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

3.14 - Reflection

Dear Readers: Back in the Cave, with a Fate we've not seen in a while... How did Lachesis choose to deal with darkness in the hearts of men? How is she feeling after that familiar thread was cut? :'(

Let's find out, in the last scene of Episode 3...

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Scene 14: Reflection

2020 B.C.

It hurt. Quite a lot.

Why? What had happened? Some part of her knew. Even here in the Cave, as an immortal, some part of her once had been human. That was the part of her that hurt. All of a sudden, when her sister’s shears had blindly sliced a certain thread.

Atropos had had no idea. She’d been snipping at random—threads that she couldn’t match to mortal souls she’d met, for she avoided those. It hadn’t been her fault. She hadn’t caused this pain. But then, who had? Was there a cause at all? Why was this happening?

Pain was exactly what Lachesis had hoped to escape, by choosing to remain in the Cave, pull her thread from the Loom. She did not belong down on earth. None of the Fates did, in her mind—but she respected both her sisters’ choices, though she couldn’t understand why any deity would revisit that wretched place on purpose.

In any case, the boy was dead. The boy with the soft hands, with hair the hue of summer sand. The grey-blue eyes that had looked after her so well. Till she’d abandoned him. Some part of her knew; soon enough, that part became the whole. Of her immortal human soul.

She needed a moment of rest from her work. Her plan to handle darkness in the human heart, in hopes of saving Mother’s life, would never work besides. She had intended to remain forever in the Cave and somehow find a way to gauge the darkness of each thread—perhaps with the help of reports from her sisters—and interlace the good threads with the bad, upon the Loom. So that the dark hearts could be brightened, in good company. So that virtue could overcome vice in these human connections. Or at least balance it out, a little bit.

But she was a fool, to believe that could ever be fruitful. She knew that she could never be of use, without walking among the mortals once again, learning their hearts and souls firsthand to guide their paths upon the Loom. Yet she was too afraid to ever go back down.

She retired to an alcove of the shadowed Cave, to rest until the pain subsided. To fester in her fearful, foolish fruitlessness alone.

Not alone for long. Her sisters granted her the solitude, both silently surmising what had happened, why she’d gasped and how it hurt—but Chaos came and sat beside her, sharing words of comfort.

“I have failed,” Lachesis lamented. “Because of all my fears, there is no hope… To ever save, to ever see Mother again.”

Chaos stroked her golden hair. “There is always hope, Lachesis.”

“If so, it is by virtue of my sisters. Never me. Their bravery…”

The grey gaze soothed the Fate into silence; Chaos said her piece. “Your heart holds far more courage than you know,” she whispered. “You must believe. In yourself, if in nothing else, you must believe.”

Lachesis wanted to, with all her aching heart. And yet her own soul was the one thing in which she could never believe…

But then she stared into the face of Chaos. The primordial eyes that had preceded everything. And in those eyes she saw her reflection, for the first time in her immortal life.

And at the sight, everything changed.

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THANK YOU so much to everyone who's followed three whole episodes of The Fates!! Two more episodes to go in Book 1 :)

Episode 4 starts out by following Lachesis down to earth again...

And if you liked the episode, or even just this scene, please don't forget to vote! :)