The Allotment | paragon soul
A single thread lies across her knees. So she takes the silver blade, and snips.
Fig. 3 — ‘to spin’
In winter’s night, an old woman with interwoven hands of stone appeared on the city streets. Her face was creased like folds of linen. Milky cataracts filled her eyes. She shuffled along as all ought to do, for in this city of fashion and light and charm, there was not a moment to lose. And when she grew tired of shuffling about the place, she rested under the light of the streetlamps where footprints drove away the spirit of winter cold so that the snow was all melted away. And the ground shone like silk in firelight. Firelight, glowing from the inside of a guided hearth, where a needle pierced a rich torrent of fabrics again and again and again and again, until a silhouette was lifted from the depths of the formless and brought alive. The lines and the tapers so delicate — spun by a steady hands. Even in sleep, her eyes still open to the cold.
Fig. 2 — ‘by lot’
A lady emerges from the windowsill and looks downward at the street. Far below, the lights of the street merge into a continuous stream of glimmering thread. Woven across the dark canvas that is this city. And this city is her world. And she laughs at her own absurd existence, her breath crystallising into a puff of iridescent light. And she twirls a thread between her hands as she muses.
Fig. 1 — ‘without turn’
Momma is busy. As she sat near the firelight, the little girl propped up her sleepy head. Enchanted by the needlework, the glitter of the mantlepiece mirror, the silver frost blooming across a dark window just beyond, she dreams. Now the room is a winter forest, the chairs are ruins overrun with gelid tangles and cracked earth. And across the carpet there flows a river of yarn. Cold and relentless, plunging with snowdrifts, the threads flow like water, supercharged and wound tightly to the reel. Now she feels momma’s hand on hers. But there is something cold and glinting. A shard of ice — no — a pair of silver shears. The dreamland disappears like a mist in the firelight. A single thread lies across her knees. So she takes the silver blade, and snips.
Oceanids: Who then is the steersman of Necessity?
Prometheus: The three-shaped Moirai and mindful Furies.
Oceanids: Can it be that Zeus has less power than they do?
Prometheus: Yes, in that even he cannot escape what is foretold.
- Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound
