Page 9 of Fated
She smoothes the fabric, searching for the knots she’d made. She found one, strong with purples and blues and she inspects her hands looking for the length of it there. It starts at her index finger and travels down to her palm and across her lifeline to her wrist, fading into the blue vein at the center of it. She holds the thread next to it and searches the fabric for another.
“Oh!” she says as her crown tips forward on her head and Ribbon slips, righting himself when she straightens.
“Apologiesss, I was a bit too invesssted.”
Eris laughs then, smoothing a hand across his scales, “Of course you were, Ribbon, you see everything I see. You know, too, how important this is.”
Ribbon hisses. She leans forward once again, “Careful now.”
She runs her finger down the first thread, closing her eyes and searching.
A man appears— abused, outcast, alone. He lived on the fringes of his family, his life. He hid who he truly was from everyone around him, the pain of his reality so deep he’d not a soul to share with. He walked through life, solitary, angry, quiet. He honed his fighting skill, became fearsome and feared. Scarred. No matter who tried to embrace him he was distant, apart, never belonging anywhere, regardless of his title and command. The pain was his sole companion. The pain helped him survive, helped him face every new dawn, helped him to live. He leaned into it, became more and more reclusive. More and more alone, until the only comfort he carried was that physical pain. Without it he was lost.
“Warrick,” Eris said, “Oh, Warrick, what I’ve taken from you, I’m sorry.”
She runs her hand across the fabric, her eyes closed until her finger catches on a tell-tale lump. A spark of violet shoots up her finger and she stops, leaning in.
A woman, alone, searching. Eris takes a sudden breath at the recognition of this woman who could be her twin. Her heart reaches for her, wanting a connection with a woman who’s her match— save the thorns, the flames, and the snake.
“Oh, Erisss, love.”
“I know,” she said, “I know.” A love she would… never know but longed to, desperately. How could she ever be close to someone when she’s covered with thorns? She didn’t even have the freedom of existing fully in her own skin, much less sharing it with someone else. Eris takes a deep breath to cleanse her mind and concentrates on the woman who reflects her so much it hurts. “But she’s not me, Ribbon, and I must return her.”
Lulu felt unsafe her entire life, and she chose to lean in to power. She became a dominatrix, a Domina, never letting anyone get close to her. She maintained all the control, all the power, but retained none of the intimacy.
Eris pauses, takes a breath, begins again.
Lulu believes she’s happy, that this is the life she’s meant to. She doesn’t know what she’s lost, what could have been. She doesn’t know who she’s lost. She doesn’t know that she’s the one who was truly lost, and he’s been searching his entire life to find her.
Eris ties the safety cords on the two threads, her fingers shaking, her nerves tangled and on edge. Ribbon watches intently from her crown, his eyes wide and excited.
Lulu stepped up to the man, Oliver, on his knees, his back bare, a bullwhip in each of her hands. She struck in tandem, a pattern forming on the skin of his strong, broad back. Wings. Wings of flesh, and finally, blood. Two tiny rills of it from beside his spine trickle down to the edge of his hips pooling in the little dimples there. His head bowed she stepped back to her camera to capture the moment— he’s beautiful, everything Lulu had ever wanted— but she still felt hollow, like a reed, whistling in the breeze. Inconsequential.
In the other thread Warrick caught his fiancée as she fell to the floor, after stamping out the fire from her dress. Saving her from pain, from tragedy, he held her— ashamed that he angered her in such a way that she’d be so careless. Angry with himself for following the order to marry her in his brother’s place. She doesn’t deserve someone like him?—
Eris cuts the threads. Reties them together. Holds them against her heart. Lulu opens her eyes in Warrick’s arms his face so raw and angry she’s instantly lost in his pain. One look and he was done, undone, he felt… everything.
The thread pulses and straightens, strengthening, slipping, returning to the fold, disappearing as Eris collapses on the floor, exhausted, lost to a deep sleep.
Warrick and Lulu’s story can be found in the illustrated novel: The Duke and The Domina.
GRACE, ANGEL, AND DEVIL
Eris wakes from her rest, her mind a troubled weaving of all the lives she’s met in her dreams. She untangles herself from the fabric so very carefully as to not cause any further damage to those around her.
She rises from the floor and in the main room she warms fresh water over the open pit for a meal. Outside the world is warming, or maybe it’s cooling— she’s no idea whether it’s dusk or dawn only that the light coming through the windows and cracks is that soft quality that creates a liminal edge to reality.
Time, however, is of no importance in her world, its only importance is the work she’s doing. She senses that the longer the threads are separated the more difficult it will be for her to reconnect them, and more difficult for the souls themselves to reconnect.
She feeds the brood, shovels down some hearty oatmeal and tea and heads back to the well.
A child. Eris sobs uncontrollably when she finds her. Lost in time— so young, so vulnerable. She almost leaves her there, with this mother she’s connected to, but when she finds the corresponding thread and the confusion of her soul match… she knows this correction is necessary— but it will also be painful.
She holds the misplaced child and sees how beautiful the girl’slife is supposed to be, but also how confusing it becomes because of what Eris has done. She sees the angel, her match, her rescuer, her foil. So beautiful with his golden hair and so desperately lost by his deep love for someone he cannot ever truly have. Not in life, not in public, not before their God as they understand it. Destined to always be naught but friends in the eyes of the beholders; bosom chums, travel companions, but never lovers, never husbands, never partners in a true marriage.
“Ridiculous.”
Eris wishes she could bring them forward from the Victorian era and its laws, and ways of thinking, somewhere they could live freely and happily. But that sort of power is well beyond her. What they need to survive the trials is each other, and she took that from them. She feels the blinding happiness they ultimately find with each other and knows she must continue.
