Matching Day: Part 1

To love risks more than just her heart.

Based on a post by SmallTownPrincess, in 2 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connected.

Girls spend their entire lives looking forward to the fateful Matching Day - and whether or not they will admit it, boys, too, have at least a healthy curiosity. It's so reassuring, knowing that in your eighteenth year, you and your age-mates will be paired off, brought together with another from their own community or a surrounding one that match them perfectly. No song-and-dance dating rituals, like the ones in the books Livia liked to read, no old maids, no riotous bachelors; just simple, comforting compatibility.

"Have you heard?" The hushed, conspiratorial tones issued from the pink-lacquered lips of Livia's best friend, Mara.

"What?" Livia's low-pitched voice always made her sound disinterested, but she paid close attention to Mara when her friend sounded this urgent.

"There was a big accident over in Micrague. One guy died!"

"Oh, that's terrible," Livia murmured, letting her eyelashes drop and rise again to half-mast in a brief show of empathy. It was all she had time for, as Mara leaned suddenly, ever more urgently forward, gripping Livia's arm in both hands.

"That's not the worst thing," she rolled on. "The guy who was killed? He just turned eighteen. That makes the numbers for tomorrow's Matching uneven!"

Two full breaths, painful to the impatient Mara, passed before Livia spoke in response. "So, what, someone won't be paired? A girl will be left without her match?"

"Whoever matched with him will have no pair on Matching Day," Mara proclaimed ominously. Her eyes were wide and glittering with morbid excitement.

"What do they do about that?" It was unheard of, as far as Livia knew; there were always even numbers, always a perfect match for everyone.

Mara gave an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe she'll never be matched."

Livia was surprised into laughter. "They can't leave her without a match forever," she said with certainty. "Maybe they'll search out another community for someone that fits even better than that poor boy who died."

Her reassuring confidence sent Mara, humming, away to terrify someone else with proclamations of an eternity alone for some poor girl. The thought nagged at Livia for the rest of the afternoon, though. What if he was matched with me?

"Verin Massada," the stern voice called from the central platform, and a stick-thin brunette drifted toward the three steps that lifted her above the circle of impatient teenagers.

"Philip Pressia." The broad-shouldered redhead that stepped up to take Verin's hand smirked and bowed at the polite smattering of applause that ushered the happy new couple off the stage. Livia smiled approvingly; Verin needed a little more humor in her life.

Livia watched each girl she'd grown up with walk back into the circle, shyly clutching the hand of her new mate, and twisted her skirt nervously in her fingers. It seemed forever before the 'R's were called, and the wad of boys brought in from all the different communities ste