You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator, Kate Baker.

Greetings, Clarks World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

This is our second to last story for the month of June.

2021 issue 177. I hope that you've enjoyed all these stories so far, and thank you for your

ongoing support. Whether it's through a subscription, whether it's sharing one of your favorite stories via

Twitter, or Facebook, or with a friend, or going to our patreon.com forward slash Clarks World

page to lend a few dollars our way for support. We can't do this without you. So whether this is

your first, somewhere in the middle, or over 550th story here at Clarks World that you've listened to,

thank you. This piece is titled Our Fate, told in photons and is by KW cold yard.

Christian Wilson Colleared grew up weird in a one caution light town in the Appalachian

foothills. She now lives in an old textile city with her husband and their clouder of cats.

You can find more about Christian over at her website, christianwriting.com.

So my dear listeners, I hope you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

We were 77 when the Pleiades burned out. As a seventh daughters of a seventh daughter,

it seemed almost poetic that this was what fate had in store for us.

Yes, I said daughters plural. Kasto came first, but she wasn't breathing. I came second,

and I was shrieking, gulping air like a parched man fresh from the desert.

My tiny fist clutched her left leg as if to insist where she goes, I go.

But she, the devilish little thing, she waited until all eyes were on her, until I was cold and

alone in my cradle on the far side of the room before she took her first breath.

If you believed in luck, you might have said we were fortunate. After all, it was only good timing

that allowed us both to survive. Had we come along at any other era in any other place,

...