Page 2 of Fated
“Promise this and promise that?—”
“You’re only here for precious cats?—”
“Feed them well, don’t lose a one?—”
“And you’ll once again see noonday sun.”
Eris nods, a little taller in her seat. “Yep. Check. Got it. Pretty sure I can manage some cats for a week.”
“So be it—” Atropos declares, raising her stick.
“We see it!” Clotho joins raising her stick.
“Sisters we go!” Lachesis shouts and the moment her stick is raised the three Fates poof into the ether of the world the thud of the sticks to the floor echoing in the silent void.
SNOOPING
Eris takes a moment to breathe in the quiet of the hovel. Nothing but the popping of the fire beside her and the scuttle of the feline shadows around her until Ribbon hisses.
“Are we going to find the fabric Black Ker foretold of?”
“Ahh c’mon Ribs…” Eris answers, deflating once again.
“You knowss we wissh to try. You knowss you wissh for beautiesss. Black Ker said the fabricss would make uss pretty. Sssso pretty.”
Eris stands, unfolding her long legs and longer arms, unbelievably tall in comparison to her folded form. She walks to a silver tray on the wall— the surface foggy and scratched. She fingers the thorns of her hair.
“I do wish to be pretty.”
“To be some-thingsss you aren’t, to be ssseeen— you could be Eirene…”
Eris looks at her tatty fingernails and picks at the edges, mumbling.
“Eirene. Loved and revered. Certainly someone my sisters wouldn’t lecture for hours.”
“Nobody runs from Eirene.”
Eris walks to the workroom. It’s lit by bulbs without strings or fixtures. They lie randomly on shelves and stools, hang from the ceiling in raw looping nets, rest on the floor.
Eris runs her hand along one shelf covered in spools of fluffy white cotton that glows from within like the thread on the loom. She sweeps her fingers along the backs of her sisters’ chairs, raw wood slats with three uneven legs. The spinning wheel waits for the Fates’ return, cotton loaded and abandoned when Zeus demanded the eye.
She pricks her finger on the spindle?—
“Ow!”
A drop of blood falls before she sucks her finger between her lips with a hiss from herself and Ribbon.
“Tsk tsk tsk. Have you learned nothing from brother’s Grimm?” He says beneath a hiss.
“Well I’m not sleepy so perhaps it was their error.”
Her blood soaks into the cotton, seems to travel through the core of the thread, disappearing.
“Five minutes Ribbon. That’s all it took and I’ve proven their fears.”
Eris runs a hand along the cotton where her blood disappeared— “It’s so soft.”
She looks at the loom, reaches for the thick tresses of fabric pooling beneath. Heavy and light at the same time, cotton white, the pulse matching the faint colorful glow.
