Page 12 of Fated
Ribbon loosed his coils and dropped down to look Eris in the eyes as she spoke, so invested in these people he was.” Eris smiled and continued, more animated than before.
“The season approached and Maeve was determined. They removed to Bridger’s townhouse in London and Bridger had his family—nephews and their brides and the like— help Maeve with her wardrobe and chaperoning her at operas and fetes and balls. He was happy for the time, for the expense, and to see her so brilliantly excited.
“She found a friend, someone she could laugh with, learn with, some one she never expected and adored in all the best of ways. They spent as much time together as was allowed…
And then she met him— Tollie. She asked her father for his hand and he obliged, securing a marriage contract for her hand with his father. But none of them could know that their simple engagement would come to ruin all of their lives?—
Swish swish swish… Skirts in the dust.
Eris heard the familiar sounds of her sisters’ return from Mount Olympus. She didn’t rush herself in untangling from the cloth— though she knew her thorns were buffered. She spent time saying farewell to the souls and stroking the fabric as she lowered it back to the earth.
When her sisters’ opened the door she closed the hidden door in the wall and greeted them with a smile at the hearth in the main room.
“And Hast thou repaired the cloth?” Atropos asked.
“I have, sisters. I searched the fabric for those knots I created in my hurry and when I found them, repaired them and, returned the souls to where they truly belonged. I learned more of them, and understood why those souls were so precious, why they were fated to be where they were, and why I had to return them.
“Harrrumph,” Clotho exclaimed as she crossed her crooked arms across her craggy chest.
“Seconded,” Lachesis croaked through her slivered lips.
Eris smiled and the three Crones tilted their heads as though she were a windmill searching for a breeze. She waved an arm to the side to indicate the door to the room and as they inspected her— noticed the gathering of their clutch at her feet.
They gasped their gasps in unison. Their precious’s had betrayed them for another.
“Oh! I nearly forgot, Soot and Ash had their litter.”
“Ash and Soot?” Atropos asked.
“Soot and Ash?” Lachesis and Clotho responded.”
“How do you know their names? How do you know them?” Atropos asked.
Eris slid a basket from beneath the table and the sisters all leaned together, hovering above the wriggling mass of black voids entirely unable to parse out individual kittens.
She reached into the center to more gasping and complaint, but the sisters quieted when Soot, the mama, licked Eris’s knuckle as it passed before her and Ash curled around her ankle, his tail holding on as she held his tiny mewling child.
“What spell have you cast upon them?” Atropos yelled.
Eris felt the tension in Ash’s tail and move the kitten back to the nestle. “Love, I’m afraid, Atropos.”
Yes, gasps aplenty.
“I named them since you were gone, with the help of the rest of your family.”
She pulled each kitten out, booping each tiny nose as she named them.
“Cinder,” Eris said softly as not to bother the babies.
Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho replied in kind, “Cinder.”
“Ember,” Eris said and turned the little nose toward her sisters who repeated this name as well.
“Clink,” she said.
“Clink,” they replied.
“Char.”
