The Fates

There were three Fates. The Greeks called them the Moirae. Clotho, the Spinner. Lachesis, the Alloter. Atropos, the Unturning.

Clotho spun the thread of life, grasping a weathered spindle carved from the wood of the whispering tree of Dodona, the same wood that Jason used to build Argo. She stands firmly, back slightly hunched, wrapped in a colorful shawl with the stories of all the great heroes woven in. Her calloused fingers nimbly run along the fleecy yarn, spinning and spinning into the thread of life.

Lachesis, clothed in silky angelic white robes, measures the thin, delicate thread with her silver measuring rod, deciding the destiny of every living being. Atropos, enveloped in midnight black robes rimmed with intricate flowery gold embroidery, stands there patiently, until it is time to end a life, using her shears made of adanmatine and snipping the thread.

Every day, every hour, every minute, every second, the three sisters stand there, spinning, measuring, and snipping. Every life to them is merely a thread. The thread of each life is so short that it seems like in the short moment they blink, the thread they had just woven has to be cut.

When a mortal approached the three sisters, begging them to extend his life after an oracle prophesized his early death, they laughed.

“Mortals. How foolish! They think everything revolves around them. You think your lives are the most important thing on Earth. But to us, mortals’ lives are merely a piece of thread. Threads that are spun, measured, and cut, eventually tossed away to be unraveled back into yarn for new lives. Do you not understand that fate is fate?”