Winter break was almost over, Miranda thought. Back to school, soon enough. She was worried... about classes, about friends, about Mariah. Mostly Mariah. She was looking forward to seeing her friends again. To seeing Mariah. At the same time, she was going to miss Glimmerbrook. Miss the creaky old house, with its smell of herbs and old wood, its cold drafts and warm fireplace, mom's music and Gwen's strange ramblings, the whispers of the family ghosts and the meows of Gwen's cat, Cally.
With the discipline of long practice, she set each of those things aside... her worries, her longings, the voices of her mothers, the sounds of the old house, the weight of her own body.
Like Gwen had taught her, she set everything aside and drifted, floating in dark, peaceful silence.
As happened more and more now, the quiet of meditation wasn't empty. She imagined she saw, spread out around her, glittering threads shifting and moving the silence.
She dreamed of them sometimes... dreamed that Gwen spun those threads into being, that Gwen's mother measured each thread and her grandmother cut them, each to its own proper length. The three of them together would gather those glittering threads and weave them together into a pattern so complex and beautiful she wept to see it. Other times, Miranda had dreamed that she was the one who spun the threads, her own mother who measured them and Gwen who cut them. That they gathered and wove the threads.
Floating in silence, she looked at the threads closest to her, saw them come together into patterns.
Aadi sang and danced, laughing with a woman made of ice and secrets.
Genie, dressed all in white, wandered through a garden of bones while ashes and blood fell all around her.
Mariah, surrounded by darkness and fear, walked resolutely into danger.
All the threads, the little patterns of her friends and countless others, rushed together toward a Moment.
At the last, before the Moment fully took shape, Miranda looked away. 
------------------
"You talk about fate and choices," Miranda said later, sitting in the window-seat with Gwen. "How can you have both? How can we have choices but foresee inescapable fate?"
"Our choices shape our fate," Gwen replied. "Our fate shapes our choices."
"Perfect," Miranda sighed.
"The choices that we make are grounded in, and constrained by, our circumstances," Gwen continued. "Our circumstances are created by the choices that have come before... our choices and the choices of all the others who came before and all those who are now."
"Then how can I see something that hasn't happened yet," Miranda asked, "and know that it will happen? Couldn't someone make a choice that prevents it? Can't it be changed?"
Gwen considered carefully before answering. "Sometimes, all roads lead to the same place. All choices come together into a single, inescapable, Moment. Sometimes, we can see such Moments."
"What good is that?!" Miranda demanded. "If we can't change it, can't prevent it, what good does it do us to know about it? Is it just a curse?"
"A Moment cannot be changed," Gwen said, "but the choices made to reach a Moment influence what choices we can make after."
"The night Vlad attacked us, years ago, that was a Moment you foresaw," Miranda said.
"Yes," Gwen agreed.
"You didn't warn us," Miranda said.
"Most people will try to prevent a Moment they don't like," Gwen said, "but a Moment cannot be prevented and trying will only further limit your choices."
"It just makes things worse," Miranda said.
"Most often," Gwen agreed, "A Moment cannot be changed, but it can be prepared for."
"So you prepared for it," Miranda nodded.
Gwen nodded.
So, I'll be prepared, Miranda thought.
