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In the world between worlds and a realm which sleeps within a realm is a library. Of sorts. It is called a library for that is what it started out as, eons ago, in a time when there was no time and no planets. Just black vastness and silence waiting for sound. It is so infinite as to be larger than the bounds of imagination. Once, years ago, there was a library on a little backwater planet called Earth which tried to mimic this very same library. So tickled the proprietor of said library was; some of the decor he changed in order to make those who visited feel more at ease. He added great pillars of marble decorated with gladiators and chariots, long walls of hieroglyphs and side-standing historical figures. Lamps that burned perfumed fat, torches and candles with no heat. (One would be prudent not to put fire in a library...as millions of historical memories can tell you why.) He remembers that time with a fondness that lasted much longer than the library itself—where the men within it had filled his halls and their own with the sound of raging (or polite) debates about the world itself. And in some cases, the legitimacy of beings like himself.

There are moments in his span of existence in this library where for him it was only a few seconds ago this happened. A twist of his fingers as he meandered room upon room, tall and as high as little skies, marble or cherry wood or granite or clay shelves, with tile floors or marble or wood or dirt—as his endless robes shift and flicker with different colors and he views his collection with the pride only an owner has...And any memory he wished would be called to his hand. He could savor it as many times as he wished, regardless if it truly was his own memory or not. (Though his own memories and a few others were in a Place That Sometimes Is No More, guarded by ancient golems built by War himself. Some memories had too much power, and these memories had to be protected as they could not be destroyed. Like the memories of Gods, for example.)

It was such a shame that the Library at Alexandria had burned to the ground. He often wondered what other memories he could have collected, what other bits of decor it would have picked up had it not been turned into a funeral pyre.

Today like any day he walked his collection as he wished to, wanted to, and had to , being the sole curator of all the memories of all the living things. He did not mind it at all for it filled his endless days and nights with things that made him warm. Things which chilled him to the bone. Things which made him weep. Things which, on his own, he would not have the chance to think or feel. Because of what he was, of course. When you are memory itself, you did not have your own: you had every one.

He passed a blank-faced woman in a simple, brown robe. She, like the countless millions of others had volunteered willingly to sign contract and to serve him dutifully for eons on end wore the same nondescript clothing. Elves, Humans, Insectoid creatures, hooves or fur or horns or gelatinous blobs; all manner of all the many worlds and realities creatures assisted him in categorizing every living memory of every living thing capable of remembering. They cared for each memory, keeping them vibrant and new for each time line and being so that they could be fetched or remembered at will. They were diligent in their cleaning duties, their filing, their sweeping, their numbers, perfect in babying each recollection. And when the time came they were as equally perfect at destroying them. Most beings lived a finite span of life. At the end of their life, their memories must fade to make way for new. Only the Gods memories did not fade of course. And they were locked away to protect the world.

Those that worked under him in his library never aged. They never had to experience hunger, sickness, be cold or hot again. They lived immortal lives without strife or disease. But they lived their lives without any of their own memories. It wouldn't be seemly of course, if they had any. It would taint the work. It was but the fine print on a contract he presented them at any rate, and most of them were willing to give it all up.

His stop was so abrupt that a chitinous, seventeen eyed Manchrallidor nearly ran into him. The creature made no noise but the soft click of his seventeen legs on the marble floor as he switched direction and continued carrying the scrolls of a memory to its rightful place.

Memory had stopped, because he had found himself near A Place That Sometimes Is No More, its Sometimes There Doors were great, yawning black things that sucked the light from his otherwise warm and inviting library. The doors were sealed with a gold chain, each link the size of a full grown elephant that gleamed at him as if giving him a baleful wink.

He stopped here, because something was off. Something was wrong about his library and something is never wrong about his library!

There was a robed figure standing before the great black doors. Small and thin it seemed to him almost as if it just appeared. He blinked, but on further study it was not difficult to surmise the figure was female. And familiar. When she turned around, he found his curiosity at who it could possibly be that breached his library turning quickly into sourness.

From a robe not as dark as the doors, but black still, Fate's pale skin seemed even more white. White enough to almost hurt Memory's eyes and make it difficult to keep scowling at her. Her purple eyes were the worst, however. The absolute, positive, worst. No one should be so sad. No one.

"Hello, Memory," she said. Soft as chalk and heavy as crosses to bear.

Memory shook his head. "No. I know exactly what you want, why you are here, and what for. And the answer now, forever more, and thus forth until the end of time is no. No. I cannot do it. I will not." He lifted a finger the long sleeve of his robe and shook it at her like old men do. She may be the same rank as he, but he knew the rules! What she wanted was absolutely forbidden!

She said nothing. Just looked at him, tipping her head up to search deeply into his eyes. Never-mind what he said about her sad eyes. That was far worse. He made himself look away.

"No! Absolutely not. Not even I can access it, not even the one that built it can. Do you understand" I cannot help you, and besides that—" He flicked a glance back her way. She had silently moved closer, making her have to tip her tiny chin up at him further. He made a soft, puppy-kicked sound and looked away again. "—I won't help you!

"It goes against my very nature, and we cannot do that. Please don't ask me..."

Quietly, she slipped her hands around his waist.

He sighed. "Oh, child," sorrowfully. An ageless hand cupped the silk of her white hair. "Does it really pain you so?"

He did not have to really ask. He could recall her memory at any time, if he so chose. Her face, previously buried into the belly of his flickering robe, tipped back up. Memory could see the span of endless sadness, a longing and a loss that had no words and would never be sung. No end to the tears and the shedding thereof, no poem that would ever truly capture it. To be one of her kind and to love and lose such as she...He crumbled. She knew that he would, and so did he. But knowing did not make it anymore legal.

"Stay here," he said finally, pulling away from her with a small shake. "This will be difficult, and it may take some time."

Fate smiled, small and white. "Time is all I have," she whispered, breaking his heart all over again with the hollow-truth of her words.

((Please delete! Multiple post!))

The silence in his library was never something he'd really thought about. Not until now. Not until he watched the pale sliver of Fate hum quietly to a tune he did not recognize and look at him with the blank eyes of a newborn: not afraid, but not understanding either. The smear of red against her mouth as bright as blood matched the flakes fraying along her fingers as she picked up her robes and danced, care free.

The Other stood and watched, still as very, very old and tired trees watch saplings. Tired and sad.

"I was warned about this."

Memory made a slight start as the other spoke. "Yes, Father. Humans are...a particular breed. They were never really meant to become—" "I know." Simply. His hood followed Fate as she twirled about. "But she was mine and she was born for it. Then she chose it freely. There are some things that cannot be undone."

The thought of that chilled Memory. He wondered then, if her state of forgetting and then remembering would ever be undone or fixed" And what price would the world pay for Fate forgetting" What price would he pay for indulging in a daughter's desperate plea" The thoughts worried him and swirled like snow in a mad storm.

"What...What must be done with her, Father" She cannot return in this state." "No, she cannot, " he agreed, placing whatever limbs he (or she, or it. Father's presence made all of Memory's recollections place millions of voices, shapes and faces to the creature. (Most confusing at times.) "When she remembers, of course, is a different story. But as she is now..." He trailed off in thought.

Memory recalled something then, something of a place far, far away. A place that was, essentially, the perfect gathering for misfits. For misplaced gods. For the weary, the wary, the far-aways, the downtrodden, the out of luck, the lost and the found. Yes. Yes. He knew exactly .

"Father," Memory hesitantly began as he pulled a scroll from a shelf. A detailed chart of a planet with two moons.

"I—I think I know what to do."

http://cfc.polyvoreimg.com/cgi/img-set/.sig/O1XHvTHGFCamP5JrFzLTSw/cid/73813855/id/hw-qe5vPR76GR1-CfuNRPw/size/c600x387.jpg When he loved her, he smothered her. Gems, gold, jewelry, silk. Food from worlds and places that had no names, servants as beautiful with languages that seemed like silk. He showed her strange things that outside of her village she had no name for and could barely comprehend. He tended her every need. He bowed to her every wish—except for the one which she wanted the most. I want to go home. I want my son. I want to go home. I want my son. It became a game for him, and a spiteful thing for her. When he loved her, he would ask what he could do to make her happy. What could he do to lessen her sadness" She would, of course, demand her son and to be taken home. He would smile his infuriating smile, as if she were a child asking for the silliest of things—then ask her again. What could he do to make her happy'

So she asked for things impossible. She asked for the wind above the sea in a jar made of the hair of an angel. He brought it. She asked to die once, so that she could have peace from the pain of living without those she loved. He granted it. But she had not been specific with her request, and so she had died in a way she wished to never think of again. Slow, horrifically, and he had watched blandly as she did. There had been no peace. He tortured her with images of fire and sorrow and brought her back alive and screaming in his chambers. She never asked for that again.

She asked for things that should be impossible and he brought them. When he did, she threw them away or broke them. She dropped them to the floor and told him they were not good enough. She told him true: that she hated him and would never love him, never be happy.

When he loved her, he smothered her, and she wished she was dead. When he hated her, she adored it and found small solace in being left alone.

He grew angry at her often, petulant at her unwillingness to love him. He took her silks away, her gold and her gems and her harp and her songs. He left her in a void, a dark labyrinth of old stone and whispers with nothing more than a candle and the clothing he stole her in: old rags they were now, their bright colors faded, the weaving tattered. When he did this she had time to think and the longer she had to think the longer she had to realize—

One night (or day. Or year. She could not tell how much time had come or gone.) he came in his speckled robe, his power pushing all around her. He took her from her punishment and suddenly she was in his chambers once more. Gold and polished bronze glinted in a thousand candles glow. Gone were her rags and gone was the filth of imprisonment. Her arms were decorated with bands of platinum and her brow a diadem of amethysts. He did not eat of the food before him on the grand table that seemed to her to stretch for miles. She could—but he did not. His food he had carried to him on the brown arms of women who (she guessed by the dead of their eyes) had finally broken for him. And been discarded. The food that he ate, he would not let anyone touch. Even the scraps, she noted oddly, he plucked and folded into a piece of cloth to tuck into his robes.

There was something about that which stirred something in her mind, but each time she thought she had it, he would ask her again: how can I make you happy" And she would be forced to think of some impossible task for him. Then their game would begin again and it would not be long before she found herself in rags and alone with a single undying candle in the dark once more.

http://cfc.polyvoreimg.com/cgi/img-set/.sig/Q4xDXI4h7iHd6b7CMlg/cid/75545924/id/bOvYqBsfQyOI-ZELPEWD2g/size/c600x621.jpg In all of her time when he would cast her out, there was nothing but silence. It had never bothered her. She filled the void with her memories of her life before she had become his plaything and it was beautiful. She'd sing lullabies to her son and hope that he heard them in his dreams. She sung different songs for her husband and hoped that his dreams were of her. But the silence of the empty dining hall—that flickered and changed colors or shape from one moment to the next—was enough to dry her mouth. All she did was creep toward his abandoned plate like a little ghost, but her heart beat so loudly as well as hard she could see the rhythm of it in her own eyes. Louder than thunder, louder than silence. Her breathe rattled then reminded her of the wind 'round a rickety old door.

The space between her seat and his was a thousand, thousand miles.

What if he came back" What if he sees me" What will he do' What if it's for naught' What if I am wrong" What will he do to my son' What will he do to my husband" What will he do to ME" What if it doesn't work" What if—

Her hand was the last leaf on a tree in autumn storm; trembling uncontrollably as she hovered over the plate of gold. Meat juice and bone and seeds from some roasted fruit was all that remained. She could not choose what to take at first. If she took the bone, were there scraps of meat left on it' Would she first, have to crack the marrow" Would the seed but not the fruit do'

In this silence of the damned—of waiting and choosing and breathing and fearing; she heard the sweetest fall and scrape of silk. Jerking her head up, she could only deer-stare at the door and the presence hovering at the frame.

The girl who served him stood there, staring back at Sadhbh with an owlish puzzlement. Her eyes were dark lined, her clothing barely decent—some sort of linen white garment that covered her dark skin but was not modest in the least. The beads in her black braided hair, turquoise and obsidian and gold clacked as well as swayed in the force of her surprised stop.

Sadhbh stared at her. She stared at Sadhbh.

For the smallest scrape in time, neither truly knew what to do about the other. Sadhbh's instinct screamed in her mind: DO IT! DO IT NOW OR YOU WILL NEVER HAVE THE CHANCE AGAIN! DO IT! White fingers reached forward to grab a handful of discarded seeds.

The woman at the door blinked once—then her features twisted as she cried out in alarm to dive toward Sadhbh. In her haste, the white woman plastered both hands to her open mouth. The seeds and the red juice of them around her mouth made a strange lipstick of gruesomeness. As if the white woman had just eaten a heart.

It was of course, too late. Sadhbh had eaten several of the sweet seeds.

The world cracked. A strange noise filled Sadhbh's head—like the chant of ten thousand voices that buzzed, that whooped, that clicked or hummed—then they all clarified into four voices. Three old women whose voices cracked with years. A man.

Is this the one" The man asked. Yes, Father. We like her. The three women said in unison. So be it, the man said.

The dining room fell away. Before Sadhbh's eyes a million colors bloomed in fuzzed blurriness. Her mind which felt as if stuffed with cotton did not know what she was seeing.

It was just before the darkness came that she realized what they were....Strings. Millions and millions and millions of strings.

A white room. A white room with white sheets, white walls, white bed, white curtains, white floors, white door. In her ear she kept hearing distant murmurs, a buzzing of voices that she could not yet pinpoint. Blearily, she brushed at an ear as one would try to brush the buzzing of a fly away.

"Oh that—" A kindly old woman's voice clearly said. Sadhbh struggled to open her eyes in the brightness of the room.

"—won't ever go away but—" Another one said. '—you will get used to it dear, and learn to pick out which ones to listen to." A third finished.

When she could finally see, she noted three women in the winter of their years. The furthest one had iron-grey hair and wore a blind fold. The one in the middle was holding a needle, spindle and was moving her hands as if she were sewing or weaving, but she couldn't see any thread. The one closest to her had red strings woven into her hair, tied around her fingers and woven into her clothing. All of them seemed to look the same: triplets, sisters...only their voices were different.

"Don't worry—" the one in the middle began. "—you're safe now. It took a long time and we—" "—had to work the threads in very complicated weaves." The one closest to Sadhbh's prone form finished.

"Do you always talk like this?" Quietly asked from the little white flake in the bed.

The three of them laughed as a whole.

"We get—" "—asked that—" "all the time! Yes we—" "—do. We've lived so long—" "—with one another. Don't worry, though, it'll be—" "—just you, now."

But before Sadhbh could ask what they meant, the three women turned to the door of her room and bowed as one.

"Father," all three of them said.

"You may go," came a voice from the door. In those three words Sadhbh felt her heart sink, float, die and be reborn. The presence of power was nameless, numberless. She felt a speck of dust on a cosmic bed-sheet, insignificant and crushed yet loved and pitied all at once. It made her lungs feel flat. She watched as the three old women shuffled out the door leaving her to this strange being who wore nothing more than robes, his hands and face a mystery.

"You have eaten the fruit," he began. She could not tell if it was reproach or statement or both. "They say that the time is right and that they are tired." He did not gesture as to who he meant but she understood.

He came to the side of her bed.

"Do you know what happens to those who eat such things" Do you understand the price you must pay?"

It took her all to nod, but she did. The robed figured clasped his hands together. If he had them.

"You must say the words, child. I must hear them." "I—I understand what I have done. I understand what it means....Yes."

Something inside her twisted. Before her once more she could see the strings. Thousands...millions...billions of them. So many that for a moment everything went dark and she thought she lost conciousness again.

"So mote it be." He said, with a roll of distant worlds being born and dying to seal it.

"Sadhbh—I name you mine. Flesh of my flesh, of stars and of memories. In faith, you will serve. In faith, you will remain."

Sadhbh—my daughter—I gift you a name."

His hand reached out from his robes. His hand were the stars and the stars were he.

"I name you, Fate."

The bells in her head rang for hours.