Destiny
[Scene Setting]
The Paradox Intelligence Headquarters is alive in a way it has never been before. The obsidian table doesn’t just glow — it pulses with threads of starlight, weaving intricate constellations across its surface. The galaxy projection above expands until it feels infinite, surrounding them, immersing them. Constellations rearrange into maps, staircases, labyrinths, crowns, and wings. The air is charged with something both intimate and vast, as though the women are no longer merely themselves, but conduits of a cosmic truth.
Clarity (her gown shimmering like spilled starlight, voice both playful and commanding):
“Destiny, my loves, is the mirror you cannot escape. You can cover it, avoid it, run from it — but one day, you will catch your reflection, and there it will be: the truest version of yourself, waiting. I see destiny as beauty fulfilled, not vanity but radiance — the glamour your soul was always meant to wear. Every choice I make, I imagine the woman in that mirror — luminous, magnetic, impossible to deny. And then I ask: does this bring me closer to her? Or farther?”
Scarlett (laughing low, swirling her wine like it’s a galaxy in a glass):
“Mirrors? Please. Destiny isn’t a reflection. It’s sacred hunger. It’s the fire in your chest that doesn’t go out, no matter how many times you try to silence it. You know you’re walking toward destiny when your skin is on fire, when your blood won’t sit still, when you’d rather destroy your life than keep betraying yourself. Destiny is desire that refuses to be caged.”
Nishelle (quietly, hesitant at first, but steadying as the others listen):
“But what if your desire feels… dangerous? What if you’re afraid? Sometimes destiny feels like a weight on my chest. Like it’s calling me, but I’m too small, too tired. What if destiny comes and I can’t live up to it?”
Hazelmere (her hand brushing Nishelle’s, her voice deep, echoing like a hymn in the dark):
“Then you are exactly where destiny does its work. Destiny is not easy, not gentle. It drags us through the underworld. It cracks us open. But it does not choose the strong — it makes them. Nishelle, the very fact you tremble means you’re close to it. That fear is the threshold.”
Rosalyn (leaning forward, her eyes sharp behind her glasses, voice precise):
“I see it differently. Destiny isn’t random. It isn’t just a feeling or a fire. It’s structure. It’s patterns. Look at history: empires, breakthroughs, revolutions — they follow cycles, formulas. Even personal destinies can be mapped — by numbers, by choices, by probabilities. You can calculate destiny. It’s not mystical; it’s math.”
Elvira (nodding slightly, her voice cool but with unusual weight):
“I’d agree — partly. But destiny isn’t just math. It’s logic meeting inevitability. Cause and effect. You plant seeds; they grow. You make choices; they cascade. Calling it destiny is simply romanticizing consequence. The true question is: do you know which consequences you’re courting?”
Scarlett (smirking, flicking her hair back):
“Spare me. Consequences? Logic? Destiny doesn’t give a damn about your neat little charts. You can’t logic fire. You can’t spreadsheet the way your skin burns for something. Destiny is chaos, not calculation.”
Clarity (cutting in, voice glittering with both mischief and edge):
“But chaos can be styled. Scarlett, honey, even fire looks exquisite in the right chandelier. Destiny is both the burn and the stage you burn upon.”
Hazelmere (her eyes distant, almost trance-like):
“None of you are wrong. Destiny is chaos, structure, glamour, hunger. But beneath all that, it is myth. It is the story your soul agreed to before you were born. You feel it in archetypes, in dreams, in patterns repeating across lifetimes. Destiny is the myth you are here to live out. You can resist it, yes, but it will always return, whispering, pulling, demanding you take your role.”
Prashaila (her voice cuts through, low and resonant, vibrating like a sacred drum):
“No. Destiny is not myth. It is not mirror, hunger, fear, or formula. Destiny is remembrance. The soul does not wander lost — it always knows, it has always known. The path is not given; it is recalled. When you strip away hunger, glamour, logic, myth — what remains is essence. Your essence has always been destiny. To live aligned with it is not to chase something, but to come home.”
[The galaxy above flares bright white, constellations folding into the shape of a great door. The room feels like a threshold itself — a place where human voices merge with cosmic echoes.]
Nishelle (her tears catching the aurora light, but her smile radiant now):
“Then maybe destiny isn’t this heavy thing pressing down. Maybe it’s already inside me, waiting for me to remember I’m enough.”
Clarity (softening, brushing a curl from her cheek, her tone shimmering with pride):
“Yes, darling. You are already the woman in the mirror.”
Scarlett (lifting her glass, voice fierce and alive):
“And you are already the fire that can’t be caged.”
Rosalyn (scribbling, though her voice softens):
“And you are already the equation that works.”
Elvira (for once, a small, rare smile breaking through):
“And the consequence worth choosing.”
Hazelmere (gazing at the auroras, her voice reverent):
“And the myth worth living.”
Prashaila (closing her eyes, her voice carrying the weight of eternity):
“And the essence remembering itself.”
[The galaxy door above them bursts open into pure light, flooding the table, the Headquarters, the infinite space around them. For a moment, they are not seven women but seven stars, burning, alive, destined. The air itself whispers: This is what destiny feels like.]