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

3.2 - Once Olympus

Dear Readers: After so many earthbound scenes... finally back to a familiar place faraway...!

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Scene 2: Once Olympus

2020 B.C.

They woke up, in a shadowed place outside of time and space.

All three Fates, all at once. Back in the Cave. As if nothing had happened. They were home, almost as if they’d never left.

The Loom, still just as they’d last seen it. The white robes draped across their limbs. The spindle and the shears upon the floor. The shadows everywhere, familiar as the faces of the sisters to each other.

The Book of Fate, clutched closely in the youngest sister’s hands.

Just as her mother had bequeathed it. Clotho could’ve sworn she felt the lingering imprints of Ananke’s urgent fingers, where she’d pressed the scroll into her daughter’s grasp. The afterimage of that amber gaze, so full of hope, only just fading from her mind’s eye in this moment. Her mother’s absence felt that much starker, more unbearable, for these few fleeting relics of her presence in the Cave.

But then there were her sisters. They were safe and sound for now, and reunited, home again. Didn’t that call for an embrace? Was she not glad, at least for that much—weren’t they? Why were they staring at each other, standing still as stone, as silent as the shadows?

Why were they here? How were they here?

A sudden darkness fell across the Cave, startling all three back to their senses. In the instant they’d returned, the space had still been brightened by the distant shaft of light: the sunbeam signifying that the Cave’s entrance was open. Suddenly extinguished now.

And Clotho knew that it was true—Ananke had only just fled.

“Mother…!” she cried out, hastening toward the corridor that led up to the opening. The scroll fell from her hands to the stone floor.

“Wait—” Lachesis broke in, anxiously grabbing Clotho’s arm, holding her back, “—how could you know that was our mother?”

Clotho’s eyes flared with insistent fire. “It was. She fled just now.”

“How do you know?” Lachesis pressed her, dubious and petrified. “How could you know what’s happened here, since we’ve been gone?”

“I felt her presence. Let me go,” Clotho demanded, wrenching from the desperate grip.

Lachesis reached for her again. “It could be anything out there… Clotho, you can’t—Mother was full of fear, of something terrible…”

“She can’t face it alone.”

“It isn’t safe…”

“Then you stay safe,” Clotho spat spitefully. “But let me go.”

“Stop,” Atropos barked.

Her sisters turned to see her standing by the scroll upon the floor. Slightly unfurled, such that a portion of the inner page was visible.

And on that page, a flurry of figures taking form before their eyes. Letters penned in holy ink, by an invisible immortal hand.

The Book of Fate was being written.

Atropos cast a solemn stare at Clotho. “She gave this to you?”

Clotho nodded, gaze transfixed upon the symbols taking shape. Strode toward the scroll and knelt to take it up. “She bade me write it… should it ever stop being written.”