In the Beginning... by Calle J. Brookes

heard your voice on the night air that you were the female my
Goddess had chosen for me some six hundred plus years ago.”
    “ How did she choose me? I wasn’t even
alive, and I’m pretty certain most of the Taniss family line didn’t
exist back then.”
    “Legend has it that when a
Dardaptoan is born, the Goddess whispers their name, followed by
the name of the one individual that Dardaptoan is destined to be
with. Most of the time it is another Dardaptoan. Sometimes, it’s a
Lupoiux—what you would call a werewolf. Other times it is a witch.
Even had a few Rajni pairs that I have seen involve Kinds from other realms, such
as an Encantado halfling.”
    “That’s it? No thought put into who should be
together, whether they will be compatible? This goddess just says
Dick will be with Jane?”
    “In its simplest form, yes.”
    “And you all don’t have problems with that?
Don’t you want the right to choose who you spend your life
with?”
    How did he make her
understand that the mere idea of having that one person you were meant to be
with out there waiting for you somewhere was the only way most
Dardaptoans were able to continue their existences? Existences that
could last more than two or three thousand years? That finding
their Rajni was
what most Dardaptoans planned for and anticipated? “Don’t you want
to spend your life with someone who is ordained for you, who is
chosen to be the one being on the entire Earth who fits you better
than anyone else?”
    “And that’s what you think I
am? I just can’t believe that.” Her hands were taut under his.
Clenched around the book she still held. “If you were destined for
me, you would have known that above all things I respect
choices . And
respect people being responsible for their own actions. I don’t
respect someone who hurts someone else because of something a
family member did!”
    “Because of what happened to your sister. I
know. And I can understand that.”
    “How did you know about
that? No one knows
what happened to Mal but our family. And my father made sure of
that.”
    “Sometimes, when I touch
someone, I can feel strong events that have happened to them. Or
that will happen to them. When I touched
your sister earlier, I saw what had happened to her. Could see her
in my mind as she lay there on the pavement beside your uncle’s
green sedan. See the red and mauve team sweatshirt your sister was
carrying before she was attacked. I am sorry that had to happen to
her, and even sorrier still that she had to meet her Rajni this way. That
Aodhan had to take her choices from her as
I have done the same to you.”

Chapter Thirteen

    Mickey felt her breath back
up in her throat. That sweatshirt would haunt her for the rest of
her life. She’d recognized it the moment she and Josey had stepped
out of the stairwell in the Taniss Industries parking garage almost
nine years ago. It had been hers , her sweatshirt that she wore after swim team
practice every day . Mal had borrowed it that morning because it had started
raining and she’d been in a hurry. Mal hadn’t wanted to be late for
her classes at the university a county over from where they’d
lived.
    The sweatshirt had been
covered in her sister’s blood, and tossed forgotten in the middle
of the parking lot floor. Mickey had bent down to pick it up before
she’d seen her sister lying broken on the pavement by their Uncle
Jason’s car. His green car.
    “How did you know? About the car? About the
sweatshirt?”
    “I saw it. Just as I saw that you and I were for one
another in this life.”
    Did she believe him? Could
she? “And what does that mean, exactly?
That I should give up who I am to spend my life here doing nothing?
I can’t do that. I have a family, I have a plan, goals for my life
that don’t include lazing around a hotel somewhere in the middle of
I-don’t-know-where.”
    “In time...”
    “If you are such a big proponent of ‘in time’
why did you...make me what you