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“No, we’re talking to the invisible goddess behind you,” Anger responds.

Envy puffs himself up, his chest inflating all over the forsaken place. “I’m no prude, I’m a whore. Get your facts straight. Now do as Papa Anger said and put on those sorry Gothic clothes of yours.” He gestures at her hair. “Without them, you just look like a grape.”

“And you look like an asshole, dressed in the suit of a prick, with the grin of a bastard,” Sorrow volleys with a fake smile.

“That’s more words than you’ve said in over two hundred years.”

“And it’s more words than you can spell.”

“Make them stop,” Wonder pleads to no one in particular.

“No! Look what’s happening.” Happily, Love indicates Anger, who palms his face in abject misery. Go figure, since the goddess has always enjoyed antagonizing him.

It would be effortless to point out how often Envy has relished peeling those “sorry Gothic clothes” off Sorrow. But that would remind him of their affair, an era that she doesn’t plan to reminisce about.

Whatever. Sorrow snaps her fingers. A cloud of badass black wraps around her body, outfitting in her in a vest, shredded skirt, and combat boots. Envy can think what he wants. She likes her wardrobe, and she doesn’t need anybody’s approval to wear—

Wait. Now it’s clear what’s got Andrew riled up. Lunar beams filter through the leaves, and brooks spill over mineral rocks, and bloated indigo toadstools swell among the flowers.

In spite of the darkness, Andrew’s snowy hair glows as vividly as Merry’s archery. “Guyyyyys?” he repeats, aiming at the forest. “You know how things happen in threes?”

When the group squints, he adds, “In fiction? Especially in fairytales? Things happen in counts of three. You know, like dragonflies that come out of nowhere, then children who come out of nowhere.”

“Clues in plain sight,” Malice and Wonder interpret.

“I was going to say repetition,” Andrew says. “Which implies foreshadowing.”

“So?” Anger and Merry question.

“Sooooo,” Andrew draws out. “I suck at math, but dragonflies and children only count as two.”

That registers on Love and Sorrow. They follow his lead and nock their longbows.

“Let me put it another way,” Andrew says. “Deities can’t have kids, right? But kids birthed from the stars can have mentors?”

Silence. Awareness. Idiocy.

Leave it to an erstwhile mortal to be equally creeped out and fascinated by their young visitors. Therefore, Andrew is the only one here who hadn’t officially let his guard down, who’d pointed out the obvious. They’ve been arguing like numbskulls, when they should have been fleeing, or at least targeting the woods, the thicket of which shifts in tandem to a group of swiftly moving bodies flying this way.

Whether innocent or not, those children had been exploring the forest, toying with a band of insurgents. And like all youths, they do have mentors.

Guardians who eventually go looking for them.

3

Sorrow

Which is why a longer, stronger, faster arrow lunges out of the forest.

It punctures a column of tree bark right beside Malice’s golden head.

They couldn’t have picked a worse god to target.

Malice howls and barrels toward the foliage, unlike the rest of them, who focus on the fully-grown deities springing from the bushes, and swinging from the beeches, and bounding across the canopy. Straight ahead and overhead, ground level and from above, they single-handedly spiral down vines, and somersault from branches, and spin around hedges.

A kaleidoscope of arrows— sapphire, rhodolite, seashell, and more—slash the sky. As the archers move, the tails of their robes flare, woven of moonbeams. The skirts of their gowns fan like pinwheels, netted from starlight. The accordion folds of their pants billow, sewn from clouds.

Males and females with wreaths, jeweled clips, and strings of beads shimmering from their hair. Sorrow’s unacquainted with this lot, but that doesn’t stop them from recognizing the infamous insubordinates who’ve defied the Fates and made an enemy of their rulers.