Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…
While Amelia couldn’t quite put her finger on it or explain how the devil it happened, she knew her reality had somehow shifted because the air smelled wrong—not just of engine exhaust but of evaporating destiny and melting fate.
They come at night during the Hour of the Wolf, that gap between night and dawn when most people perish, when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when nightmares become flesh, and when ghosts are at the zenith of their power.
When they were alive they were families and neighbors who came to each other’s aid and fought for peace and tragically lost the battle before that peace had been established.
Now, they step each pre-dawn from the void of the hereafter to remind us of how far we still must travel.
Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…
“Faith, my dear, I can assure you that there is not a misogynistic bone in my body. I fully agree that some women are born to lead, just as others are born to follow.”
“And in which category do I fit?”
“I cannot imagine you following a soul.”
“Both perceptive and wise, but you failed to notice one important fact.”
“And what might that be?”
“I am not a woman at all.”
“Don’t be absurd. My eyesight might not be as sharp as in my younger years, but I can see plain as day that you are most certainly a woman.”
“The form is feminine, but I am in fact a Fatum.”
“A what?”
“A sort of supernatural being, born to meddle in the affairs of humankind.”
Some women were born to lead, others to follow, but Faith discovered she wasn’t a woman at all. She was, in fact, a Fatum, a supernatural being born to magically meddle in the affairs of humankind and she was about to accomplish that on a global scale by marrying the leader of the free world.
Aeton was made for Ioasephyn, and she him, of this there was never any doubt. Formed during The Great Making and united in an unbreakable union when the world was in its infancy, the couple consummated their love as the molten planet cooled. Theirs was the first love and the fulcrum on which all love that followed would be balanced.
In the days before there were others, Aeton and Ioasephyn relaxed in fields of spun gold and stared upward, watching as the void caught fire, pinprick flames burst into life throughout the inky black and became stars. As the land masses grew restless and pulled away from one another, separating the waters into greater and lesser portions, the pair frolicked while the planet went through its growing pains.
When others came, some as a byproduct of their union, and the rest molded from clay or evolved from simpler lifeforms, they watched as gatherings became villages became towns became cities, and those overpopulated cities became nations. There were those who sought to rule these nations, some successfully, others less so. Aeton and Ioasephyn had seen the noblest of endeavors corrupted by pettiness, jealousy and greed and wished to separate themselves from the inevitable outcomes.
Time passed for everyone but the young lovers. Their children grew older, as did friends. Not all were accepting of the fact, so they vanished from the daily workings of societies, and only visited occasionally when curiosity got the better of them.
One such visit proved disastrous for Ioasephyn when someone in a new city recognized her. She thought enough time had passed and the world had forgotten them. How could she have known that she and Aeton had become the stuff of legend? A legend planted in the soil of truth, watered by myth in each retelling until it sprouted the belief that their blood, the liquid of pure first love, granted eternal life.
They surrounded her, the entire city did, and forced her into a prison until they consulted with an elder on the precise details of the ritual needed to extract the blood for the immortality elixir.
Aeton was on the opposite side of the world when he felt Ioasephyn’s fear tug at his heart. He pleaded with the moon to create a tide that would carry him to his true love’s side. It obliged and he rode the waters day and night without rest until he arrived at the city that held her.
Without delay, he met with the officials who held his love and attempted to reason with them. With a father’s patience, he listened to their wild tales and struggled to dispel the myths. He told them the truth in the Voice of Authority, but they paid no heed and took him prisoner, as well.
The legend warned that the couple’s invincible power was only focused in their union, so the jailers locked Aeton and Ioasephyn in cages separated far enough apart so they could not touch. Upon seeing one another, the lovers wept for they knew their demise would soon come. But they were not angry, instead, they pitied those who could never have seen the world through their eyes. The love they declared for one another stood the test of the sometimes wondrous sometimes terrifying times they lived through, and it would survive this as well.
Though they had accepted their fates, Aeton could not bear the thought of Ioasephyn not existing, so he hid her away somewhere no one would ever think to find her. He hid her in plain sight, tucked away in the corner of the mind’s eye of everyone in existence. He spoke the words of the incantation in his native tongue, acquired at the dawn of language when words contained magic.
Unbeknownst to Aeton, Ioasephyn had done the same to him. They truly were of one mind.
So now they lived where visionaries and dreamers created and though they often tended to their own affairs, sometimes they could be glimpsed frolicking on the cusp of thoughts or relaxing in fields of gossamer daydreams, staring upward and watching as the void caught fire, pinprick flames bursting into life throughout the inky blackness to become ideas.
Text and Audio ©2014 – 2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
MADD FICTIONAL 