Page 5 of Fated
Eris ties the last two threads together and drops the fabric back into the well as the door behind her screams a welcome.
She lets out that proverbial breath, “Whew.”
Eris tries to appear calm while peering into the well, shifting the fabric with her toes, trying hide the tied threads.
Too late.
The crones step into the room, their shrieks bounce off the walls around them as Eris ducks, covering her ears with her hands.
Once again speaking in that lyrical cadence Atropos says, “Chaos hasn’t listened, sisters!”
“Discord reigns, sisters!” Clotho replies.
“Strife is upon us, sisters!” Lachesis grumbles.
Eris rolls her eyes.
“I mean it’s a touch dramatic,’ Eris says under her breath.
Ribbon attempts to disappear in her thorns lest he become a stick.
“No, no, you misunderstand, I heard a mewling and followed it here, I thought a cat had been trapped inside.”
Atropos says, “You’ll never return here.”
Clotho says, “You’ll never return anywhere.”
And Lachesis finishes, “Zeus will learn of this trespass.”
Eris turns on the floor, pulling one leg up from the well and holding her hands out to plead but realizes —too late— her greatest mistake.
They’re stained in softly glowing colors.
The sisters shriek once again, a hollow painful sound, as the curl into each other.
Eris looks down and can’t help but to marvel at the beauty of the softly glowing rainbows on her skin.
“That one might be warranted.”
Atropos, “We should have known!”
Clotho, “A cat cannot?—”
Lachesis, “Change its’ stripes!”
“Oh gods they’re mixing metaphors, ribbon, I am truly fucked.”
Atropos then says in a voice Eris has never heard, deep and foreboding, full of the shrieks of a thousand wraiths, “Do you know what it is that you’ve done?!”
Eris collapses against the floor covering her ears as best she can to dull the sound.
Together they squall, “The blood of time!”
Eris flings her stained hands above her head to beg them, “Please— please let me fix this! I can fix this!”
Clotho, “You’ll do no such thing.”
Lachesis, “You cannot be trusted.”
