Let me tell you a story.

A long time ago, in a land you are quite familiar with, I think, there lived a little boy. The boy had two parents, who were cordial enough on the weekends when they were forced to speak to one another. He had a number of toys which he occasionally even played with when he wasn't at school or playing some new game on the vid. And he, as every lucky child should, had a puppy named Toby who he loved more than anyone else in the world.

In a few years, he would have been going into Junior High. He would have struggled with math and science, but gotten along easy enough in history and English. He would have made friends that lasted, not a lifetime, but long enough, and through enough that they would have lived in his heart until the day that he died. And he would have had a falling out with his parents, drifting further and further away over the years as his budding attraction to other boys widened the gulf between who he was and who they wanted him to be.

In a few years, he would have made his own choices, his own mistakes, and shattered the caul of innocence like a chick breaking out of an egg. Taking his first stumbling steps of his own volition and for his own future. 

And yet this was not to be. For as he stepped on that plane with his father, unbeknownst to either the boy or his dad, their fates twisted in the skein. 

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A long time ago, in a place you are not familiar with at all, I would presume, except perhaps in dream and forgotten memory, three women crowded around a growing quilt. A number of threads were beginning to fray, threatening to pull apart the rest of their project. The threads were far too close to the knots of their work, and as they broke they would have created a cascade in the threads until the integrity of the project was lost and the weave had came undone.

There was a single thread, however, that they found would be strong enough to tie off the breach. They realized that if they cut out the frayed cords and tied them off with this strong fiber, the damage would be minimal to the rest of their skein. And yet the cord that they needed, the one that could save every other thread in their project, was far too tightly wound with a smaller one, a newer one. And they sat in their den staring at the threads, knowing what needed to be done and yet hesitant to make that final, prescriptive cut.

A long time ago, in the place where I found myself, I sat hand in hand with my father; waiting for the wheels to move and the engines to ignite; unaware of the forces even now staring at the short thread of my life. Of the woman so hesitant to make my final cut.

I thought of the games I wanted to play; I thought of my grandmother, waiting for us down south; and I thought of how uncomfortable the seats were, squirming and complaining loudly. I did not think to hold my fathers hand tighter, nor to cherish those final moments of my existence.

And yet, even still, the Kindly Ones were even then reaching for their shears. The decision made, they moved to save the canvas of fate with a single, almost insignificant... snip.