PART FIFTH: Prophecy Girl
This morning, a girl awoke screaming. It was not Katherine Pryde.
��Welcome to Destiny's Diaries v.1.2.4
��This program is designed to run on RAMSEYd UNIX
��Designed by Shadowcat Team X-treme
��Random Prophecy of The Day 871-84917849279
I don't have time for this, why did I ever write this into the bloody boot up process. She paused a moment, she used a "bloody" and she hadn't thought of Pete Wisdom, well she had now, but she hadn't then, she'd escaped; and then came a second thought, Pete's idea of a boot-up process would involve hitting the CPU hard with some suitable footwear. And swearing. Loudly. But she's over that, she reminds herself, she's set herself free, she's fighting the battle that really matters. She has a life of her own now. And there's somebody new on the horizon, his name is Tom. He's going to be so much better for her, she reminds herself.
��Time is not a simple path, no more than the one before me
��World between worlds
��Path between paths
��Time between times
��It is of there I shall sing
��That is where things fall to from their appointed place
��A refuge to many but a sanctuary to none
��Save he the son abandoned thrice by mothers three
��He who is heir to me in all things
��A mirror crack'd, and the thread is tangled,
��While he might weave the thread he still has the end
��The mirror remains broken
��Things shall fall.
Silently, Kitty cursed Destiny, she had a very strong feeling that the woman had enjoyed being obtuse. That she knew what was going to happen, and just liked to make everyone else to have to jump through hoops. Well, it wasn't happening. She had her fill of arch manipulators. She'd cut her strings. No more do this Kitty, do that Kitty, come and let me possess you Kitty. Then she thought of the picture frame she found the first diary in; of the name scrawled on the back on the uncertain, hesitant hand. She didn't now her name, that blind woman scared and alone, hadn't been sure of her name, what of so many possible names was hers. Ariel, Sprite, Kitty, Katherine, Pretty Kitty, Pirate Kitty, Lion Pryde, Kit-Kat, maybe just names of a moment, but moments stretched across eternity in that all-seeing mind. Was this how the time lost felt? Her Rachel, trapped in a world not quite her own, with everything not quite right? Jubilee had written to her back in the days of Excalibur, angry and scared that Bishop always had to follow her name with the rider "the last X-man". She didn't even notice when a tear began to form on cheek like a sorrowful jewel.
This morning a girl awoke screaming. She was still screaming when the doctor came, that afternoon, her friends' desperation overwhelming their fear. They didn't tell him she was a mutant, what were they meant to do, just slip in to the conversation that their new friend who they'd just met had said she was just slightly psychic over dinner about two weeks ago? Anyway, he looked really old, you know ancient, probably would have put psychic powers down as hippy dropout nonsense and drugs. She was still screaming when they put her on the ambulance. Her friends seemed less than keen to make the journey with her as all the eyes on the street turned on to her. She was still screaming of tangled string and doomed thrice born children when they signed her into the hospital. Her name was Marie-Ange Colbert, but the unfamiliar sounds rebelled on paper, the letters jumped and huddled in unfamiliar combinations. And so they escaped the notice of the intelligent computer worms sent out by x-corporation to keep track of mutant related incidents…