The Fates (Book II)

7.10 - The Difference

Let's revisit the Fate of death back in B.C....

P.S. For any readers who don't remember much of Atropos/Atria's first visit to earth, arriving in Egypt - specifically, the night in the court of the Pharaoh - I might recommend revisiting Scene 2.12 in Book I... Hopefully this scene would still make sense without rereading that one - but I just wanted to put this out there, in case it helps to prevent any potential confusion :)

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Scene 10: The Difference

2020 B.C.

She didn't know the difference. It was true. Her righteous little sister had been absolutely right, as usual. Atropos had confessed as much herself, about what little she knew of love, sex, 'or whatever.'

But then why were the words festering like a wound in her heart? Why should it bother her, that she couldn't tell love and sex apart? It should not. It was insufferably dumb. Besides, the reason why she didn't know the difference between them was simple: there was none.

Sure, there were non-romantic forms of love — affection among family, friends, folks whom one wouldn't want to fuck — but when it came to so-called romantic love, that shit was really just sex sugarcoated with some sentimental nonsense. Animal attraction glorified and glamourized, so as to give hormone-crazed humans a false sense that their species was different. That they were set apart somehow from beasts, from all the other forms of life upon the earth.

But Atropos knew better; when she took on her mortal form, that was exactly what she was. A fucking animal. She knew it and embraced it. Felt no shame in it.

If only Clotho and Lachesis, too, could realize just how senseless romance was — that this one mortal whom they both believed they loved was just a piece of meat that they would crave until they'd had enough — then all their silly troubles could be solved. They could just take turns fucking him till they were done and then move on.

The eldest Fate herself could relate to hormonal confusion, all too well. She had simply figured out how to make sense of it much faster than her sisters. For instance, her fondness for the sickeningly perfect Gilgamesh: that was lust plus gratitude and admiration. Nothing more and nothing less. And the fact that she still hadn't managed to forget about that ravishing tomb robber — the one who had returned for his brother, in the pharaoh's court on her first night on earth — that was just lust plus lust plus lust. The motherfucker had been criminally gorgeous.

What was more, the tone that he'd taken toward her, on that dark night in the court of blood, had been savagely vicious and violent, which the animal in her had found incredibly arousing. She knew that was twisted, but she was death itself in the flesh, after all. Only natural that she should have a taste for darkness.

Anyway, it was a crying shame that he was no doubt dead by now, Atropos inwardly muttered as she strode across a dry expanse of desert, where her latest visit down to earth had landed her. That meant her craving for his fine ass was probably fated to last for all eternity. She had asked the court to do the man the honor of a noble death — a face like his was far too pretty to disfigure, obviously — but even if her request had been granted, which she doubted, he had still been executed.

Atropos really didn't like to think of it. But it was difficult not to dwell on such thoughts, now that she had set out in search of his family, to tell them what had happened. It was a foolish errand. She wasn't usually the type to bother with such courtesies.

And yet she had felt strangely compelled to do this, for quite a while now. Drawn to this place: just south of Egypt, through the desert to the neighboring land of Nubia, where she knew that the man and his kin had been banished for his crimes.