Chapter 4 - A New Fate

The exact nature of his companion’s mission was unclear to Barney. A search for a shoe, even a nice shiny glass shoe with rainbows in it, seemed rather inane and tedious for a mission from the Gods. Barney had heard many stories of Godly missions, and as far as he could remember, not a single one involved searching undergrowth for a shoe. Saving princesses was a big theme. Fighting dragons. Conquering kingdoms. Apparently this was a non-traditional mission that involved slashing at shrubs with a knife, looking for a disappearing shoe.

And so it came to be that Barney was sitting, stomach growling, in the middle of a field, while Sameus Rufus Pegasus (Sammy to his mother) bashed around in the fringes of the forest and bellowed in frustration. His horse, which Barney now recognised as a placid and rather fat pony rather than the fearsome battle charger it had appeared to be, grazed sleepily and farted. And while Barney was sitting in the field, ruminating on what he would most like to be eating – even the pony was looking tasty at this point – a girl in a blue dress was tripping happily through the field towards him.

Barney had never been in love. Girls never go for the cross-eyed one with the wonky face and irrational fear of trees and all products derived from them. One of the great mysteries of life. He hadn’t spoken to a woman except for Martha since he was fourteen. Consequently, when love hit him, he did not recognise it.

The girl in the blue dress was named Celia Josephine Brown, and her father had, but a few hours before, been holding our hero at gunpoint. She recognised that her father was an unpleasant and uneducated fellow, and had decided to make her escape. And now, while her father made his way home, unharmed but shaken from his encounter with a God, Celia whistled while she walked to freedom.

When the two met, it shook the earth. A foolish man would call it a coincidence. An educated man would call it science, and explain it by the inner workings of the earth. A wise man would tell you it is what happens when two fates intertwine. For Celia’s fate was to be saved by him.

Fates are not, as many presume, omnipresent. Neither are they unalterable. Rather, they occupy a small area of our immediate surroundings, a circle with a radius that depends on the strength of the fate – Barney’s was unusually large. They invisibly guide our actions, some stronger and more dense than others. When two fates meet, one must reshape itself, changing to accommodate the other. However, very occasionally, two fates of equal size and strength meet. They jostle for position, each seeking to prove its importance and overcome the other. The earth moves and the sky darkens and all other fates are pushed aside. This was one of those occasions.
At the moment they met, the fates of both warped slightly, and they found themselves travelling on the same path.

A third traveller was gained, and Barney fell in love.

[Word Count: 3172]