OFF #5 - A Destiny No Coincidence

The forest loomed dark on the horizon that was quickly relenting to the insistence of night.

Famished and nearly spent, the two skidded to a halt and stared at the eerie shadows of trees reaching gnarled fingers toward their prey.

“I don’t want to go in there.” Julienne said, falling to the ground and pulling her arm away from his clutch. Her hands closed over her throat as if the shadow branches were grasping for her.

“I don’t, either.” Nicholas sighed, out of breath, and kneeled beside her. “But we have no choice. He’s right behind us. If we don’t go in there we have no other way of escape.”

“I’m so tired of running!” Julienne cried. She stood and paced, her arms wrapped around her dress. A beautiful crimson ballgown. Highly inefficient in the matter of keeping one warm. Nicholas also stood and put his arms around her.

“You’re cold.”

She scoffed. “Of course I’m cold. I’m also starving and I need to relieve myself. There never seems to be time for such things. The limits of this… this… succession of events we’re made to engage in… to be – It’s too hard! I can’t do it!”

“You must do it.”

They both whirled around at the sound of his voice. He stood, not a stone’s throw away, with his hands behind his back and a serene smile on his face.

Nicholas tried to hold her back, but Julienne had experienced the worst day of her life and was not to be trifled with. He stepped back in fear and respect of the well dressed gentleman standing confidently with his hands hidden behind his back.

“Why must we do it? Why must we listen to you at all? How is it that you came to be the god of this world? Already today I have watched my entire family burn to death in the untimely and orchestrated fire of our family’s estate. I lost my fiancé to a duel that he neither started nor cared to finish. Somehow this Nicholas fellow saved me from certain doom when a runaway horse and cart became separated on the bridge above where I was standing.”

She dared to take a step closer, though the man didn’t flinch, and his smile remained fixed upon his lips.

“Your horse and cart, was it not?”

“It’s all mine, my dear. Just as you are. You will never be the creator of your own destiny, because I’m the one that created you. So you will mourn your family, pick of the pieces of your heart, and gladly allow Nicholas here to put them back together. I can promise you that in the end, you will live happily ever after.”

She seethed at him as he picked a leaf from her hair. “And how can you possibly promise that?”

He smiled. “Because, my dear heart, I am the writer.”