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Episode 1:
Ari was born in winter.

Her mother, Hanah, was pleased.

Her father was not.

Ward was a believer, and the prophecy said The World Weaver would be born of winter.

Hanah told him to knock off his nonsense and be happy for a healthy baby.

And Ari was very healthy. It wasn't at all surprising when she started showing a knack for ice magic - sorcery ran in both sides of the family. Ward was a healer, born in spring, and Hanah was a researcher in solid state alchemy, a field of study her own winterborn sorcery was especially well-suited for.

Prophecies are quickly forgotten as life with an infant goes on. Lack of sleep leaves little room for such worries, and the misgivings Ward had at the birth of his daughter on a particularly cold and stormy winter night were quickly replaced by the day-to-day antics of a child whose winterborn curiosity often led her straight into fire.

Ari released the thread of memory she'd been holding onto. It wasn't a thread she could influence very strongly. She'd been there, but as an infant, she'd had no cognition of choice, the tiny brain still operating purely on instinct and need.

Changing threads operated on choice. She could step into any thread, but she only had the influence of the version of herself that she stepped into. She had to find the threads that would give her the power. Infancy was not one of those threads.

As Ari brought herself back to the present, she could feel the presence of another and she immediately went on guard, quickly standing and turning to face the intruder.

"Hey, Ari, chill," Vance said.

Ari relaxed. Vance was her roommate. A monk of the Order. He was studying Aleatoric Sorcery as well.

"Visiting threads again?" he said.

Ari nodded. She didn't tell him what threads she was exploring, or why. Or that they were the forbidden threads of the past. The shielding she'd had to do to prevent the Headmaster from detecting her intrusions in threads that were protected by the Chaos Accords had drained her and she didn't have much space left in her head for words at the moment.

"You know it's not safe to do that alone, Ari," Vance sighed. He was fond of Ari, but her obsession with her studies scared him at times. "Brother Stavius ..."

Ari cut him off. "I know. I was just curious is all. Not like I can do anything about the threads anyway." She didn't tell him she'd already figured out how to counteract the dampening ring that all novitiates at the War Abbey were given to prevent them from manipulating threads before they were fully trained, experienced, and sanctioned to do so. Working with the threads of time, space, and reality itself was precarious work.

"Well, we need to get to Sermon anyway. ," Vance said. "Let's go."

Ari pulled herself further back. So many threads. It was getting harder to remember who she was, easier to lose herself in them as she relived the various threads of the lives that she'd traversed to get where she was.

The World Weaver.

But it still wasn't enough.

She still hadn't found the right thread.

The one that would give her the power she needed.

A flit of the wrist and the life thread of a young believer twitched. The girl brought a plate of food to the shrine that she tended.

Ari consumed the food in the way that only The World Weaver could.

Reweaving reality required a well-fed body.

The offerings of her threads served her well.

Episode 2
Ari shook her head and looked around the shrine. She didn't remember coming in here, or even preparing the food that was now sitting on the altar, but that didn't surprise her. The offerings were such a habit now it was just automatic. Life of a novice of The Winter Abbey.

She walked out of the shrine, just a small stone building, and she bumped into the most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her entire life.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," a sweet and lilting voice said. "I am so, so sorry. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. I'm sorry!"

"It's okay," Ari said, "I wasn't exactly paying attention myself."

"Hi, I'm Sabine," the woman said, sticking her hand out for a shake. "I'm new here, and I'm kind of lost."

Ari took the hand, and felt a shock of energy flow up her arm and flood her body. "I... I'm Ari," she said, "And, uh, I guess I could show you around. What Abbey do you belong to?"

"I'm springborn," Sabine said. "And I'm trying to find the Gathering Chapel."

Ari laughed. "Well, this is definitely not the Gathering Chapel. This is the Chapel of the Winter Crone." She watched Sabine's eyes go wide.

"Oh, you're a winterborn!" Sabine said, excitement bubbling in her voice. "There aren't many winterborn here!"

It was true. Winterborn tended towards the more academic and analytical magical areas of study, not the mystical ones that were taught at the abbeys and monasteries scattered around the world. But Ari had always felt the pull, and also knew that she needed more control of her emotions, something she hadn't been able to find anywhere else so far.

Ari pointed down the walkway, away from the far edge of The Winter Abbey where they were currently standing, towards the central Gathering Chapel. The complex was huge - Abbeys for each season were arranged in a wheel with buildings for study and practice as well as residential quarters for the novices and the visiting monks and nuns who came from the other abbeys and monasteries to teach the novices until they were ready to choose their specialty - or return to the world as was sometimes the case.

The season that one was born in has great influence on one's magical abilities, so part of the novice year was honing the particular talents that one was born with, while also learning to access and balance the magic of the other seasons. By the end of one's novice period, a specialty would be chosen, and a transfer to a monastery or abbey of that specialty would be arranged.

The novitiate lasted from three to five years, and Ari had only just finished her first year of studies. It was spring now, so not surprising to see a brand new springborn. Just surprising she'd gotten so far lost.

Ari pulled her awareness back to the War Abbey. Brother Stavius was droning on and on about the Chaos Accords again, and the importance of not meddling with the threads, but instead observing them and determining what threads would lead to optimal outcomes. A basic ethics lecture she could repeat by heart at this point.

She shook her head, letting go of the thread of memory where she'd first met Sabine. That was a thread she was terrified of ruining and so was one she never visited. She wasn't sure how she'd found herself there - she'd never accidentally drifted into a thread like that before. It shouldn't even be possible. Threadwalking was conscious, by necessity. It's not something that could just accidentally happen. She had to stop. She couldn't keep doing this. She'd talk to Brother Stavius after Sermon. He could help. He'd be angry she'd been doing it, but he'd help her stop.

Ari sat at her loom and snipped a thread. That knot there just would not do, and sometimes, it was better to splice in an entirely new thread than to try to influence a brittle one.

Episode 3
Ari sat with her fellow Winter Novitiates. There were only three of them. Tiny in comparison to the four dozen Spring Novitiates. But even among all of them, Sabine stood out and Ari couldn't take her eyes off of her.

Ari had taken lovers before, of all genders. Intimacy was not forbidden by the Orders, provided the relationships that one was involved in didn't detract from work and studies.

But never before had she felt such a deep and instant need for someone. It was confusing. She'd never had intention of ever tethering herself to someone, but here, she felt the urge to bow before Sabine and beg for her hand in marriage, an effort likely to result in nothing more than abject humiliation. Ari suppressed the urge.

The Spring Novitiates all stood together and began to recite the Spring Canticle. Ari didn't hear the words, she was still too enthralled with Sabine.

A nudge in her side broke her reverie.

Ben whispered in here ear, "New conquest?"

Ari blushed and shot him a dirty look, "No, it's not like that."

Ben chuckled. "Better pay attention. Sister Esmelda won't be happy if she sees you distracted again."

Ari knew he was right. She was already on the Winter Abbess's bad side. She didn't need to make it any worse.

She snapped her attention back to the podium where the Abbess Prime was waiting for the canticles to end so she could begin her Sermon and announcements.

New novices. This was going to be a long day.

Ari pulled herself back to Brother Stavius's Sermon again.

It was becoming more and more difficult to stay in the moment and she didn't understand why.

She recalled something she'd read in one of the forbidden texts she'd gotten access to after she slept with the librarian. That part of what drove the Threadwalkers mad had been called Slipping, but there'd been no description of what Slipping was, just as there were no texts left describing how to Threadwalk, only describing the effects of it on the individual Threadwalker and on the fabric of reality itself.

She made an effort to pay deeper attention to Brother Stavius's Sermon, and focused on staying present until she could talk to him and get his help re-anchoring herself back to reality.

It was in that moment that Brother Stavius collapsed at the podium. The Abbey broke out into pandemonium.

Ben ran forward, as did Ari. She had no choice but to be present now. Crisis was good for that.

Brother Stavius was an elder, but he wasn't that old. To collapse so suddenly? And just as Ari had noticed that she might be Slipping?

She shuddered at the thought that her own illicit Threadwalking might have led to this. She tried to tell herself that wasn't possible. She'd just been accessing the memories, using her magic to bring her closer to the threads of time so that she could see them more clearly. She wasn't reliving them, she wasn't influencing them. Just observing is all.

Ari smiled. This weaving was turning out quite nicely.

It wasn't her first attempt. She'd reworked the threads again and again, adjusting the pattern a bit each time. Some threads wore through faster than others, knots happened irritatingly often, but years of practice had taught her hands to manage it all with grace.

Splice in a new thread here, weave a change in the pattern there, snip that knot and let the pattern resolve in a new way.

It was almost instinct now.

Done with barely a conscious thought, her mind drifting through threads of memory as she wove the tapestry she'd trained over lifetimes to create.

Episode 4
Ari danced, her toddler body swaying to the music that Da was playing on his lyre. Not a thought in her head, just feeling the music swirling around her and nudging her to move this way, that way, arms swaying, body swirling around until she got so dizzy she fell down.

The music stopped. Da laughing and Ma swooping in to pick Ari up and dust her off. Mumbled words Ari didn't understand. Ma passing her off to Da. Da putting her down and grabbing her coat. She hated that coat. Hated it. Hot and stuffy. Just let her love the cold!

And so she burst into tears, throwing herself back down on the floor, pounding her tiny fists on the ground.

With each hit of her little hand to the rug of the living room floor, a bit of ice spread out. It felt so good.

"Look, Ward," Ma said, "she's making ice already!"

Ari's attention snapped back to the War Abbey.

Sister Tara was sitting across from her. Their knees were touching. It helped Ari to ground into reality.

After Brother Stavius had died, Ari hadn't had any trouble staying present. She'd been resolute about not attempting to Threadwalk anymore. There was a part of her, a small deep voice, that said she should leave the War Abbey, forego her studies in Aleatoric Sorcery, but she pushed the thought away. She could find balance. She could learn to observe the threads and advise the Generals towards finally winning the War, without Threadwalking herself.

Brother Stavius had been replaced by Sister Tara as the teacher of Aleatoric Sorcery at the War Abbey. It was a prestigious position, one that Sister Tara hadn't expected to find herself in quite so soon.

"Were you able to access the Thread?" she said to Ari.

"Yes," Ari said.

"And?" Sister Tara prompted.

This was a training session, not casual practice, so recounting of the experience was expected, not that there was much to recount. Accessing and observing past threads was a routine practice, as the Threads of the Past informed the Threads of the Future.

"I was young. Barely a toddler. No conscious thoughts. I could barely articulate 'Dad and Mom' let alone anything else. I was dancing, my father had been playing his lyre, and I spun round and round until I was dizzy, and fell. Mom fussed over me, she was always fussing over my dresses. Her need for everything to be pristine. I could feel the tension, though I don't remember that I would have called it that. Dad grabbed my coat. We must have been going somewhere. But I hated that coat. And then I just started screaming. A toddler tantrum. Pounding my fist on the carpet, just pure emotion, and the ice started, spreading out on the rug each time my fist hit it. I could feel the cold and it felt good. I wanted more of it."

Sister Tara nodded. "How did your parents react to that first display?"

"Mom was thrilled. She's Winterborn, too. Top of her field," Are said.

"Solid State Alchemy, right?"

"Yeah," Ari said. "Really good stuff. She'd been young on her first display, too. So I don't think she was really surprised."

"And your dad? How did he react?"

"I..." Ari paused. "I don't know. The memory ended before I could see how he reacted." That wasn't really the truth. Ari had left before she'd seen his reaction to her young display of power. She didn't want to see it.

Sister Tara nodded again. "Well, I think that's enough for now. It's almost time for Work rounds."

Ari stood up, stretching her muscles. She hadn't told Sister Tara about the Threadwalking. Only that she'd been having some trouble with connecting to the Threads of her own memories and needed some extra support in her practices. Sister Tara had been happy to offer some private tutoring sessions.

Ari sat and breathed in the aroma of the liquid brewing in her mug. Not quite tea, it was a special recipe crafted only in a remote monastery built into the side of a volcano - the rich soils allowed for the siblings of the monastery to grow rare plants that didn't grow anywhere else in the Realms, with magical and healing properties that were useful in Ari's work.

The siblings left regular offerings of the blend, and she rewarded them well for it.

Her mind drifted through the threads of memory.

She still hadn't found the right one.

She would though.

In the meantime, she enjoyed her steaming not-quite-tea and pondered the unfolding pattern of her current weaving.

Episode 5
Ari stared off into the distance.

She was standing on a cliff and all she could see was ocean.

Endless ocean.

She turned around and walked back to the monastery.

It was time for Work rounds and she was needed in the lab where the final step in the preparation of the brew was performed. She'd learned the techniques from her mother so many years ago that it felt like lifetimes.

Solid State Alchemy it had been called then, but terminology was constantly being updated as new theories came along and old ones were proven wrong.

She cared little for what it was called, only that it meant she could transform material components into states of matter those components would not ordinarily exist in, then in combining them with other similarly transformed ingredients, she could brew mixtures that weren't quite tea, but were ingested as such, and imbued the drinker with special effects and even in some of the rarer mixtures, special powers.

Ari opened her eyes.

She was back in her room in the War Abbey.

Alone.

That was not a Thread she'd ever seen before.

She was having a hard time feeling where in her personal timeline it was - obviously, it wasn't her past. She had no memory of that ever having happened. She'd clearly been in a monastery, but she wasn't at all familiar with which one as it looked like none of the ones she'd visited in her years of study.

Which meant it could only be a Thread of the Future.

But that didn't feel right, either.

Viewing Threads of the Future was fuzzy. It wasn't like visiting a memory, where'd you been there and could relive it again and again. Future Threads were tangled, thin, bits and pieces unresolved as choices had yet to be made.

This Thread, though, was as clear as any that she'd visited from her past - a number that far surpassed what other trainees in the Aleatoric Sorcery programs undertook. Visiting a Thread from her past was as easy as closing her eyes and thinking about it now. She had to take care not to Walk full into the Thread. To hold some of her consciousness back or she might influence the Threads of the Past and change her current reality, but she'd learned how to handle that over the last few years of working with Sister Tara.

But to see the future that clearly?

She'd been taught that the Threads of the Future were so fuzzy because the future wasn't fixed. As people in the present made different choices, the Threads of the Future would change. A skilled Aleatoric practitioner could tell which threads were more likely to become reality, and how to shift the probability of the various threads to lead to the desired outcome, but even in the most probable threads, there was still some fuzziness as there was no way to control all variables.

Even the gods had failed to do that.

But that Thread? Ari puzzled about it. It was her, she was certain of it. As with the Threads of her Memories, she had been consciously present - not quite in control, but there, in her future body, conscious of her own intentions. Or the intentions of her future self anyway.

She was making something powerful. A blend of enchanted plants using her mother's solid state alchemy techniques to change the properties.

She was making a Threadwalking brew.

But where was that monastery? She'd never heard of any like it before.

She had to find it.

Ari sat back down at her loom and looked over the current patterns of the weave.

"Yes," she said to herself, "that will work."

She began to weave a new set of threads into a previously empty spot of the tapestry she'd spent years working on.

It would take her time to connect it to the rest of the pattern, but time was something she had plenty of.

Episode 6
Ari stepped out of the chapel after leaving her offering to the Winter Crone, and was surprised to see Sabine there waiting for her.

"I didn't really know where else to find you, so I thought maybe I could find you here," Sabine said.

"Oh," Ari said, surprised that Sabine had sought her out at all. "How can I help you?"

"I need a friend," Sabine said.

Ari laughed. "You're a Springborn, your novice cohort has like 50 others you could be friends with." It came across more harshly than she intended, and she immediately regretted it when she saw Sabine flinch. Then was puzzled by her instinctive need to protect this complete stranger.

"I..." Sabine hesitated. "I'm not really all that interested in the sort of things most of them seem to be interested in," she said. "They're all focused on connecting to plants for healing, and I have..." Sabine paused for a brief moment, "other interests."

Ari laughed. "I get it. I wasn't really expected to even become a novice at all, let alone join this particular Abbey. I'm heading for lunch myself, would you like to join me?"

Sabine nodded her head vigorously. "I'd love to," she said.

Life at the Abbey was only loosely structured, and only certain parts of that structure were mandatory. Breakfast was one of those, but lunch was a have it when you have it sort of thing. Whoever was on kitchen duty for the day would be happy to serve whoever came in through the lunch period.

"Lunch is usually leftovers from last night's dinner," Ari chattered as they began walking towards the building where meals where held. "But it's always still really good. I'm a terrible cook so I never sign up for kitchen duty, but Lira is an Autumnborn and she is brilliant at hearth magic, so her lunches are divine. She's on the roster today, so it'll be delicious."

Ari shook her head and pulled herself back from the memory. She did miss Lira's cooking, but she couldn't risk hovering too close to those memories. She couldn't risk accidentally walking into herself and changing those bits of her reality.

The work bell chimed, ringing out over the entire grounds of the War Abbey, so she stood up, adjusted her robe, and headed to the alchemy lab where she was on the roster for production work. She'd applied for a research position, but didn't have the experience needed for that. Production shifts, though boring and repetitive, would give her more experience so she could try again for a research position the following year.

In the meantime, she readied herself for another afternoon of making potions and salves to supply the armies and intelligence agencies who were actively defending the land from invasion.

Ari wove a thread from the main design of the tapestry to the new bit she'd started working on. It would be easier if she'd used a mechanical loom, shuttle moving between the warp threads, but doing so would limit what patterns she could weave into her Great Work, so she worked in the ancient way, with the warp threads strung on a frame, and the weft threads woven by hand, bit by bit, moving to various parts of the tapestry as she decided what to fill the holes with.

This was not her first tapestry. She'd made many others. Not well, at first. But she'd mastered her craft years ago, and this piece she'd been working on for so long that she couldn't remember exactly how long it had been.

She began to fill in the background design around a motif she'd recently finished and let her thoughts drift once again through the memories of her long life.

Episode 7
Ari grinned as she walked back to her quarters. Lunch with Sabine had been lovely. Lira had made a wonderful spread of salad and sandwiches. She'd baked the bread that morning - Ari could smell more fresh bread baking when they'd entered the dining hall.

Sabine had shared a bit about her life until then, and what had made her decide to enter the Abbey of the Four Seasons and undertake the monastic life. It wasn't such an unusual choice for a Springborn. There were more of them than any of the other seasons at the monastery, but it hadn't been her first choice. She'd really been interested in alchemy, and the Abbey was not known for that at all. It was a devotional abbey, not a scholarly one, so research was informal - though many of the Siblings of the Abbey had their own little projects that they dabbled with.

"Why didn't you enter one of the Universities then?" Ari had asked her.

"Money," Sabine said.

Ari nodded. She understood. Universities were expensive, and most couldn't afford them. Ari had been to University - her mother's fame and her own test scores had earned her a spot and covered her tuition, but she'd been expelled and had decided to come to the Abbey for a fresh start.

"Expelled!" Sabine had declared with a bit of shock when Ari had casually mentioned that.

Ari blushed. "Yeah, long story. I have a bit of a temper and I accidentally froze something that shouldn't be frozen."

"A person?" Sabine whispered, her tone a mixture of horror and fascination.

"Part of a person," Ari shrugged. "No permanent damage, but it wasn't really my first offense and they were happy to be rid of me."

"Well," Sabine said, "I bet he deserved it."

Ari recalled the conversation over and over until she entered her room to find a complete stranger standing there.

"Who are you?" she said.

"I'm Sylvie. Your new roommate."

Ari blinked. She had not been told a roommate was coming. It was barely a week into Spring. Winter novices wouldn't start for months, and only Winter novices lived in this hall. Not to mention there were plenty of rooms still unoccupied given the small number of Winter novices who'd pledged the last few years - as tension rose at the border, more and more Winterborne had joined the Universities and Defense Department tracks of study.

"I know it's a weird time for me to start," Sylvie continued. "I was supposed to start with the last Winter cohort, but I had to delay."

"The Abbess Prime allowed that?" Ari said, distrustful.

Sylvie nodded. "It was her idea for me to pause my entry to deal with... things."

Ari didn't know what to say, so she turned and ran towards the Abbess Prime's office. This had to be a mistake. She'd been promised solitary quarters - she still didn't have proper control of her emotions and she didn't want to hurt anyone.

Ari walked across the courtyard of the War Abbey towards the alchemy lab.

"Hello, Ari," a familiar voice said.

She stopped and turned.

"Sylvie," Ari said. "What are you doing here?"

"I have a message," Sylvie said.

Ari hadn't seen Sylvie in years. Not since she'd left the Abbey of Four Seasons. Not since...

She shook her head. She didn't dare think about that. Every time she tried, she started to Slip, and reliving that was torture.

"What message?" Ari said, wondering what could be so important that the Assistant to the Defense Secretary would deliver her a message personally.

"It's a warning, Ari. I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't tell you this, but I owe you. They know you're a Threadwalker. There's rumors in the Department they're making plans to move against you."

"What are you talking about?" Ari said. "I'm doing what I was assigned to do. Train my latent aleatoric skills for the war effort."

"They think you're The World Weaver, Ari," Sylvie said. "And they'll do anything to stop you."

Ari tilted her head just before she heard the knock on the door.

Just in time.

She stood up from her loom, stretched, and walked across the room to an old oak door - a piece of a monastery that had been bombed during one of the many invasions and occupations the land had endured.

Opening the door, she smiled.

Standing there was an old woman. Scars criss-crossed her face from years of battle. Burns that had healed wrong. Cuts that had been stitched badly.

"Sylvie," Ari said. "I've been expecting you."

Episode 8
Ari stalked back to the residential hall where her suite was located.

The Abbess Prime had confirmed that Sylvie was indeed her new roommate, as she felt they'd be able to help each other in their studies.

Ari had argued that she didn't need help, but when the rug at her feet had started to ice over, she lost the argument.

"Sylvie is Winterborn with exquisite control of her abilities," the Abbess Prime had told her. "You will do well to be in her presence so that you can learn from her. And she could definitely benefit from some of your more creative ways of working with the ice. Her control makes her more rigid than is generally helpful. I wouldn't put you together if I didn't think it wouldn't benefit the both of you. You'll be fine."

Ari didn't want to be fine.

She wanted to be alone to practice visiting the Threads.

She approached the door to her room and took a deep breath before entering. She knew that being a member of The Abbey of Four Seasons came with a commitment to obey the orders of the Abbess. Even when one was unhappy with those orders. The only exception being illegal orders, but much to Ari's annoyance, a new roommate was completely expected for most. She'd only been able to go without because The Winter Abbey never attracted many novices.

Ari stared at Sylvie in shock. "What do you mean?" she said. "You're not buying into that nonsense are you? It's followed me my whole life."

"I know," Sylvie said. "That's why I'm here to warn you. I know you lost your dad to the cult, and you need to know the cult has penetrated the highest levels of authority. They believe in the prophecy, and they believe it's about you."

Ari spat on ground at the mention of her father. "I didn't lose him to the cult. He's the fucking leader of it."

Sylvie stared at her, stunned.

"I'm not the World Weaver, Sylvie," Ari said. "You have to convince them I'm not the World Weaver."

"I've tried, Ari," Sylvie said. "I've tried. But they want you gone."

"What do you mean they want me gone?"

"Dead, Ari. They want you dead."

Ari was stunned. She didn't know what to think. She had done everything they'd asked her to do. Sure, she'd been practicing visiting the Threads for years, but she'd always been so careful. There was no way they could suspect what she was doing, let alone be so certain of it that it would warrant her death. She hadn't even made any unsanctioned changes to the Threads. She was still looking for the right one.

Ari invited Sylvie into her home, pointing to the table near her loom.

"How do you know my name?" Sylvie said to her.

"I have known you for many years, Sylvie," Ari said. "You just don't remember it. Yet."

Sylvie's eyes widened. "So you'll help me change my fate?" she asked.

Ari nodded. "I already have," she responded, handing Sylvie a cup of the tea. "You just have to accept it. Sit here, sip this tea, have some of the cookies," Ari pointed to a plate on the table, "and when you step through that door again, you'll find yourself faced with making a different choice than one you already made, with the opportunity to live your life again in a new way."

Sylvie wasn't sure what to believe. But she knew what decision she wanted to change. One made decades ago, before the War came, before everything went so very wrong.