Clotho's hands danced on the thin thread, rolling it between the pulp of her index finger and her thumb, pulling on it; unfolding a person's life and winding it around her spindle. Although her eyes were on the rising sun as Apollo rode his carriage across the dark blue sky, she could only see, in her mind, the baby boy whose life was spinning between her thighs – the boy who was born seven days before and who would be named today. Atlantis may be a long way from Mount Olympus, but nothing could escape the Goddess's gaze.

"So thin, so fragile," Lachesis said as she carefully picked up one end of the thread to measure it. Clotho's younger sister stared at it with widened eyes and a gaping mouth, as if she witnessed the miracle of birth itself.

A snort came from Clotho's left. "After all these years, do you still wonder at the thread of life?" Atropos asked.

As Clotho looked at her, a timid sunbeam shone on the shears Atropos was twirling with her deft and lethal hands. For an instant, the terrible intrument that ended all human lives burned white in the sunlight, and dark as night in the next. Cold fingers ran down Clotho's back and made her shiver. Under Atropos' glare, she went back to work dutifully.

"Where am I to cut?" her older sister asked Lachesis matter-of-factly.

Clotho blinked but said nothing. That Atropos could be blasé about their work was as astonishing as Lachesis' genuine marvel – at least for Clotho. The sense of their responsibilities weighed on her shoulders. Their duty was to decide every human's fate, and to draw it on a barely visible thread.

Holding out one like a newborn bird, Lachesis showed the place with a light finger. "Here. It is long enough. He will have a long and good life."

"Then I shall end it." Atropos cut the thread and wrapped it around the spindle, careful not to sever it. As she was winding the boy's last years, she froze, a deep frown on her brow. "Clotho?"

Even as she was starting on another life, a new spindle spinning wildly between her legs, Clotho had been watching her sister out of the corner of her eye, but when she heard her name, she raised her head. "Yes, dear sister?"

"What do you make of this?" Atropos asked, showing the stick to Clotho.

Although there was no scorn in her sister's voice, Clotho knew something wasn't right. She looked at the thread and, in the middle of the boy's twenties, another strand, shorter, came out of the main thread. She brushed it with a tentative finger. "It's a mistake, surely. It never happened before." Like an old bone sticking out of a fresh grave, it pointed at her accusingly.

Lachesis bent over her sisters' shoulders and stared at it. "What does it mean?"

That was the question that churned Clotho's guts. She knew enough of her craft to understand that such a mistake could have terrible consequences on the person's life, but had no clue about what it meant exactly. She nervously bit her nails, punishing her fingers for betraying her – and the boy.

"Clotho?"

"It means only one thing; this boy can have two destinies. Where the thread becomes two, there lies an event that will decide his end." She couldn't imagine any other explanation.

Atropos opened and closed her shears fast. "I shall end this too."

Her sister's calm decision fell like earth on a coffin in the quiet room. With a resounding click, the little strand, nothing more than a stub before, became even shorter. A heavy silence followed for a short while.

"Will he have two lives?" Lachesis asked, still transfixed by the thread. Her nervous hand clutched Clotho's shoulder.

Clotho felt herself shaking her head like in a dream while guilt dug a hole in her heart. "Something will happen that'll choose his fate for him." She wished she knew how to fix this. For the first time, she felt the limits of her powers as a Goddess of Fate.

"That can't be," Lachesis decided. Her eyes had narrowed down to pinholes, and she was gnawing her lips, drawing blood. As Clotho glanced at her, she turned around and walked away.

While she watched her sister head to the other side of the room, Clotho wanted to tell her that they had no choice, that something – a greater Fate, a more powerful God – had decided for them, guiding her hands to commit this mistake, but not a sound escaped her tightened lips.

Lachesis came back, another spindle with another life's thread wound around it in her hands, that she held out to Clotho. "I link this life with that one. Let their destinies be intertwined. Let this boy have one more shot at happiness."

Clotho kept silent. A tendril of hope had wrapped itself around her throat. She swallowed audibly. "Can you do that?" she wondered, as her heart swelled inside her chest.

"I can do anything for I'm a Goddess!" Lachesis' naivety felt like fresh air in the stifling tension of the room, her laugh like pearls of ice.

Clotho indulged her sister's creativity. What was the worse that could happen?

"Whose life is it?"

"It is of a boy named Pythagoras, born in Samos two years ago."

Clotho sighed before she tied the threads together in a tight knot. "So be it."

.

In the bedroom, upstairs, his wife enjoyed the respite she deserved so much after another fitful night. Life with a newborn was mostly sleepless, Daedalus had noticed. Thankfully, sleep was not a thing he needed much. While the mother tried to slip a couple of hours of rest between two fits of crying, Daedalus spent the night watching the miracle that was their son like it was another science mystery, which he was, to be honest. How something so small could make so much noise?

To allow his wife her much deserved nap, Daedalus had taken his son to the basement. Flickering candles lit the windowless workshop, throwing shadows of his mobiles and models on the walls. The baby, usually apathetic when he wasn't sleeping or crying, stared at the moving silhouettes with curious eyes and, to Daedalus' surprise, displayed his first smile.

"You're only seven days old, my boy! I feel it's a sign that you'll be precocious and smart like your father." A thought struck him like a bolt of lightning. "Seven days! I totally forgot."

Of course, he could argue that he had been busy with his latest project; that his wife should have remembered. But those were all excuses, and they couldn't ease the guilt he felt at forgetting to name his child.

"What was it that your mother suggested? I can't remember... Ah, yes!" He raised his child in the air and looked right into his eyes. "Your name is Icarus!"

The baby smiled once again at his father, oblivious to what Fate had in store for him.