Little Blue Strings

The Strings of Fate and the Book of Destiny

Fate and Destiny are not quite the same. Fate changes. Destiny is set in stone. The only one who has the power to alter the words in Destiny's book happens to be Fate. Which is what he happens to be doing at the moment, while his twin's back is turned.

He flips through the carefully written and very detailed pages of the tome, until his finger comes to rest on a name. With delight, he pulls out his quill- the one that somehow creates its own ink- and scribbles over a few choice lines that Destiny has written. This particular human, a man slated to die this day, has just had his fate changed. He will now live a long and prosperous life. Why did Fate do it? He doesn't really know. He doesn't know why he changes a lot of things, to be honest. Maybe it is because he enjoys tampering with Destiny's things and disturbing his sibling. Some days, he just feels...compelled to do it. A name will crawl into his mind, and it won't leave until he flips through the book and finds it.

Aside from the book and its strange promptings, he also find himself surrounded by curious, shimmering blue strings. Often times, when they appear, he ignores them. However, a few he will follow a little ways. He doesn't know why he follows them. In fact, he never follows them to the end. He either abandons them, or he pulls out his knife to sever it. Whenever he does this, the string fades out and disappears. Now, he doesn't know why- in fact, he doesn't know a lot of things- but every time he sees those strings, some vague memory of a shadowed, obscured figure enters his mind. Of course, he doesn't know who this is, or rather what it is, so he just passes it off as some monster from a darker time.

Fate stuffs the quill back into his cloak. It is rose red, like the strings of lovers he very much enjoys playing with. He looks around, making sure that his twin is nowhere in sight before fleeing the area. No less than a few moments later, he hears a voice from the cave echoing off of the walls.

"Fate!" the angry voice calls. "What have I told you about changing my things around?!"

He giggles, flickering and fluttering up the big boulder. Fate ducks into a crevice just as Destiny emerges, holding the tome. It has shrunk into a notebook, making it far easier to transport. Fate watches his twin fume about for a few seconds before flickering into the form of a saw-whet owl.

Once he is sure Destiny has gone away to look for him, a second wide-eyed saw-whet owl emerges from the crack in the stone, very amused and very pleased with himself. He has avoided his twin for yet another day. Or so he thinks.

He makes an undignified squawking noise as a small owl barrels headfirst into his chest, knocking him over. Two sets of wings flap about for several seconds until one of the saw-whets manages to pin the other beneath a taloned foot. The one pinned beneath the other finally stops struggling, and the two share a flicker.

"You weigh a lot," Fate wheezes. "Please get off of my stomach."

Destiny glowers at him. "Then stop messing with my stuff."

"I can't breathe."

"I can't stand you."

"Well, I literally can't stand you."