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“IS THERE ANY OTHER way?” Persephone asked, cool as a cucumber at the talk of murder.
The last Fate sighed and put her hands on her hips. “It is the simplest and easiest method.”
“No, I’m with her. Any other way?” Ariadne added her input and internally cringed when the Fates turned their heads to her and gave her a slow smile as one.
“Not one we can do.” The middle one spoke again. “But you, Princess Ariadne, mistress of the labyrinth, could do it another way.” The last Fate walked back to her place in the line of creepy sexy goddesses.
The three spoke as one, voices echoing and resonant. “There is much we could teach you and much for you to learn.”
Ariadne abandoned her dignity and clung to Persephone’s robe. “Please.” She squeaked, not managing to finish her sentence of ‘please don’t let them get me’ before the Fates took her.
* * *
“Thinking about your lover?” The Fate nearest to her clucked her tongue at her slyly. “Don’t let your motivation to leave distract you.”
Ariadne scowled at the stupid scarf in front of her. They had given her a crocheting hook and a basic lesson on stitches and told her to make a scarf and use the whole ball of yarn if she wanted to leave. It should have been easy. It was easy. The problem was twofold. First, they kept unravelling the damn thing while she slept. Second, no matter how much she crocheted the scarf before sleeping it only used half the yarn even if the amount she made was longer than she was tall.
“How does making a scarf teach me anything I need to know?” She jabbed her hook through the weave of yarn, resenting the feeling of being caged once again.
“Nothing, really.” The Fate told her, unblinking.
Ariadne shrieked, throwing the whole bundle of thread at the tapestry covered stone wall. “Then what was the point in having me do it!” Respect had went the way of her sanity and scarf- slowly unravelling and down to a single thread.
Another Fate appeared, catching her nightmare crafting project and unravelling it in front of her, staring her dead in the eye as she did it.. “You know the thread now. The feel of it slipping through your fingers, the pull of it in the weave, how tight it can be drawn.”
Ariadne regretted skipping out on her childhood weaving lessons if this was her punishment. “Does this mean I can get on with leaving now?”
The third Fate appeared and grabbed Ariadne’s hands and pulled her forward. Ariadne stumbled and was suddenly standing beside the Fate, looking at her unmoving body standing there, eyes closed and arms slack. She could see the weaving threads connecting her to other people, thick and thin and all brightly colored.
The gleaming white rope embedded and curled within her chest like a parasite was rather noticeable and alarming. “I won’t ever truly be free of the Minotaur with this tying us together, will I?” She realized, staring in shock.
“We make the thread, weave the thread and cut the thread.” The Fates told her together. “You can do something different.”
Ariadne waited. They said nothing. “Do I have to guess, or are you going to tell me?”
The Fates laughed at her, briefly seizing her sexuality and giving her hormones a good shake when they managed to not show their teeth. “You can pull threads free of the weave. We would have destroyed you for this ability before you were conceived for treading on our territory but-” They do not finish the sentence.
“Finish your sentence please, I need to avoid being vaporized.” Ariadne demanded, not at all polite but very much desperate. She got the impression the Fates were less goddesses and more elder Primordials shoved into the shells of goddesses.
The one in the middle tilted her head. “We cannot destroy you, as we cannot destroy each other. We are too similar to unweave from the fabric of the world without risking ourselves as well.”
Ariadne abruptly decides she would rather be dead and have Dionysus visit her in the Underworld than fall into the eerie synchronization of the Fates.
The Fate on the left smiled at her. “We decided to give you would have no reason to compete for our role.” Or, Ariadne thought silently, unweaving them from existence.
The Fate on the right smiled at her. “It wasn’t hard. Truly, all we had to do was have you meet the god of wine and madness. It stopped what would have been endless suffering for him and in time, the rest of the gods. Such as they are now. In turn, you lose interest in manipulating the threads of fate outside the happiness of your immediate chosen family.”
“Selfish.” The trio agree. Ariadne isn’t sure if they are referencing what is apparently a hoarding power problem on their part or her disinterest in destroying herself in an attempt to control and ‘save’ the world. Ariadne decides not to touch that subject at all.
“How am I able to manipulate the weave of fate? I’m just a mortal. Demigod if I really stretch the definition.” She skirted around the more problematic parts of what they had told her.
“For now.” The middle one agreed, looking bored. “But once you marry your lover, you will be made into a goddess.”
Ariadne tried to stare incredulously at the Fates but her eyes began to water at the strange aura of unreality that was always around them. She rubbed her eyes.
“But that will be later.” She hoped. “Right now, I’m not a goddess of anything.”
The Fate on the left tsks. “Time is what you make of it.”
“Which is to say, we sit outside of it.” The Fate on the right clarified, giving her sister an annoyed look. Perhaps not all of them were fond of being vague. “You are not yet conceived and also already dead to us.”
The middle Fate finished slyly, “Mortal maiden and married goddess both.”
Ariadne had no idea what that meant beyond the Fates being creepy as possible. She decided to try and manipulate the connection with her ill fated twin. Who was she to question the eerie judgement of the Fates? Even Zeus, the King of the Gods himself, respected them.
She studied the thread embedded in her chest. She touched the white rope, feeling its smooth untextured surface. She gave an experimental tug and felt it slide smoothly both in her hands and eerily, in her chest. “If I remove this, there is going to be a huge hole. That does not seem like a good thing to have.”
“Holes tend to be filled.” A Fate agreed, appearing abruptly behind her. With a long elegant finger she pointed to the next largest thread, red and tangled in a knot around her heart like a protective barrier against the overwhelming presence of the white thread. “That would take it’s place. Your lover would be pleased. You would never be separated, not for long.” The Fate said directly into her ear.
“Given the knot I already have, isn’t that already the case?” Ariadne interrupted the creepy manipulative talk with common sense.
A different Fate cackled. “Too like us indeed. Yes, you both have tied yourselves together quite well already.”
Well. It was a good thing he wanted to marry her, Ariadne supposed. Being immortal would solve a lot of potential problems if they were this tightly woven together. Still. It made her wonder if this was what they really meant when speaking of ‘tying the knot’.
“How can I have this ability at all?” She asked, bracing herself and gently pulling the white thread free, shuddering at the phantom sensation of her flesh caving in around the hole. “I barely have a fourth of Titan blood and none of it related to anything like this. I would be less surprised if I was made a goddess of stars or something.”
“Gods don’t have to be human to be powerful.” A Fate told her idly, watching over her shoulder as she slowly pulled the thread out.
Ariadne swallowed hard, chills racing down her spice. “The Bull my mother slept with was a god?” She wasn’t sure if that made the union any less icky or not. She was thinking not.
“The earth gives rise to many kinds of gods, as she always has.” The Fate gave an answer that wasn’t really an answer with a smirk, then following it up with, “With the power in the blood, the shape of it was decided by circumstance. Nurture, if you like.”
Circumstances like desperately wanting to change her fate as soon as she was old enough to understand what it was, what it entailed. That being a good daughter to her parents meant being complicit in the murder of other people, of innocents.
Her lips thinned and Ariadne resumed working on her project, not sure when she stopped. She finally finished detangling the thread connecting her to her twin the Minotaur and pulled it free. A phantom ache bloomed in the empty hollow in her chest, throbbing in time with her heart.
She stared at the limp, now much more threadlike string in her hand. “What do I do with it?”
* * *