The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

2.7 - Entwined

Dear Readers: Back at Rider's camp! Picking up on Clotho's conversation with Chrysaor, and introducing one more character as well...

FYI, I didn't come up with the new guy's name, either—it's also mythical, and chosen for a reason which will be revealed in time! ;)

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Scene 7: Entwined

2020 B.C.

No, she could not afford to think about her mother. Not right now. Whatever had befallen the goddess of necessity, there was nothing that Clotho could do about it, mortal as she was. For now, she had to carry on this conversation. To conduct herself as humanly as possible.

“What kind of life is that?” she asked Chrysaor, in reference to the raiding, robbing lifestyle on which this camp survived.

“If it’s good enough for Rider, it’s more than good enough for the rest of us.”

“What is he, some kind of god?” she sniggered.

“Among men, you could say that. He never falters, never fails in anything. No better place to put our faith than in a man like that.”

She winced, more at his words than at the ropes that chafed her wrists, as Chrysaor tightened them. “A man who steals, destroying homes and families? A man who kills?”

“Oh, he never kills. The same cannot be said for all of us. But it’s a point of principle for Rider: unless in necessary self-defense, he spills no blood,” Chrysaor claimed. A cheeky smile crept across his face at his next words. “Except of virgins in his bed.”

Her gaze was pulled toward the pallet at the far end of the tent. A makeshift bed, for a man always on the run. “So he just takes them?”

“Nah. Waits till they’re willing. But he’s got a way with women, even when he’s sacked their homes. Just like the feisty blonde back there, whose town we plundered weeks ago—they're often begging for his cock before they know it.”

And apparently that batty wench, for one, hasn’t stopped begging ever since, Clotho silently observed. “And if they’re not?”

“Then he hands them over to the rest of us,” he stated simply, the mischievous grin still dancing along his lips and in his leaf-green eyes. “And we take… very good care of them.”

Clotho sighed, astonished again about one of the threads that she’d spun. She never would’ve guessed that they’d turn out like this.

“Only when they’re willing, of course,” Chrysaor noted, as if in response to her troubles.

She rolled her eyes, shook her head. “How many drinks until they're begging for it?”

“Ah, you’re a feisty one too, aren’t you?” he remarked. “But not just from blind fire. You’ve got some brains, I think.”

“If so, then I would never have let Rider take me on his horse,” she countered, audibly ashamed.

“Some brains, I said. That doesn’t mean you, too, don’t have a bit of blind fire in your blood.”

She bit her lip. She had felt something like blind fire in her blood, when she’d met Rider in the garden. A fire that’d had nothing to do with the surrounding scent of smoke.

Chrysaor had long since finished fastening her ropes, but he remained here, sitting back on his haunches, contemplating her and seeming to enjoy the conversation.