Page 4 of Fated
Eris moves to stand, dropping the fabric from her shoulders behind her in the same motion, but it catches on the thorns in her hair, jerking her head back and tearing the threads.
“No, oh no! Ohhh, no no.”
She turns back to the fabric as Ribbon menaces the feline, keeping her from getting too close.
On her knees Eris holds the the fabric tenderly where it’s separated. The color bleeds from the fibers staining her fingers.
“Nothing good comes when I come around.” she says, her lower lip wobbling on a quiet sob. “They were right all along.”
She looks at the cat and growls deep in her throat.
“How cute is the machine of my destruction. My luck you’re on your eighth life.”
Eris crawls over and wrestles it toward the door but then?—
“hushshshsh…” Ribbon whispers.
As Eris pushes her capture into the workroom and the shadow scampers away beneath the loom she sees it?—
Fog rolling in beneath the doorframes.
She groans, “Mmmmmmmnnnnoooooo.”
Then she hears it…
The quiet of shuffling footsteps beyond the threshold.
Muffled Cackling.
Eris deflates, “Oh come on!”
TROUBLE
Eris peers through the hovel to a front window. A thick fog envelopes the Moirae as they shuffle in line toward their home swaying to and fro as if connected, their mumbling chants unintelligible.
Eris turns back to the well.
“Why couldn’t you be a skink?”
“Whatever for?”
“Of all the times I’ve wished arms upon you, never more than I do right now. Ribbon.”
“My deepest sympathies.”
“Yeah.”
Eris crawls back to the well, sitting at the edge and pulling the threads from her thorns piece by piece?—
The front door of the hovel creaks on its’ hinges.
Eris ties the threads together without regard?—
Her sisters cackle
—for where they belonged.
“Fasssster.”
