The slaad would be poor creatures of Chaos if they did not know or understand how to return to the portal he left open for them. He had traversed this realm called RhyDin one end to the other in search of what was his with little luck. Each time she'd stepped into the inn, it was as if the building itself alive and swallowing her whole. He could not touch her there personally...but these creatures...

Elation at first soon fell to rage as he realized they had been gathering the wrong girls. A room that stunk of dirty sea-water, tears and fear. Many had been punished and the girls left to fend for themselves with the remaining Slaad...They were not his concern, after all. What he had wanted, no, what he had needed remained elusive for so long that the wait was driving him mad. But he knew a mistake would happen, an opening as it were.

It came in the form of a small glass marble left to prop open a door. When the mysterious blue frog-like creature delivered Fate into his very hands he had little eyes for anything else. He reached out and took her from his arms and dismissed the brute while the very fabric of reality around him flickered by in red-heart pulse fast changes. A reflection of his anticipation.

He laid her out on a table he made from his own rib in preparation for this. Something about the idea had amused and titillated him greatly. From black mass grew spider-like, crooked things like looked more like teeth which closed around her as he lay her onto it. Chaos had always lacked talent to create anything truly beautiful without Order. But that was a tale for another age.

He could taste her dreams again. They tasted like sorrow.

When she awoke weeping, he smiled his smile. The one he knew she hated. The one that made her feel so very, very small so that when he reached over to tug the blind fold away, tenderly dabbing at the fat, wet tears rolling down her cheeks it was the first thing she saw. The first horror she knew.

"Hello again, little doe," he hummed. "We have so much to talk about, you and I."

The look of real fear upon her face made his hands tremble and his breath catch. It made her the most beautiful thing he had ever owned.

He let the blindfold flutter to the floor. Its decent made the same noises of dying birds shot through with arrows or perhaps drowned in the very sea they had attempted to eat from. He listened as she talked but each word hacked away at his smile until his eyelids drooped in disinterested lines heavily over eyes and he found himself finding her rather dull.

Blah blah blah, my son, blah blah blah, my husband, blah blah blah.

"My dear, you really need to learn new things to say," he chided. He brushed his long fingers together as if removing dirt.

There is nothing left. Now that, that was interesting. That was exciting. He felt his interest spark once again. Had he finally broken her" Did she finally understand that all she had was him' Would she finally see that all she had ever needed was him' The thought made him almost tremble and he crossed what little space there was betwixt them to bend long and low over her prone form.

"I have, haven't I?" he whispered. He watched in fascination as his breath stirred the finest silk of her white hair at her temple. The way her lashes glinted like moonlight on snowdrifts.

"But do you see why, my little one" Oh my darling. Do you know, now?" She wore a faded tunic. All along her ribs he watched the red of her blood spread in little roses as his table...his altar built for her...wormed their way into her flesh. He could see the pale blue dust of her veins in her neck. The drum, drum, drum, drumming of the blood in them.

Her mouth was a tiny cherry, draining itself of sweetness. He loved her better when she was pale and cold, anyway. His altar tightened around her, crushing, squeezing, wriggling, worming, digging in.

He bent to brush his mouth to hers.

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None of them dared speak. Gathered in this place that Chaos had created, all eyes, all vision, all thoughts, all shapes were focused on the two entwined on strange altar: their lives no more. It was a stark thing, that. A reminder that not even the Gods were immune from that which ended all things and perhaps, they never were.

Memory stood by Time, who had come and laid his hand in this place to keep the moment. Memory's quiet tears seemed to be the only sound despite the thousands which gathered and gathered and gathered, until even Memory himself might have been hard pressed to recall the names of all of his brothers and sisters from all realms, all times, all walks of life. Wings were silent, muzzles kept shut, chitinous and claws stayed still. Many looked upon the bodies of Fate and Chaos with unrest. Many looked away. Some looked at Memory with Time's hand upon his shoulder and uncomfortably looked away.

"I-It's my fault," Memory said quietly to his brother, Time. "If I hadn't...If I hadn't told her to come here. If—"

"Shhh, now," his brother said, patting Memories shoulder. Both to comfort and to stop his voice. Their Father had arrived. Now the place was filled with countless sounds and they all bent the knee to their Father. All. The atmosphere tingled with sudden tension as his children waited for his reaction.

He came from a dark place with planets and star dust muted swirling in his robes. He came with the sound of old mothers giving up, the sound of men remembering their children at their graves...with sorrow.

"Father!" Memory cried. "Why did you let—" Time's hand on Memory's shoulder tightened so forcefully the rest was swallowed in a cry of pain.

Father stopped, whirling around to look upon his son who dared to speak. All gathered shivered then lowered their eyes and seemed to collectively forget how to move. Some watched from the corners of their eyes as Memory and Father's eyeless, swirling hood stared at one another: Memory's anger met Fathers....Nothing. Impossible to read.

The seconds ticked, and something did pass between them. Something which made Memory's eyes sink shamefully down to his feet and refuse to rise. He could not look at Sadhbh's face frozen in sweet smile anymore, he could not look at the way her once-vivid eyes stared pale and lifeless.

Father turned about slowly in a circle. It seemed as if he searched all of his children in that time, saw in them, through them, around them and touched them in ways they could not say.

"It is finished," he said. As always, his voice birthed prophecies and children, worlds and extinguished them. Black holes swallowed suns and a million stars began their first days. Such was the way of things. Though he did not say if he meant the ill fated conflict betwixt Chaos and Fate, or Sadhbh and the once-dark druid from eons past...The avatars, gods and representation of Chaos and Fate gave each other side glances and then hurriedly looked elsewhere. It was then that Father turned and walked to the eerie altar built from Choas which Fate lay cold upon. He came to it and stood at by the white-haired head so still in her forever-sleep.

A wordless queue, then, that started a reaction. Some slunk away, some of the Gods began speaking in whispers, some separated and formed sides, some came and paid their last respects. The three old hands of Fate, wizened and collapsed under the weight of their Prot"g" death. Upon Sadhbh's chilled breast they lay three things: a spool of thread, a spindle and a needle. Some that represented Chaos paid their respects, some spat upon the corpse, some took a piece of robe or hair or fingernail...and devoured it. Some did nothing at all but gawk. Father let them do as they please as long as they please, mourning.

He let them come and stood silent vigil over his children's bodies. #

Memory honestly did not know how long he had stood there. His library would turn on, his servants would continue his work while he was away—though he did not care or really think on such things. All that he knew was that suddenly he found his eyes dried of tears as well as feeling as if someone poured brother Time's sand into them. And that he and Father were alone. Time had long since paid his respects or left. He could not recall. It was a harsh, rough blink that brought Memory out of his mourning to look upon the two entwined in death, his father still wordless and without a single light in his robe at their heads. He did not want to do it, but he made himself look at her face. Her little, precious face.

He made himself take each weighted step to go to her. He would have sobbed, but he found that nothing more would come. He reached out with tired, trembling fingers. Her eye lids were so very cold. She was always so small and so prone to chills. He remembered. She would hide and nestle in his robes when—

"Oh child," he told her. He liked her eyes closed much more. He could pretend, instead, she slept. "I have failed you, haven't I?"

"It was not you who failed," Father said, startling Memory. He had forgotten entirely he was there. How does one forget Father"

Memory had the sense not to comment, to only press his lips together and look away from Chaos. The hate in his heart toward his own family was as difficult to understand as Sadhbh's death.

"What...What will—" "What always happens. The cycle continues. There will always be chaos and there will always be fate," his Father interjected. "But she—"

His father's annoyance destroyed an entire people some where and brought a galaxy, far, far away to war. "Do you think I will make them suffer again?"

Ashamed, Memory looked down once more. It was then that he remembered. He had one last question, one last thing he must know. One last piece to the puzzle which his heart would not let him leave his Father alone.

"Father?" Hesitantly, Memory began. When he felt no anger, but the patience of waiting in reply he continued. "Father, why...why does she smile?"

His Father's hood looked down to his child's face. It seemed that even he had difficulty with the answer and if Memory had not been drained, he might have felt the tingle of shock.

Finally, he said: "She chose her fate." #

In his library, Memory personally carried Sadhbh's scroll. He carried it past the looming doors that should have sealed her memories and life and toward a small bookcase he knew well. A bookcase that, now, he had wished he could have told her about it, shown her. With much care he placed it beside the memories of a boy. A boy who grew into a great man, a great leader, a great warrior, who ushered about golden decades during his adult-hood and who, though time forgot, had been one of those men rare indeed.

He set her memories beside that of her son and patted them gently, feeling the tears sting his eyes.

"Good bye, my child," he whispered. "Good bye."

THE END