Atropos' Existential Crisis INT 2024

She slipped off into the night, bringing only her knife and a few necessities slung over her shoulder in a small leather pack. The air was balmy and the ocean spray carried hints of enticing, exotic lands. Her feet hastened along the path. At the shore she found her contact, shrouded and beckoning, exchanged a few hushed words, a promise and some coin, and they quickly took to sea.

Once all she had ever known was left behind, she had time to evaluate her choices. She had no qualms about leaving her warped, evil sisters. Nor was her flight without a planned destination; through the blackness the ship sailed with a steely purpose. The will of a rebel goddess controlled it.

As it had been when she’d performed her divine duties regarding the fates of man, woman, child and babe, she severed the past from the future completely and without mercy.

The silver moonlight cast the sea in a dark and enchanting light. It glanced off Atropos, who in the light resembled a radiant maiden but in the shadows a wretched hideous crone. Such was the nature of her existence, born of mother Necessity and no father, integral to destiny itself but destined to a life of constriction, forever. She and her sisters held the fates of all, the great and the small, in their hands.

Clothos, the youngest of the three, weaved the threads of man’s life and thus determined the quality, color, and durability of his existence. Lachesis, the middle sister, measured the days of each thread, and Atropos, our heroine, the eldest, was tasked with deciding the manner of death and to swiftly cut the thread.

If Clothos wove a beautiful, exquisite fiber, and Lachesis measured merely a tiny inch, just a brief flash of life, Atropos had to sever the thread with indifference, and swiftly. This is where her heart started to rebel. The small, beautiful lives she had no choice but to cut short due to the reckless abandon of her sisters cut the most. Some not even out of the womb yet or mere days old.

The final severance between them and her though happened with an unusually long thread; that of a tyrant king; a dull and rough and filthy thread Clothos wove and bored uncaring Lachesis let grow monstrously and hideously long for sport. How dare these cruel witches allow such a crude and wicked life such as this linger on; all the while leaving ruin and destruction in its wake? Atropos shredded the vile thing before she left, but not before assigning the evil tyrant a slow and suffocating end. She considered going herself and using her knife but knew her new fate had nothing to do with death.

Indeed, the opposite.

On the horizon a brief glimmer of rosy Dawn beckoned.

The End

originally posted by: zosimov

Very fitting for the topic... the Three Fates.

I enjoyed reading your interpretation of it.

Thanks, Lumenari ☺️
I really enjoyed reading your submission, and many past stories as well. I will really miss you when the site goes down.



haha now my time to misspell your name because of beverages

originally posted by: zosimov
Thanks, Lumenari ☺️
I really enjoyed reading your submission, and many past stories as well. I will really miss you when the site goes down.



haha now my time to misspell your name because of beverages

Get on it babe because the clock is ticking....



ETA... I was absolutely mortified when i didn't check into my story thread for a week and noticed that everyone was flagging my reply to you. Then I realized what I had done. For SHAME!.... hahaha

a reply to: Lumenari

I already misspelled your name, last night, Luminari instead of Lumenari (facepalm) but caught it in time to edit

I read your story again this morning. (link below in case anyone missed it) It's fabulous; I hope you win
www.abovetopsecret.com... 

a reply to: zosimov

I wrote a story I'm 99% pretty happy about.

I already got what I wanted.