Atropos sat on her stool, watching her sister Lachesis measure of the strings of life.

“Lachesis…are you finished?”

“Almost,” the other, younger Fate replied.

The two eldest usually worked together; their smaller sister, Clotho, always kept a good distance from them, for they fought eternally.

Clotho loved to give people life and she hated seeing it being destroyed with a passion.

“This is becoming ridiculous,” Atropos said, crossing her haggard hands over her frail chest. “You must pick one for me to cut.” She brandished her scissors in Lachesis’ face.

Lachesis gulped. “But…I don’t know which one to pick – one’s a widow, and she lives with her three children; she’s destined to be in a car crash.”

Atropos rolled her eyes. Lachesis had always been a softy.

“And the other is a man who is engaged and is going to be in a bank robbery.”

Atropos took the plunge and cut the fiber of the woman.

Lachesis cried out in protest.

“It’s going to come for them all, eventually, so what’s the difference?”