Page 11 of Fated (Lords Of Time)

IN THE END… HIM

Eris and Ribbon spent the rest of the days of her week loving on the cat hoard— they did finally earn their trust and friendship.

One morning she even awoke to find a cat licking Ribbon’s scales as he hissed little kisses against the kitty’s nose.

Of course as soon as Ribbon realized Eris was awake he coiled tightly, guarding himself from the cat in abashment.

Eris had fashioned a cap for her hair from some fabrics she found, capping the points of her thorns with some old marshmallows she’d seen in a cabinet.

At night Eris and Ribbon slept on a low pallet she’d created from split logs, hay, and forest debris. She’d then covered it with a clean linen and rested, carefully, beneath the fabric of time. Dreaming of the humans whose souls were protected therein.

* * *

Her last night of the week brought her to the most endearing of families— when she woke Ribbon knew something had happened. Eris held the blanket tight to her chest, her heartbeat slowing to match the pulse of the fabric of time, wrapping her in the love she found therein.

“Must I asssksss for you to ssshare or will you tell without me begging?” he asked.

Eris laughed, “I was only waiting for you to waken naturally.”

“Naturally,”

“I met a family, Ribs, so much more beautiful in the end than at the beginning. Like the rainbow of a storm. Bridger, the father, was brilliant, neurodivergent, and desperately in love with a man whose name he didn’t know and couldn’t ask.

And that feeling was mutual— more than, perhaps.

Bridger preferred his northern England estate and his personal passion was bees.

He loved them like children and spoke to them as family.

He wasn’t the best of fathers to his flesh and blood, but he was the absolute best his brain allowed for him to be.

“Even then he of course wished for more for his daughters because he knew… he knew they were better off being loved by someone who could return that love in a way they deserved.”

“How… aware,” Ribbon replies and Eris nods, pulling the souls closer to her to feel the soft beat of their lives.

“Yes, Ribbon. Saoirse, the youngest, took after her father in the mind department. She didn’t speak much but when she did it was through quotes from her favourite authors and novels.

Jane Austen when she was happy, Jane Eyre when she wasn’t.

She was loved dearly by both her father and Maebh, but because she never spoke her own mind, instead choosing to borrow the minds of literary genius, they felt a bit disconnected from her, particularly Maebh who wanted only a companion at their home far from society.

And Maebh, being the eldest and perhaps the most accessible in thought process, wanted very much to have a relationship with Bridger and doted on him and every overt gesture he attempted.

He tried, he truly did, but she knew there was a different sort of love for her somewhere.

Certainly there would be a man who could be hers, who would kiss her hurts and help with her ails, and love her like she herself had built the forest and fen for them to explore— and her time had come.

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.”

“Char.”

“And finally, Coal.”

“Coal. Well, I’ll be… But it’s now time you showed us the fabric.”

The three followed the one— Ribbon chose this moment to make his own presence known by hissing— to the back room and then the well room to see the fabric.

The sisters crouched at the edge bending their knees until their bottoms touched their ankles.

Atropos grasped the fabric reverently and passed it to Clotho— who passed to Lachesis— who dropped it back to the well.

Their fingers tangled in the fabric as it passed over each palm, the pulse of the rainbows brightening with each pull.

Finally Atropos stopped and looked to Eris through the side of her one eye.

“You’ve done well,” she said. The three dropped the fabric to the well. “In fact, the pieces ruined and rearranged are stronger then ever. You have a gift.”

“I have a—”

“I don’t like it! Clotho yelled as she stood. The sisters followed like shadows.

“It’s different. It shouldn’t be.” Lachesis said pointing a long scraggly finger in Eris’ direction.”

“But it is, and as it will be,” Atropos replied as she paced around the well and considered. Her sisters followed. After the third round Atropos said, “I may have work for you. For now, you may go.” She waved her off and Eris dissolved into a cloud, returning her to her home.

The End