The remarkably short aspie woman at the thrift store counter.

Her lithe underdeveloped body conceals an interiority of boundless depth, she is a genius, she is a romantic, she actually knows stuff. She could get me.

She can’t look me in the eyes, I try and pierce through by staring deep into her and let her know that I can see her but to no avail. Eventually I give up, looking at the limp lanyard draped around her narrow neck will have to suffice.

She takes up so little space but I get the impression I could break through her encryption and transform her from a mousy brunette trapped inside a 13 year old’s body into a titan of vitality and splendour.

The blossoming of the rose... freeing her from her self-imposed reaction to the hostility of a sick world who could never even understand her gifts. A world where brilliance is rewarded with scorn and alienation. A world where the cognitive elite are forced to withdraw inside themselves, finding solace in a prison… a palace of the mind.

Had any man even noticed her before?

As she scans the stack of classical music records I place on the counter, in my typical fashion I mumble and stutter, “the Rimsky Korssakov doesn’t have a price on”. She shakes her tiny head in a way that signals she didn’t understand a single word I said. Maybe I was testing her... does she know who Rimsky Korssakov is? Had she heard Sheherazade? Letting her know that I’m a highly intelligent and cultured person, just like her...

Maybe she could be my Sheherazade, telling me… teaching me so many things as she gently reads aloud to me every night. Learning all the knowledge that she possesses. My own personal oracle.

Well read and well bred… well, maybe not well bred… she might be some kind of genetic mutant… I’m not sure if she’s a dysgenic failure and deformity of humanity… or perhaps an autistic supersoldier whose physical development was sacrificed for the birth of a truly brilliant mind. Possibly even devolving into some kind of Adamic being, what we should have been… what we were... shedding the corruption of time. Or an extant bloodline of a forgotten race of noble people whose complex intellect triumphed over any need for physical strength. Perhaps even the magical wood nymphs of yore.

I imagine our future together. I ponder my reaction to the inevitable questions of “Is she your daughter?”, as we grow old together but she escapes the scythe of the collagen reaper. Her skin looks like she has spent less than an hour outside in her entire life… I might even believe that if she told me. She spends her time inside reading old books in various languages, sewing beautiful dresses that are recreations of historical European cultures (not in a cringe neopagan-dark academia-harry potter fan way, but simply because she is a woman out of time). Even if she did go outside, she would be too shy to step into the barbaric, venomous world in her meticulously crafted extravagant and beautifully ornate attire.

She will stay young forever.

Why is she even here? Is she too intelligent to be able to be integrated into a workplace environment, was she pushed out because the other people felt threatened by her competency? Is she a bored NEET aristocrat futilely seeking some kind of purpose? Is she forced to work here as a result of some form of therapeutic state NGO employment program, aiming to help autistic people transition into the labour market, stemming from a cruel misdiagnosis of brilliance as mental retardation?

She was the only person working in any of the stores that day who wished me a Happy Christmas as I departed… that was to be a sign of confirmation of my perception, no?