Back home, Teresa was greeted in her room by a grinning Wisdom. She put the wicker basket containing her frozen clothes down on her bed.

“I’ll dry them for you later,” promised Wisdom. Teresa noticed her room looking a bit tidier than before she’d left; apparently Wisdom had cleaned it. “But before that… There is something to celebrate! In fact, there are two things to celebrate!”

“Did I forget your birthday?”

“No. But today marks the first day you’ve gone out ever since you came here. Congratulations!”

“What?” Teresa took a careful look at Wisdom to make sure she was still sane. “That’s not even true. I leave quite often.”

“Well, yeah. You go out when others make you. Like when you go with the Future. But what I meant is that you were out all on your own today, for the first time.”

As she went over the last few weeks in her head, Teresa couldn’t refute that.

“Oh well… What of it? I just went back to my home for a second. Please don’t make a big deal out of it… You know, all of you come to me with all that weird stuff today… Just imagine: I go home alone, tell nobody about it, and still the Past found me to recruit me for some kind of sabotage mission.”

“Oh, so she did find you! She was here earlier and asked for you. I gave you some pointers on where I suspected you might be. So she went to recruit you, huh? Very interesting…”

Teresa got a little annoyed at how transparent she seemed to be and decided to change the topic.

“The past mentioned something in passing about how the Future’s daughter will have some kind of ability. And well, I know the Past has an ability as well. So I guess the Future would have one too, right? An ability that lets her do what she does… Something like… Scrying?”

“Yeah,” Wisdom said, brushing her green strain of hair out of her face. “She has an ability. It’s not scrying though. Wanna see it? If so, we’d have to go to her shed.”

As she said that, she got up, beckoning Teresa over, who was wondering right about now what it was within that place full of junk that she’d missed last time. While they went out, Wisdom started explaining: ”So, sis doesn’t have quite as amazing an ability as the others from her family. The Past, for example, ‘archives’ every event that ever happens, like in a movie, or in a text within a library. And then she can look at all of these events within her mind, as many times as she wants, without it costing any time at all. I think I told you about that before.

Her brother is a person without any width in time. They exist within a single frame of their choice at any given moment, however, it’s not possible to find traces of them. They cannot appear in secondary sources like texts or pictures, and they don’t appear in the Past’s archives either. You can meet them, but you will only remember your meetings while you are wearing their fish bowl.

And then, there is one of the mightiest people in their family; a person who exists everywhere and anytime at once. A single entity stretched out to all of existence. She’d already know today what you are going to tell her two years from now. And while we are at it, that person’s mother is even more — Ah never mind, here we are!” she finished, opening the door to the shed. “Well then,” she said, gently pushing Teresa inside. For a moment, Teresa couldn’t see a thing, until Wisdom turned on the sparse light of the shed made up of a few light bulbs scattered around within the junk.

“Let’s see… where are you, little one…?” Wisdom wondered, until she finally saw the paper dragon which Teresa had already seen last time. “Maybe it hid because it knew what I’m about to do to it” she said sheepishly and gathered a few stools, stacked them up to an incredibly unstable construction and then easily and quickly hopped onto them to fetch the dragon from its vantage point.

Teresa carefully glanced up, getting a little nervous looking at Wisdom’s wobbly endeavour, eventually making a step towards her in order to stabilise her hips.

“Oh!” made Wisdom when she felt the touch. “Haha, that I’d see the day!”

Teresa ignored the comment and then heard some rustling from above. Wisdom flinched a little.

“Okay,” she finally said, “So, the Future’s ability is that she’s able to remember every single thing she ever learns. It’s like an absolute memory.”

As she said that, she brought down the dragon and gave it to Teresa. “Be careful, it bites.”

The paper felt incredibly thin and light; almost as if it had no actual thickness. The dragon was made up of a myriad of folds, much more complex than any work of origami that Teresa had ever seen. It was also covered in countless small symbols. Wisdom skillfully jumped down and grasped the roots of the dragon’s wings with her hands.

Teresa let go. For a moment, it almost seemed like the wings were flapping. They were much bigger than she would have expected.

Now that Wisdom held it, Teresa saw how all the little segments that made up its back and tail were independently movable. It was a marvellous construction.

Then, with the sound of tearing paper, Wisdom dragged the wings apart.

“The one who built it was the Future’s grandmother.”

In between the wings, where the back had been ripped apart, Teresa could now see the true nature of the dragon: It was made up of sumless folds and creases.

“You can extend it as far as you want. It’s infinitely large. But it doesn’t like being unfolded. Typically it resists.”

“What’s written on it?”

As Teresa looked closer onto the parts that Wisdom had just stretched out, she could make out lines that weaved together into many nodules, some of which had letters next to them of an alphabet she had never seen before.

“Is that a map? Or… a family tree?” she asked.

“Exactly,” responded Wisdom. “This is a map describing everything any person has ever done, is going to do, or is doing right now. Their entire life. For every person to ever exist. We refer to this little cutie here as Fate.”

Having whispered these last few words, she now made a pause for dramatic effect. Apparently revealing this to Teresa was a lot of fun to her.

“The further you open it, the more details it will give you. On a person… or an animal, for that matter. I once managed to open it to about just a few seconds of detail. You’d be able to even see the fate of individual fingers of a person, and all the kinds of things they do to other people… hehe. I didn’t open it more than that, it was too hard. I even pulled a muscle. Future claims that opened further, it is able to show the fate of individual cells, atoms and even smaller parts. Quite something, right?”

Teresa couldn’t really make out anything when looking at all these symbols.

“What you see here is the fate of long forgotten peoples. Fate uses their original language, where possible. If you open it far enough, you might find a translation. Here, take it.”

As Teresa took it over, she immediately felt the strong pull the dragon exerted as it tried to get its wings back together. It must have taken a lot of effort from Wisdom to keep it open for this long. Teresa kneeled down to pull the right wing further apart, but the dragon started to thrash around in protest.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“By the way, Fate reads a bit different for each person looking at it,” Wisdom mentioned as she was glancing over Teresa’s shoulder.

“Makes sense,” she replied. “Since it probably can’t show you your own fate, right?”

Teresa figured it would cause a lot of issues if that was possible.

“Yea,” Wisdom nodded and started petting the dragon gently.

“But,” said Teresa, “what does this have to do with the Future’s ability? Didn’t you say this dragon was created by someone else?”

“That’s right,” said Wisdom. “What it has to do with the Future’s ability is quite simple: She sat down, read all of Fate, and memorised it. That’s why she knows what’s going to happen and when; however, since you can’t read your own fate, she only knows things as long as she’s not personally involved.”

“But she changes people’s fate, right? So what’s written here isn’t set in stone?”

“Mhh, yea, something like that. Fate is more or less just a suggestion. A blueprint. As soon as you change a person’s fate, their notes in here will be updated.”

“That sounds a bit creepy,” said Teresa as she let go of the dragon. “Doesn’t that mean you can do whatever you want to a person when you know what their fate is? You change someone’s fate, then you read the update, and if it’s not the result you want, you just do it again? … Wait, is the Future turning people into their little marionettes? Am I one!?”

Wisdom laughed. “Well, it’s not that easy. See, when you change a person’s fate, it will become part of your own fate as well.”

“Oh…” said Teresa. “And that would cause it to become unreadable to you.”

“Exactly. Though there is always some leeway. Like, you can’t read details any more, but the general direction their life is headed might still be visible to you. It also depends on how much time you spend with them. And, if you continue to stay away from them, then eventually your reading of their fate will again become clearer. Although it can potentially take years, or even decades, until it becomes as clear as before. That’s why sis doesn’t always know about what’s going to happen to people after she met them, and she can’t be sure she actually accomplished what she set out to do. She sometimes revisits people she met, just to see how they are doing now.”

With that, Wisdom’s gaze fell into a slight sadness. “Well, at least that’s what she used to do. She hasn’t done it since the start of this year.”

“I see… so that’s how she does her thing,” Teresa said.

“Yes. That’s how. So, does that answer your question?”

“Probably.”

Teresa watched Wisdom put the dragon back onto a shelf on the other side of the shed; the place where Teresa had first seen it months ago.

“I’m going back,” Wisdom said. “If you want, you can stay here and look at all the stuff. Oh, by the way! Before I forget. I did mention there were two things to celebrate, right? Well, the other thing is… The Future is finally done with gathering her tears. A few hours ago, she started working on manufacturing her daughter!”

That evening, Teresa couldn’t fall asleep. There was too much going on in her head. Finding out about Fate did further her understanding of this entire situation a little, but many questions remained open.

Of course it was still possible — and, in her mind, very likely — that all of this was simply an elaborate hoax and they all spent an enormous amount of resources to make fun of her. However, Teresa decided to reject this notion on principle. She simply wanted to believe all of the things that were shown and explained to her, even if just in a metaphorical sense. But the longer Teresa stayed awake in her bed that night, trying to make sense of everything, the less she was able to.

One particular question kept echoing back in her mind.

Why was she still here? Teresa had assumed that the Future would eventually come for a tear of hers, as well. But now, all the tears had been gathered. Teresa’s tear was no longer necessary. Be that as it may, there was no need for the Future to invest several months into a single tear in the first place when she could gather most of them in a matter of minutes.

So… what was the point of Teresa remaining here? Wasn’t she completely unneeded at this point?

In that moment, Teresa remembered the words that child on the school yard had uttered to her:

“What is the purpose of that entity identified as Teresa R. M. S. Hargrove?”

She tossed and turned in her bed for a long time, until her blanket slipped within its cover, making it unusable. Angrily, she got up to fix it. As she did that, she figured she could also fetch her lip balm from the drawer on her night stand. Her mouth had again almost completely dried up.

Her room was only illuminated by the small charging light on her phone and the distant street lamps scantily shining in through the window, so she could barely see anything while searching through her drawer.

But then, she saw something shiny in there. When she took it, she realised it was that pearl she had gotten when she’d first met the Future. Next to that was a little piece of paper. She turned on the lights to read what it said.

It was a ticket to a planetarium… but not one that was very close by. In fact, it was in a coastal city almost 100 kilometres away. The date was January 12th.

That’s still a while away, she thought after glancing on her phone for the date. Apparently, someone wanted her to visit that event in particular.

November 29th

“Well,” Wisdom revealed a week later, “and that’s why we’re now going to visit an aquarium, sweetie! That said, to be honest, considering your background I would have assumed she’d send you to an observatory or something, but oh well, you never truly know her ways, right?”

Teresa wasn’t going to mention the ticket she had found in her night stand.

“Anyway, what’s important is simply that you start crying, so it doesn’t really matter where we go.”

The two of them were sitting in a train, and for some reason, Wisdom had been excited like this all day long. Teresa couldn’t share her enthusiasm. “Anyway, why do you act like my tear still matters? The Future is done with gathering her material, right?”

“Oh dear, it’s not like she does all this just for the tears. She also wants to help the people she makes cry, you know?”

“I see. So you think today is going to be my big day?” asked Teresa.

“Precisely. What else? Just imagine… the romantic blue lighting, the cute little critters, an amazingly charming plus one, and… boom! You won’t even know what hit you!”

Teresa couldn’t help but reciprocate Wisdom’s smile. It was just too contagious.

“Ah, and the weather is amazing, too, isn’t it? The sun hasn’t shone this brightly in weeks. There isn’t a single cloud in the sky!”

“Then maybe we should have gone to spend the day outside?” asked Teresa. “Those fish tanks are all in dark corridors., right?”

“Oh, whatever. It’s all about the feeling, you know. The feeling of knowing the weather is great.”

Teresa had to listen to nonsense like that for the rest of the train trip. Apparently, the Future had recommended this aquarium visit and asked for the both of them to go together… Teresa had stopped second guessing the Future’s machinations and learned to just roll with it, so she just leaned back with closed eyes and let Wisdom’s sweet chit-chat rain on her until they arrived at their destination.

“Wow, a deep sea anglerfish!” Wisdom shouted when they walked past a leisured specimen in a dark passage. “This is an entire tank full of lightfishes! How did they even get them here? How can they even keep them here? Oh damn, aren’t these places wonderful?” Wisdom asked, spinning around with stretched arms, in full marvel. Then she turned back towards the anglerfish and walked along it, staring at the animal with utter adminaration.

Teresa glanced at Wisdom’s face gleaming in child-like wonder as a reflection on the glass, as it just so happened to exactly overlay with the face of the anglerfish.

If you ask me, it made the fish uglier.

Teresa herself couldn’t help but feel happy for Wisdom, even though she herself opposed holding animals confined and couldn’t find a lot of value in places like this.

It took almost an hour until Wisdom was done marvelling at the lightfishes, but eventually they left the area and went to look at parts of the building housing other sea fish. There, Teresa saw a knot of people standing in a circular recess of a tank. They were listening to a woman giving a museum tour, watching a large fish that was slowly swimming along the curved glass wall.

“… Which is how it came to be known as one of the most popular examples of a Lazarus taxon. They belong to the Osteichthyes — also known as bony fish — and live hundreds of metres deep.

According to reports, our Melody here was one of the first coelacanths that were ever rediscovered. Before she came to us, she was in the care of an old travelling animal merchant. That said, the credibility of those reports is disputed, as it is somewhat unlikely that she would have survived in his tenure for long.”

The fish she was talking about was probably about two metres wide, had meaty fins and a very pronounced armour of scales. It had a grey, greenish colour with some dots scattered around its body that where much brighter.

“I can’t believe it,” muttered Wisdom, who slowly walked towards the fish. Teresa sneaked after her, until the both of them stood directly in front of that big creature, only what seemed like a very thin thin glass wall between them. Wisdom placed her hands on the pane as if she wanted to touch the coelacanth’s fin.

“That big meanie!” she whispered and turned around to Teresa with eyes wide open, biting softly on her quivering lower lips. She was clearly about to cry. “I thought all this was about you!”