Let's check in with #Treliese...

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Scene 7:  Engaged

A.D. 2015

"Rise and shine, love," Miss Primor bade her fiancé as she strode into their hotel room, wasting no time flinging the curtains wide open.

"I'm awake, I'm awake," Trevor slurred from somewhere deep in a heap of blankets. "Wish I weren't. Where'd you just come in from?"

"Just walked Cloe back to her hostel after she finally woke up this morning," Charliese informed him. She had insisted on taking care of the poor girl after she'd passed out at the bar last night, convincing Cloe's hostel buddies that she was a trusted acquaintance from home. Knowing that she could look after her better than a herd of inebriated kids who were all but strangers to Cloe, really, despite whatever sense of instant-friendship the international backpacking scene might foster. Brought her back to their hotel to sleep on the fold-out.

On which another Fate had also laid, not long ago, Charliese silently recalled now. If only the girls knew just how closely entwined their lives were.

Well, one person did know now, aside from her primordial self—and that was the horribly hungover professor tangled up in the bedspread with his spectacles hanging halfway off his curly-haired head. She could've sworn that she'd removed them for him, before helping him to bed. Realized now that he must've reached for them and donned them while in deep sleep in the middle of the night. On some subconscious nerdy impulse. How stupidly cute, she inwardly cooed.

"Ohh," he yawned, "riiight. We ran into Cloe last night."

"Yes, dear, that's right," she affirmed, reminding herself just how relieved she was that Cloe had been knocked out last night while Trevor was awake, and that Trevor had been asleep when Cloe woke today, so that no awkward drunken slips had happened. Given what he now knew about her.

"I mean, Clotho of the Moirai, turner of the spindle, spinner of all mortal lives," Trevor continued. "...which makes her pretty much the mom of the entire human race, including us. Right."

Charliese sighed. His incredulity had been hard enough to handle when he was sober, but this hangover seemed to bring out a snarky side in her beloved professor. "As I've explained to you too many times, the relationship isn't exactly maternal..."

"Yeah, just like my fiancée, even if she gave birth to the universe, isn't exactly my great-great-etc.-grandma. Whatever you say."

"Exactly. Whatever I say," she echoed with a firm, serious stare. "I'm telling you, Trevor—every word I've said about this is true. The sooner you come to terms with that, the easier this will be for you."

"But isn't that what any pathological liar would say, to her prey?"

"If you're joking, then it's not funny. And if you're serious, then—"

"Please just chill for a minute, okay? I'm neither. Just hungover. Way more than a guy my age can handle. And I love you, honey, but your voice right now is like a million cooing pigeons cooped up in my mind, and your silvery hair is so bright that I think I've gone blind."

She frowned. "So you're telling me to shut up and disappear."

With a suggestive wiggle of his brows, he shifted under the covers to make space for her. "Or shut off the lights and get in here..."

"Ugh, I swear I'm never letting you near alcohol again. And won't be going anywhere near you till this dreadful hangover is done."

Trevor didn't bother trying to mask his disappointment.

"Don't think for a second that your puppy-dog pouts will win me over now," she sharply chided. "Stay put like a good boy, won't you? I'm stepping out. To pick up some greasy food for you, or whatever it is that those wasted college kids use to recover from..." she gestured in disgust at the mess he had made of the bed. "...from all this."

"Wait, wait," he grunted, sitting upright with great effort, setting his spectacles straight, "before you go, Char—can I ask you something?"

His fiancée paused halfway across the room and blinked at him.

"Why did you tell me all this? I mean... let's say it's true, and that I believe you," he uncomfortably supposed. "Even if so, why did I ever have to know? Wasn't our life together nicer, easier, before?"

She looked in earnest into his endearing hazel eyes. "Would you rather I had kept you in the dark? To live a lie?"

Trevor wagged his tired head. "That's not what I'm saying, it's just... it's just scary as hell, feeling so overwhelmed."

Aw. If this hangover brought out his snark and other insufferable qualities, Charliese mused, at least it also made this woeful moment even more adorable than usual. "Well, let me tell you, love—you've got nothing to be afraid of," she reassured him, honeyed voice set at her maximum level of heartfelt and comforting. "You're engaged to the first and most powerful deity who ever existed. And so, from anything that you might fear, you'll always be protected."

She glided over to the bed, sitting with careful grace against the edge. "Even if what you fear is your fiancée herself," she granted, knowing full well just how terrified he had to be, of her recently disclosed identity. "Charliese Primor, Primordial Chaos in the flesh."

Trevor started chewing his lip, of course. His telltale nervous tic.

"I understand that this will take some getting used to, I really do," Charliese cooed, leaning in, laying a hand upon his cheek. "But you must know: I've told you this overwhelming truth, one that I've never shared with anybody else, because I love you. With all my immortal heart."

He had stopped chewing, while she'd been saying those words to him. His lips were parted, now, though not a sound came out.

The smile in her stormy greys was warm, but did not stay that way for long. She lowered her hand from Trevor's face to pat the sweat-damp skin of his bare shoulder. "Now go take a shower, before I take back every word. You smell like rotting turd."

"Hey, it can't be that bad—" he scowled, too full of pride to sniff himself. "Sure, I was shitfaced last night, but I swear I didn't shit my pants—"

"I know, Trev." She crossed the room and grabbed her bag. "I may have exaggerated for emphasis to get you to clean up, but you are truly disgusting right now; I mean that just as sincerely as everything else I've said. Please be sure that you're half-decent by the time I'm back."

"Aw, but Char, if you can't love me at my worst..."

She rolled her eyes, sparing only the faintest shadow of a laugh.

Trevor huffed a playful snort as his fiancée reached the door. "Just saying—you really ought to love me through my hangovers. I mean, when I've accepted you as being basically the uterus of the universe..."

"Please just stop talking so that I can grab us some gyros without throwing up," she implored. "Sometimes I think I hate you, love."

"Heh," he chuckled just before she stepped out. "Love you, too."

And he did. Damn it, he did. He was in love with the gaping void from which the cosmos had arisen, the nothingness that preexisted all creation, an all-powerful force that had somehow walked into his life in the form of the most irresistibly beautiful creature on earth. And furthermore, this goddess claimed to love him back. How could anyone blame him, for being overwhelmed and scared as hell, by that?

The worst part was that Trevor felt deep down, by some freakish intuition that went against all reason, that his fiancée was legitimately not insane. That every word of her incredible nonsense was true. Somehow, try as he might to refuse it, he knew.

He was engaged, fated, towed Chaos incarnate—terrified to find, in his heart of hearts, that he still wanted to—and there was absolutely nothing he could do.

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How would you feel in Trevor's shoes? ;)

Next scene, we'll head back to Rider's camp in B.C....

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