#sunday snippet (a day late)

[ellenmillion]

The room Carina shared with Toren was just down the hallway from Tania's door, but Carina paused with her and hesitantly asked, “Did you ever believe in destiny? Before all of this, I mean?”

“I’m not sure I do now,” Tania said frankly. “I believe in free will, you know? I always thought that fiction that relied too heavily on fate and prophecy was taking the easy path, sort of cheating.”

“You don’t think that the Compact knows the future?”

Tania wished she wasn’t running out of energy so fast; she would have liked to take the time to invite Carina in and have this conversation in earnest. The more she got to know Carina, the more she liked her, and right now, she looked vulnerable and uncertain and Tania kind of wanted to hug her.

“I...don’t know,” she confessed. “When I met Rian, he told me that all those things I was feeling were what I was going to feel, like an echo from the future. And that’s a kind of a terrifying idea, that a piece of paper can make me feel things in the first place, before you even add in the concept of an immutable future.”

Comments

[kelkyag]

Yup, that's terrifying. Many sympathies to Carina and Tania.

[ellenmillion]

The love at first sight/destiny/fated mate is such an accepted trope in this genre - but there are such interesting undertones that no one really digs into. (One reason that this ISN'T a Zoe book!)

[kelkyag]

Now I'm curious as to whether there's fanfic (genre-specfic or Zoe specific) that does. I'm glad you are!