fin // four // ode cheyne

The ring dangles from an almost invisible strand of blonde hair as Ode leans over her aunt's swollen belly and holds her arm completely still. Silence hovers in the room like smoke. The eighteen year-old's short pink fingers grip the end of the hair, so different in colour from her own shock of dark red locks, and her wide-set, squinted eyes scrunch even further while she waits for the wedding ring to start to swing. 

If a stranger saw them going in, it would be impossible to imagine every member of Ode's heaving family fitting into the living room of that one house, but the Cheynes have always found a way to make things work in their favour. Ode herself believes what she hears other people whispering as she passes them with her notorious red hair, that they manage to make things move around them because they're so slippery. She tries not to associate herself with the most infamous members of her clan, though she'd never do anything as drastic as abandon her family name altogether. She's not guided by pure insanity like they are - she's guided by fate.

Fate manifests itself in many different ways and Ode considers herself blessed whenever she channels one. Now, as the ring begins to swing in tiny circles above the expectant and expecting mother's belly, the girl feels that same thrilling shiver of electricity she gets whenever destiny reveals itself to her. She speaks without hesitation, "it's a boy." It's as if the words had been whispered directly to her.

The room erupts in cheers and laughs. Ode watches her uncle breathe a sigh of relief, and resents it.

Later that evening, Ode asks the wind for an answer, although she isn't totally sure of the question. What she feels, as the breeze blows its petrichor-scented breath over her face, ruffling her long, dark eyelashes and filling her pale honey-coloured cheeks with colour, is the answer to every question. The worry that often knots uglily in her stomach like a clot of hair in a drain unravels and floats away as easily as dandelion seeds. Don't worry, the wind says, you're on the right path. Ode releases her fear and, as always, returns to letting her senses - including that sixth sense for divine intervention - guide her.

She has been finding signs in nature since she was barely a teenager, discovering the world through taste and smell and touch as much as through sight and sound, as she had ventured through her childhood. As she wandered through the salty-aired environment she is honoured to call "home" one dusk, she would have fallen straight into the cold, saline water of a pooling stream if it weren't for a sharp gust of wind that rebalanced her stumble. With golden-brown eyes wide and shining at the shock, long arms spread wide for balance, the girl considered how close she had come to death. She had never believed in coincidences. It has since become her ritual to thank the natural world for guiding her, protecting her, and helping her find her way. 

Yet Ode can't deny that this has the potential to lead her to go against her conscience, and sometimes her common sense, if she truly believes that fate has urged her to turn away from what is sensible, or good. Part of her longs to regret some of the harm she has (totally intentionally) caused others in the name of destiny. She wishes that when she looked up to the moon and asked for sign to bring retribution to someone that had wronged her, the clouds could have just stayed where they were and not have revealed that sadistic orb's encouraging face. But since her life was saved by a natural force, what else is she to do? She has a debt for life, and while no other debt will ever be as significant as that, she knows that debts must be honoured.