He twisted his fate between his fingers, and it stretched out before him, a shimmering golden line that fell in graceful coils on the black-marbled floor beneath his feet.

“When I said I wanted to control my own future," he said slowly, "this wasn't quite what I was expecting."

Laughter rang out behind him. From the corner of his eyes he could see her sitting on her stool, fingers flashing too quickly for the eye to catch through the threads of her loom. The soft clicking was a comfortable, yet eerie sound in the confines of the chamber.

“You must forgive my student,” she said serenely. Even looking at her through his peripheral vision made his eyes ache. “You were their first assignment, and they were perhaps overeager in giving you your Gift.”

The longer he looked, the brighter her dress seemed to shine, and the more the walls around them began distorting in an uneasy fashion. He averted his gaze.

“So I'm supposed to, what, accept that I have a guardian angel - one who's new at their job, no less - and that they granted me an audience with you for the hell of it?” He stared down at the string looped over his palm. “Who are you, then? Are you going to tell me you're the Norns, or one of those witches from Macbeth, or something?”

He probably shouldn't have been mouthing off this… this being of unknown power. Even his own decidedly skeptical self could recognize that there was something Not Right about this place, some unspeakable quality that made it impossible to tell if the room they were in was large or small, if the ceiling above them was really a ceiling at all, or why his eyes teared up whenever he ventured a glimpse in her general direction. But her loom merely clicked on, unstopping.

“There were three of the Norns, as the story goes, and there's only one of me.” She sounded amused. “And however much I enjoy Shakespeare - such a charming man - I don't see what he has to do with anything.”

“I don't know,” he said, faintly. “I guess I don't know much about anything, anymore.”

He felt more than saw her smile.

“That in itself is not a bad thing,” she said. “Very few beings do.”

The thread pulsed against his skin, and tentatively he ran his other hand along the length of it. It was too long to hold fully outstretched from tip to tip, even with both arms extended. It wasn't smooth, nor was it rough, or of any describable texture at all. And yet it was undoubtedly there, a solid presence twined around his thumb, its glow the faintest echo of the light emanating from the weaver behind him.

“Is this my life?”

“Yes.” Her voice was calm.

He didn't know what he’d expected to feel at her confirmation. He felt somewhat foolish, actually; just a guy in ragged jeans and a hoodie, scuffing the smooth tiles with his dusty converse, and holding a long piece of string.

“What do you see?” 

“I see nothing,” he said. “It's pretty, I guess, but it just looks like sparkly twine. Maybe - maybe I can't see things the way you can.”

“Oh, I know that already,” she said, dismissive. “I haven't had a mortal come visit before, but anyone can see their fate, no matter who they are. Look again.”

He looked. And the longer he looked, the more he realized - it was less like seeing with your eyes, and more like feeling. He could feel them - his memories, rushing to the fore. Hazy summer days of bike-rides, interspersed with wooden desks and the smell of paper. There was the smile of his mother, half-forgotten until now. His first taste of wine, his first time picking up a paintbrush, and his first exams in high school, heart pounding in his chest. Laughter and arguments and reunions with his friends; his first time kissing a girl, and his first time kissing a boy. College applications. The fight with his father, ugly and wrenching, with hurled slurs and you're no son of mine, before he'd woken up in a black-marbled chamber with the clicking of a loom in his ears and his life held taut in his hands.

But there was more. There was —

His heart skipped a beat in his chest.

“Ah. You see it now?” The clicking, unbeknownst to him, had stopped. Now a hand, as heavy as a planet, rested on his shoulder.

“Yes,” he breathed. He didn't dare look back at the weaver's face.

“And do you understand?”

He gripped the strand to his chest and the touch of it burned through his sweater, though not painfully.

“No,” he said. “But I might, one day.”

“Not then,” the weaver said. “Not fully.” He could hear the spreading smile in her voice. “Then again, perhaps you will surprise yourself.”

--

He awoke in his bedroom - head aching, tears drying on his cheeks - to the sun's first rays peering through the half-drawn curtains.

Something sat at the back of his mind; a niggling feeling that there was something important he was supposed to remember. However much he strained to recall it, though, it slipped through his fingers like water through a sieve.

His fingers…

He glanced down, and there was a yellow string twined around his right palm. Nothing but a loose thread from the bedcovers, but this one seemed to glimmer faintly even in the dim dawn light.

He pushed himself upright. When he looked again, there was only a plain white thread matching the others from the blanket's frayed edges. Yet something compelled him to hold it tight in his fist and press it carefully against his chest, a gesture that felt oddly familiar. His blood pulsed in his hand, and for a moment he fancied that the string itself thrummed with its own heartbeat.

Then the moment ended, and left him blinking owlishly at the opposite wall of his room. Wakefulness suffused his limbs, and he let out a long, slow sigh and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Absently he plucked at the ends of the thread, unravelling the fibres into countless slender strands. Outside his window, the day lengthened, and sent yellow sunbeams dancing through the glass.