Arcana; Prolouge

She’d made sure to say her goodbyes:

To her husband, who had loved her so dearly.

To her newborn son, who would never know his mother.

Gazing down at the child’s small form, she felt the threat of tears burn her eyes. He was so small, less than a day old. When she’d held him for the first time, for the last time, he’d gazed up at her with those pale blue eyes- just like his fathers. He was proof of her life. He was proof of her love. And for that, he would be forced to endure a lifetime of hardships and sufferings.

This is the fate she saw for him, the fate she’d known since the moment of her own conception.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered to him, desperately wishing to convey her honest regrets. How cruel was fate, to gift her knowledge of the future, to make her unable to leave the path laid out for her.

Even if she could, Beatrice wasn’t certain she would choose another path. Her life, though brief, was one well spent.

Her only regret lay before her sleeping- for her sins would be borne on his small shoulders.

And he would never know the truth of his fate.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered again, her voice cracking. She leaned over to press her lips to the child’s forehead. Beatrice hoped that he would always feel how she cared for him, especially in the years to come. Her precious boy, who would lose everything beginning with her.

Then she turned away and faced her fate- the fate she had chosen despite knowing its end.

The pallid landscape of winter greeted her beneath the glittering canvas of stars- snow coating the sleeping earth as far as the eye could see. And there, at the center, was the lake. During the warmer months Beatrice and her husband had gone there, her stomach round with her unborn child. They would take a boat out to the quite center and gaze out at the vast green expanse that they called their home.

How fleeting were her joys.

How great.

Now she walked alone across the water’s frozen surface, the only movement in the darkness being the gentle falling of the snow.

“I see the rumors about your abilities are true.” The voice came from the shadows, slow and sweet. Unreal. “Though it obviously hasn’t done you much good.”

“Perhaps.” She said, trying to gather her courage. “Though I have found there is no use running from Destiny. But you already know that, don’t you? It is your job, after all, to make sure everything goes according to what is written.” There was a flash of white from the shadows.

“Yes. It is. I was there when you first met him-I was the breeze that brought you together. I was there on the day of your wedding. And I am here for the birth of your son, the result of all my work.” It was hard, hearing those words. For so long she had dwelled over other options, ways to stop what was to come.

But there was nothing. She had known her duty in life from even before she was born - when she was blessed with her power of foresight by the Pillar Demon Azazel. To know the outcome of your actions, but to never be able to stop them – such was the nature of her existence.

She was the trigger, the beginning of a game of fate greater than herself.

Her death was the beginning of the end.

“I loved him.” Beatrice murmured, tears forming in her eyes and freezing along her lashes.

“Yes, you did. Just as you were meant to love him. You have played your part well, but you know what must happen now, don’t you?” A cool breeze made her skin prickle with foreboding. She nodded.

Yes, she had known even then, when they first saw each other.

Beatrice closed her eyes, remembering the ill-fated encounter that had led her to this moment. A blue, cloudless sky. The scent of lavender carried by a gust of wind. The blue streak of her hat as it flew away. And his smiling eyes, like the sky, immediately stealing her heart away. Undeniably. Irreversibly.

A great love, and with it, a great tragedy.

The man she loved would change with her death. They would find her body beneath the ice and snow.

His heart would remain as frozen as her corpse.

“Let me ask you then. Do you regret? Regret what you were given at so great a cost?”

Beatrice had asked herself that same question many times through her meager lifetime.

“Don’t we all? To die without regrets is to die without ever living.” She spoke just as the ice beneath her began to splinter. The entire world shook, and for a moment the woman was suspended above the black water that was to be her final resting place.

And then the cold hit her like a thousand pins entering her skin all at once. The air left her lungs in a single pained gasp, and her body began to fill with the murky water that was now swallowing her up like an abyss.

There was nothing but cold and darkness and a silence so impenetrable that if not for the pain Beatrice would have thought she had already entered the realm of death. So she closed her eyes and thought of her little boy, and of her husband. With her last thought as the numbness began to enter her mind she wished them happiness she knew would never come.

Percy turned from the hole in the ice, lifting his head up to the moon whose pale faced watched him intently- the only onlooker to his deed. She had died as she had lived- a fool bound to the steel chains of fate.

Yet, somehow, hers was a noble existence in its tragedy. It was a pity her life had to end here and now.

But Percy had something new to look forward too. With the rising of the sun a new tale would be woven.

A new play to direct.

As the sky began to lighten and the first tinged of pink and violet graced the sky, Percy stepped back into the shadows, looking out upon the scene that was unfolding before him. And through the cries of horror and dismay a single statement wrung out- carried on the breeze.

“Now the story will begin.”