Dear Readers: Had enough humanity for a while? Let's head back to the Cave to see the girls as gods again... and meet their visitor! :)
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Scene 7: Thread of Gold
2020 B.C.
The three Fates, in the dark Cave, only ever had one visitor.
“Let me guess,” Atropos greeted their mother, as the goddess of necessity approached them at the Loom. “Zeus found another wench he wants to bed.”
Ananke smiled warmly. “Not Zeus this time,” she replied, handing Clotho a luminous golden thread.
“Where shall I place it?” Clotho asked, not even bothering to ask whose thread it was. It didn’t matter.
Ananke’s honey-colored eyes surveyed the Loom for a moment. She pointed at a certain spot, to which Clotho then affixed the glowing thread. It gleamed like firelight as it settled into place among the masses—all the mortal threads were a dull silver-grey.
Lachesis watched the process from the corner of her eye, though she pretended not to see or care. She’d always wondered why their mother trusted Clotho with the task of placing gods’ threads on the Loom. Was she not better suited to the task? Lachesis thought. She was the one who set the mortal threads on their paths, after all.
Ananke noticed; there was nothing she did not. She saw the spark of wounded envy in Lachesis’s sky-blues, the bottomless boredom and frustration in Atropos’s dark emeralds, and the yearning in the brown eyes of her youngest.
Almighty though she was, in many ways, there was yet nothing she could do to mend her daughters’ woes.
“The thread looks happy,” Clotho wishfully remarked.
Ananke laid a tender hand upon her shoulder. “The world of mortals is a darker place than any of you know.”
“I thought this hole was as dark as it gets,” Atropos retorted. “I’ve been requesting windows for some centuries now.”
Lachesis glanced at her sister, silently wondering what need she had for windows. Whereas she and Clotho were rather fair, Atropos’s skin tone was a rich bronzed olive, as if sun-kissed every day.
“The earth is a dark place,” Ananke repeated. “Not for lack of sunlight, but for many other reasons. Over which you needn’t worry.”
Clotho pursed her lips as she continued with her spindle.
She wanted to worry over such things. She wanted a reason to care. All these threads were mere shadows of lives. There were only ever shadows, empty shadows, in the Cave.
“And when do I remove it?” Atropos asked her mother, nodding toward the golden thread.
“Tomorrow, at some point,” Ananke replied. “I will return to let you know when the visit is finished.”
“And with new ones to send down, no doubt,” Atropos anticipated.
This was the process.
Gods who wished to walk among the mortals made their requests to Ananke—the all-powerful force of necessity, nature, and destiny—who stored all immortal threads in her safekeeping. She would then give these to her daughters, to place upon the Loom. To interweave with human lives, as the immortals wished. At the end of each god’s visit, Atropos pulled the golden thread, returned it to her mother.
And then everything continued just the same.
The three Fates, too, had golden threads. They knew it, but they’d never seen them, and their mother never spoke of them. These threads were kept safest of all.
“I know you wish to walk the earth,” Ananke expressed, to her youngest and eldest, “as other gods have done. But you control all human fates. There is too much at stake. You must remember—”
“That ‘distance preserves order,’ yes,” Atropos interjected, quoting her mother’s favorite maxim. “Our distance from humanity ensures that all goes according to plan. That we don’t screw things up.”
“You say it, but you don’t seem to believe it,” Ananke asserted.
“Oh, I believe it. I just don’t know why it matters. Why the order needs to be preserved. Maybe we could all use a little disorder.”
Ananke swallowed visibly, her amber eyes darkening. “That is a very dangerous way to think, Atropos.”
“Maybe we could all use a little danger.”
Ananke sighed, resigned. It was a lost cause. She was grateful, at least, that her firstborn was more defiant in words than in actions. For now. She feared the day that Atropos might break free of these chafing eternal restraints.
Then again, she knew, Atropos had more wisdom than she let on. Beneath a guise of rebel flames, there was a steady compass. A strong immortal heart guided by love for her sisters, respect for her mother.
So there was hope, that Atropos wouldn’t rise up and carelessly send the world into disorder.
Ananke clung desperately to that hope every day.
“Is there any other business to attend to, Mother?” Lachesis asked, eager to shift the subject away from disorder and danger.
Ananke smiled to mask her fears. “Not for today. Just carry on.”
“As if we have a choice,” Atropos spat.
Ananke’s smile dimmed, a little. For it was sad, she mused, that these three who directed mortal fate had no freedom over their own.
She said she loved them, as she bade them farewell for the day.
Clotho and Lachesis echoed her.
Ananke waited, breath bated for only a moment. She then realized that she knew better than to hope for a third echo.
She exited the Cave, back to Olympus, back into the light of day. The light the Fates could never see.
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And yet... four thousand years later, somehow the Fates DO see the light of day, don't they! What do you folks think might've happened in between?? ;)
Forward again to 2015 for our next scene... Thank you SO MUCH to all my readers who are following the Fates... And as always, if you enjoyed, please don't forget to vote! :)