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

1.2 - Commencement

Dear Readers: Another scene from Cloe's standpoint, but back at the start of the modern storyline... I hope you like it! If so, as always, I hope you'll vote :)

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Scene 2: Commencement

A.D. 2015

It was supposed to be the end and the beginning.

For Cloe Turner, it was neither. It was sunrise over Cambridge for the thousandth time. The last she'd witness from this window, but that didn't seem to matter. Were today to mark a milestone in her life, it would not be for the supposed reasons.

Commencement. The word coursed through her mind as she unmade the bed, folding the fitted sheet into a square of blue. The conclusion of four years at Veriton College, she mused, and the start of the rest of our lives. The ceremony she was set to miss. She packed the bedding in the spare space she could find among her moving bins.

The boys in the dorm room next door were still slamming their snooze buttons, somehow sleeping through the clangor of five alternating alarms. Within the hour they'd all be showered, shaved, shouting triumphantly, and storming out their door. Toward commencement. Ready for the real world, as long as it involved unlimited video games and beer.

Cloe recalled that she had nearly dated one of them her freshman year. The memory was fleeting. Neither fond nor foul.

She finished packing; four years' worth of memories fit in so few bins and boxes. Took down her over-the-door mirror. Glanced at her reflection—bright brown eyes, little else worth noticing.

Just after she had showered and slipped into an ivory sundress, the cell phone on her desk chimed unexpectedly. She crossed her small room toward it as she fastened a thin braided belt around her waist. Her brows furrowed at the new text message:

"Come to the garden :)"

From an unknown number.

She bit her lip. The invitation piqued her curiosity. In fact, she felt compelled to follow it. The smiley face tugged at her heartstrings more sweetly than such faces usually did. She even thought she heard a voice somehow, a voice she knew and loved, behind the playful summons on her screen...

Then again, this could just be the text equivalent of a shady van labeled 'Free Candy'.

Frenetic footfalls passed her door, followed by a painfully off-key rendition of the Veriton fight song as five graduates paraded down the halls. The boys were off. And already late for the rest of their lives.

Cloe took up the phone to type "Who is this?" in reply. While waiting for an answer, she smoothed back a wide tress of hair from each temple, then clasped both from behind with a sleek clip. The rest of her chestnut locks fell in loose waves over her bare shoulders.

Her phone presently lit up. She grabbed at it more eagerly than she should have, wondering why she felt so invested in this cryptic invite.

"Message Send Failure."

Ugh. Resending once, twice, was to no avail. She took note of the time. Too many minutes had passed since the first message. Why so invested? Cloe wondered again.

Somewhere close by, bells were ringing. They may have been ringing for some time now. She wasn't sure, but all of a sudden, the sound had become overwhelming. It echoed her breathing, the thunder of blood from her heart through her veins.

She could not seem to shake off this feeling that someone was waiting for her. Someone very worthwhile.

So she paused just long enough to pretend that there was a decision to make. Then she shouldered her summer tote and sailed out of the room.

There was one garden on campus that she'd visited most often over the past four years. She surmised that the message referred to this place. It was a spot of sunlit green amidst a sea of stone and brick. While there was greenery throughout Veriton Yard, none was as verdant or as vibrant as her garden.

The first week of her freshman year, she had stumbled upon it while navigating by a campus map that she'd been viewing upside down. The happiest accident of her time here—it was where she'd met her favorite professor, and the following week, the student who'd become her closest college friend.

The garden was by the smallest building in the Yard: a miniature library with a modest rounded portico, two stories tall, devoted to the classics and philosophy. She had ended up majoring in these fields.

Nostalgia for that first week flooded in as she followed the path of stones leading the last several steps toward the garden. She was glad that it was at the margin of the Yard, far from the thousands of white folding chairs lined up for the impending ceremony. From all the pomp and circumstance of Veriton commencement.

Mind full of these and other musings, eyes lowered wistfully toward the steppingstones, she approached the final few nearly forgetting why she'd come. She remembered as she turned the corner to enter the garden.

And then her eyes rose, and her mind was gone.

He was of marble. There was no way he was human, here today. He was of a golden age, of men, of gods. Of marble, more so than the statues behind him, or any monument that stood the test of time.

But there were apples in his cheeks, a faint flush to his faultless face... the blush betrayed the blood that beat beneath.

Cloe feared her own had risen to an unforgiving red.

She blinked away the world to which she'd just been taken. Cursed herself for having imagined this man as if out of a myth.

His eyes were on hers. Those impossible eyes, the deep blue of a bay before daybreak...

She swallowed. Stopped herself from drowning in that bay. He was here, totally human, in a tee and dark wash jeans. She had to speak.

"Are you waiting for someone?" she asked, as if perfectly unfazed.

His roseate lips lifted into a slight smile. "Not anymore."

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