Page 3 of Fated (Lords Of Time)
TROUBLE
Eris peers through the hovel to a front window. A thick fog envelopes the Moirae as they shuffle in line toward their home swaying to and fro as if connected, their mumbling chants unintelligible.
Eris turns back to the well.
“Why couldn’t you be a skink?”
“Whatever for?”
“Of all the times I’ve wished arms upon you, never more than I do right now. Ribbon.”
“My deepest sympathies.”
“Yeah.”
Eris crawls back to the well, sitting at the edge and pulling the threads from her thorns piece by piece—
The front door of the hovel creaks on its’ hinges.
Eris ties the threads together without regard—
Her sisters cackle
—for where they belonged.
“Fasssster.”
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.”
Atropos pulls the fabric from the well, inspecting it. The pulse of the fabric is faint in spots. She touches the dimming, drawing her hand back as though burned.
“Do you even know what it is you’ve done?” she asks.
Clotho says, “Zeus will kill us all for messing with his precious humans.”
Lachesis laments, “Nothing so precious as humans.”
Atropos adds, “Nothing so fragile, so delicate so—”
“If you hadn’t returned early I would have fixed it properly. I can do it! Why are you here anyway?” Eris interrupts.
Lachesis points at her sister, “Clotho forgot the eye.”
“The eye,” Atropos echoes.
“Ah, the eye,” Eris laments.
In chorus the Moirae shout, “Get out of our well and GO HOME!!”
Eris begins to beg, her words tripping and spilling desperately, “Please, please, let me repair what I’ve done! I promise I can do it. I promise I can fix this. Besides I sublet my cottage for a week, I have nowhere to go—”
Clotho stares at Eris’ hands in a fugue comparing them to the fabric in her hands.
“Clotho? Please?” Eris says.
In a hushed and reverent voice Clotho says, “The threads have imprinted her.”
Eris brushes her hands together, trying to wipe the light away to no avail, “I’m sure it will come off. Besides don’t you have to—”
“She’s the map!” Atropos yells.
“—return to Zeus?”
Lachesis responds, “She must stay.”
Eris is confused. Atropos melts to the floor in front of her, taking her hands. Inspecting the color and Eris takes the opportunity to try again, “I can do this. I can restore them.”
Eris tugs her hands away and Atropos grunts at her.
“That’s what has to be done, right? I have to reconnect the souls?”
“What would yo know of a soul?” Atropos hisses, to whit Ribbon scowls.
Atropos stands and the sisters turn to a circle of their own, unintelligible whispers floating between their shoulders.
Their crooked fingers motion in and out of the circle. Pointing and threatening.
They turn back to her; twitchy and anxious and in their lyrical chant…
Atropos, “You’ll reconnect the threads.”
Clotho, “Return them.”
Lachesis, “You’ll reconnect the souls.”
Atropos, “Take care of them.”
Clotho, “And the brood.” She shakes a gnarled finger in her face.
Lachesis, “Don’t forget the brood.”
They poof again leaving Eris alone in the silence of the hovel.