both put on this world to do. We are not here to do it alone, there is a reason we felt this parallel bond. We needed to know why we felt so special around them. 

We longed to figure out and discover all of this together. Our future together was bound. As we were surrounded by open land while we were walking away. In our brain sparked a flash of our possible future together.

It was all picture perfect, the pieces fit together so clean. We could run away from it all. Society and our jobs. Just the two of us. In the Uncharted Forest. Following our own laws, not adhering to anyone. Building a life for not one of us but the two of us. 

But in the back of our head we knew this was only something from a dream. Nothing realistic, nothing that would become our reality. 

The Council would never allow that, never for a second.

Yet we still hoped for it to morph into our reality.