The Sands

Chance Meeting

They did not see her as she walked among them. They saw her, but they did not see her. They did not see the light that shone from her skin; one that pulsated with the wind. They did not see the way the ground trembled as she walked, the way cracks opened up in the pavement with every definitive click of her heels on the pavement. The saw her body, but not her power.
But she saw them. They buzzed around her like flies; quickly zipping and zapping from one place to another. And they did not know - but how could they? How could they possibly be expected to know that a goddess was among them?
She watched in satisfaction from her place across the street; the man turned suddenly, hauling his bike along with him, and crashed straight into the women who was reading from the book in her hands while she walked. The two collided, and he caught her just in time from falling to the ground. He apologized profusely, but she wasn't angry; she kept looking at him with a strange, serene smile as he fingers softly splayed out over his forearms. He looked down at where her fingers lay, and smiled softly. She didn't need to hear his words as he asked this stranger to a drink. Because they saw her body, not her power.
A shower, a curtain of gold threads fell around her; clouding her power from anyone in the universe who looked. They were tangling together; millions, billions, trillions of them, intermittently knotting with one another. She smiled as another knot slowly formed, connecting two previously unconnected strings.
"Good job," he said mildly from behind her. She didn't turn to look at him. There was no need.
"Thank you," she said serenely. She was still staring at the couple happily. "They're gorgeous together, aren't they?"
"Hmm." He said non-descriptly. She ignored it. "What do you have in store for them?"
"For them?" she asked. "Not much. They'll date for a year, get married in her mother's garden, and buy a house and a dog."
He looked at her suspiciously.
"Then why is it important enough for you to be here? In person?" he questioned.
She turned to look at him, and saw his power rather than his body.
"They don't have anything special in store for themselves, but ask me about their child," she suggested.
He looked at her with amusement, subtle but present.
"What about their child, dear sister?"
She smiled as she turned her gaze back to the happy future couple. They walked into the door of the bar together, and then disappeared from sight.
"They'll find out that they're expecting soon after they get married," she murmured quietly. "And they'll be overjoyed. And then, eight months into the pregnancy, she'll miscarry. An accident."
He looked at her with confusion.
"If she miscarries, then why is the child of any importance?" he asked.
She smiled radiantly up at him as the golden threads surrounded them in a web, separating them from the rest of the world.
"The miscarriage will change her forever. She'll go into depression for a year or so, and then they'll set about adopting. Together, they'll adopt a total of seven children over their lifetimes. One of them will be the next president, another will create the formula for preventive cancer. And everything will change in this world."
He looked back to the street, where they had stood only moments before.
"All because two strangers bumped into each other," he murmured.
She grinned at the now empty spot on the sidewalk.
"I know," she said. "Isn't it beautiful?"
They started walking together, her arm hooked through the crook in his arm; a courtly way for brother and sister to walk together.
It had been hundreds of years since they'd been at court, she mused, but that was where he had been born. She couldn't exactly blame him for clinging to those age-old traditions of the world he'd always known.
They walked down the street together, and she leaned her head against his arm a little bit. Her sweet little brother wasn't so little anymore. He was taller than her above-average height, with broad shoulders and a strong jaw. He looked so much like their oldest brother. But they didn't speak of him anymore.
"So why do you come to me, brother?" she murmured vaguely. Her eyes were drifting over the people who passed them; they buzzed by like little flies, unaware of the great power that was in their presence.
He rested his chin on the top of her head for a brief moment before straightening, his eyes falling on the subtle curtain of golden threads that surrounded them, keeping them from the sight of the mortals around them.
"We've come into a complication," he said quietly.
"What complication?" she asked without care. He was always the worrywart of the family; he worried enough for all of them combined.
"It's about the League," he said quietly.
She stopped in her tracks, and it took him a moment to realize, and stop with her as well. She looked at him, unadulterated horror sprawled over her face as she stared.
"Please be joking," she whispered.
He shook his head grimly.
"I'm not," he said. "Cresta realized it yesterday. There was a mistake in the pool - some were released ahead of time, some have even yet to be released. It's a mess."
A massive, boiling knot of tension dropped into her stomach, slowly rising into her chest with the force of an atomic bomb.
This was it. This was the future of the world, the world that they guarded and cultivated and protected so vigilantly, and it was gone. The League had been scattered before its time, and now would never meet.
"But what will happen withou - "
She never finished her own question before her gifts began to answer it. Darkness settled over her vision, stealing away her sight of anything before her, and was replaced with carnage. Blood was spilled; bullets ricocheted, axes swung, bows were thrown to the ground amongst the bodies. Children wept over the bodies of their parents and parents wept over the bodies of their children. The White House was burning, the Taj Mahal was torn down and the Grand Canyon was filling to the brim with the dead. Production ceased and chaos reigned over every being in the world.
The air in her chest swirled unnecessarily as she tried to capture it, to take it in, and failed miserably.
Her legs went out from under her, and strong arms wrapped around her waist, keeping her propped upright.
"How could we have let this happen?" she asked in horror. "How could we have been that reckless, Airon?"
He closed his eyes painfully and touched his forehead to hers, their pain shared between them.
"I don't know," he whispered. "But Cresta has called a tribunal."
Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest, but she nodded. The League had been their responsibility, their charge as a brotherhood. And somehow, they had failed.
"When?" She whispered.
"Now." His words wore away at the drone of air around her ears as he pulled them away from the busy street and to their family home. The mortals on the streets would not notice their sudden absence; they would notice only that the sun dimmed a little, perhaps because of a cloud passing overhead. They had no idea just how large the cloud really was.