[Visiting the great Halls of Destiny only to discover that "Destiny" isn't all that it's cracked up to be.]

Dimos shielded their eyes against the golden sunlight as they squinted up at the tall towers before them. Everything appeared to be made from white, fluffy cloud-stuff, from the ground they were walking on up to the onion-shaped domes topping the tallest towers. Beside them, Tibba bounced lightly on their toes, finding the ground surprisingly springy.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Tibba asked. "I always imagined that destiny would be a little... you know, firm?"

"Well, it's certainly got that whole 'Celestial' vibe going for it, so either we're in the right place or we landed in a different magical sky-realm. Come on, let's find someone in charge and find out."

Tibba couldn't help but be in awe as he walked across the clouds towards the majestic palace in the clouds. He felt so small beneath those grand billowing towers, walking under archways sized for giants. The grandeur of the palace put even the mighty Atlatl trees of his homeland to shame - even the Lord of the Forest would have been dwarfed by several of the more modest towers.  As he tried not to stare he realized that the palace was slowly changing its shape just like a real cloud, too slow to notice while you watched but obvious when you looked away then looked back.

"What kind of person would even live here?" Tibba wondered aloud. Were the scribes who wrote destiny themselves giants? Would they even notice two creatures as small as himself and Dimos, let alone entertain answering any of their questions about the future?

Dimos pointed at the palace's grand double-doors. "Something like that?"

The doors were slightly ajar, and a figure was... well, billowing out, was the best word that Tibba could think of. Puffs of cloud that drifted out from between the open doors that just sort of coalesced into a vaguely bipedal form. It seemed to turn its head towards them, even though it had no discernible facial features. A low sound, like distant thunder, rolled over them, and Tibba realized that the literal cloud-giant was speaking to them.

"Groundlings!" the figure proclaimed. "What brings you to the illustrious Halls of Destiny?"

"Well, that answers your first question," Dimos muttered, picking up his pace to pull in front of Tibba and waving at the cloudy giant. "And brightest salutations to you as well, o esteemed and luminous host! My travelling companion and I are seeking wisdom and guidance, so decided to drop in while we're in the neighbourhood."

Tibba shot a glare at Dimos when the Tssrrn slipped into such informal language, but if it bothered their host they didn't show it. Possibly couldn't show it, what with the lack of a face and all. But either way, some decorum was surely in order here.

Even though Tibba didn't completely understand the thunder-like reply, the cloud figure beckoned at them to enter as it gradually drifted piece-by-piece back into the palace that it had just come from. Taking heart form the fact that they hadn't been smote by lightning for impudence, Tibba picked up his pace to keep up with Dimos as they jogged across the white, fluffy courtyard.

Tibba had to quickly shield his eyes with his arm while his vision adjusted when they stepped into the palace. Where the exterior was all white and puffy, like a lazy fortress of cloud drifting by on a summer day, the interior was lit up like a glorious sunset. The floor was a bright, dusty pink; columns and furniture reflected blindingly golden sunlight. The walls of the room faded through all the colours of the spectrum, just like the sunrises and sunsets that he'd been able to experience  since leaving the jungle.

As Tibba's eyesight adjusted to the light, he realized that they were being guided to some sort of grand celestial library. Shelves of every size lined the walls and jutted into the room at odd angles, crammed full of scrolls, books, and anything else that could be written on - Tibba could have sworn that some of the items on the highest shelves looked like stone tablets. Between the maze of shelves were countless desks, most of them piled high with stacks of loose pages or partially-unravelled scrolls, and all of them had a cloud-figure hunched over them, writing.  Across the room, two smaller clouds stood around the same desk, apparently laughing. Tibba wasn't quite sure what they were saying - he thought he heard, "Quick! Write that down!" - but these hallowed halls couldn't possibly be home to the kind of silly pranks that brought to mind. Right?

Their guide turned to face them when they reached the centre of the great library hall. "Behold, mortals!" they rumbled. "The Great Halls of Destiny! Within these walls, temporal creatures such as yourselves are permitted a glimpse into What Is Written, once per lifetime. Is this truly what you seek?"

Tibba and Dimos exchanged a look. The look Dimos gave had that, 'This is your quest' vibe that Tibba was starting to get to know all too well. He cleared his throat.

"Um... Yes? See, I'm trying to save my homeland from everything dying, but I have no idea how to do it, so I was hoping that maybe, by seeing some hints of the future, we'd know where to go and what to do when we get there?"

The giant cloud figure leaned down to regard Tibba face-to-face. Tibba shrank back a half-step as it regarded him, suddenly very aware of just how large these creatures were. If it rested its chin on the floor, Tibba wouldn't even be able to reach up to tickle where its nose should be.

He forced himself to swallow his nervous thoughts. "...I-if that's alright with you?"

"Hmmmmmm..." their guide rumbled. "Let us find What Is Written about you."

The cloud giant waved its hand past Tibba. Tibba closed his eyes and flinched as the hand approached, but other than a cool dampness he didn't feel anything. The giant broke apart into multiple wisps of cloud that all moved in different directions to scan the seemingly-infinite shelves.

"Well, that was easier than I expected," Dimos said as they looked around the room.

"Yeah... Almost too easy," Tibba agreed.

"Says he who got to sit back and watch while someone else cast the spell," Dimos grinned, giving Tibba a small poke in the side. "So what kind of destiny do you think you've got? I'm guessing one of those big ol' golden scrolls."

Tibba frowned at being poked, then looked up and pointed. "Maybe one of those books? Some of those remind me of the leatherwork that we do back home."

The light in the palace was beginning to fade, like sunset fading into night, but with somebody to talk to Tibba didn't feel nearly as scared or alone as he knew he would be if he were here alone.  Finally, the scattered clouds drifted back to the centre of the room as their host re-formed.

"Did you find his destiny?" Dimos asked, grinning widely as they rubbed their hands together.

"Indeed," rumbled their guide.

A moment of silence hung in the air.

"...Well? Aren't you going to give it to him?"

Their guide seemed to hesitate briefly before answering. "Are you sure you wish to read the contents of your Destiny? The revealed truths can be quite unsettling, and once known there is no returning to a time of ignorance."

Tibba looked to Dimos for support. Dimos gave an encouraging little nod of his head. Tibba took a deep breath.

"I'm sure," he said. "I... If it helps save my home, I'm ready for it."

The cloud giant nodded. "Very well."

It leaned down, resting its impossibly large hand on the floor in front of Tibba. When it stood up again, a single scrap of paper laid on the floor at his feet.

"That's it?!" Dimos squawked.

Tibba slowly bent down to pick up the paper. His lips moved as he quietly read the words to himself.

Their guide turned to face Dimos. "I am sorry, but not every mortal sparks the imaginations of the Writers of Destiny. If it is any consolation, take heart in the fact that What is Not Written is still open to change."

Tibba scowled and started to crumple up the page before catching himself. He forced himself to calm down, to smooth out the page and tuck it neatly in a pouch pocket. "Well, that was..." He looked around the room one more time, taking in all of the shiny golden futures and destinies on display that were not his. He forced himself to take a breath, to try and swallow the bitter sting that was all that remained of his pride. "Thank-you, I guess. Come on, let's go."

Tibba turned to lead the two of them out of the great library of Destiny. Dimos had to jog for the first few steps in order to keep up.

"How bad is it? I mean - you don't have to share if you don't want to, of course, and I'd be a hypocrite in the extreme if I tried to make anyone else share their-" Dimos cut himself off as Tibba wordlessly shoved the scrap of paper at them without even looking their way.  Dimos tried to be as careful as they could with the crumpled paper as they opened it while keeping up with their companion.

"...Inspires Maxtara to write their book," Dimos read aloud, then held the paper at an angle to try and catch more of the fading light. Turned the paper over.  Held it closer to their eyes and squinted. "Well, they certainly poured it full of the soul of Wit, I'll give them that."

Tibba whipped around and pointed a claw right at Dimos' nose. "It's not funny! What happens to my home? My friends? My people? Does none of it matter?? Or am I just doomed to fail and somebody else has to clean up the mess?"

Dimos' crests drooped as they frowned, then flashed yellow and stood upright again. "So let's fix it!" Dimos grinned and ran toward the nearest vacant writing desk.

"What-? Wait! What are you doing?!" Tibba yelled as he chased after them. He caught up to Dimos when then Tssrnn had managed to climb nearly halfway up the side of the desk. "Are you trying to get us killed?! Or... or worse?!"

"Oh, relax. If they didn't want visitors after hours they would have escorted us out properly, right? Here, do the rope-thing again and help me up."

Dimos used their tail to fish the rope out of their pack and toss one end to Tibba. The Ghishveldi frowned as he caught it. Anger and frustration at being treated as barely a footnote in somebody else's story wrestled with curiousity and his desire to strike back at Fate.

Tibba tightend his grip on the rope. The vertical sides of the solid-cloud desk were no match for the Ghishveldi's climbing claws and a lifetime lived in the upper canopy, and before long he was pulling Dimos up onto the top of the desk.

"All right, now what?" Tibba asked. He looked around. The desk was very neatly organized, with everything put away. A jar as tall as he was housed a small set of pens, and a stack of papers large enough to fold a house out of was pushed to one side. Otherwise, the desk was devoid of any clutter, and Tibba was suddenly aware of how exposed they were up here.

"Now..." Dimos rubbed his hands together as he scanned the work surface. "Help me get one of those pens out of there, will ya?"

Tibba and Dimos climbed up the side of the jar and tried to lift one of the pens out of the jar. Despite how it towered over them, it was surprisingly light. They had to shift their grip several times to lift it high enough to clear the edge of the jar, but it didn't take long before they could tip it over and let go to let it fall onto the desk.

"All right, now what?" Tibba asked.

"Good question," Dimos replied as they hopped off the rim and rolled to their feet once they hit the desk. "This was a much simpler plan before scale became an issue..."

Tibba jumped and spread his wing-flaps to glide down and land next to Dimos. He walked down to the business end of the pen and leaned in to take a look.

"I think maybe we can take the nib off and just use that?" Tibba prodded the pen to try and see if it would unscrew, then jumped back when it deformed at his touch. He poked at it again more gingerly, watching it squish and bounce back into shape. He gripped the part of the pen where the nib was attached to the barrel, wrapping both hands around it, squeezed, and pulled. After a moment of resistance, the nib suddenly came loose and Tibba tumbled backwards to land heavily on the base of his tail.

"Ow."

Dimos hurried over and offered Tibba a hand up. "You alright, kid?"

Tibba let Dimos help haul him to his feet as he rubbed his back with his other hand. "Yeah. Lucky it was a soft landing, more surprised than anything. So now what?"

"Now we..." Dimos said, rubbing their hands together before picking up the part of the pen that Tibba had pulled off. It was still impractically large, and was slowly dripping ink. Dimos Hmmmm'd as they prodded it, then crumpled it up into a rough cylinder. The pen nib only partially bounced back to its original shape.

Dimos grinned. "Alright, I think I've got an idea. Let's see if this works."  They put the nib on the desk and started rolling it out, like a kid rolling snakes out of a blob of clay. Once he had part of it rolled down closer to the width of a normal pen, Dimos whipped out his tail-blade to chop a chunk off, pinched the back end to seal it up again, then spun their newly-created pen between their half-webbed fingers. "Ta-da! And finally..."

Dimos unfolded Tibba's scrap of Destiny and quickly scrawled something beneath the original ornate lettering. "Here y'go, kid! One red-hot Destiny, straight from desk of the number-one clairvoyants in all the realms!"

"...'By saving his jungle before the trees died'," Tibba read aloud. He looked up at his companion, who had a huge grin on their face as they fidgeted with their new pen, and couldn't help but smile a little in return. "Thanks, but... I don't think it exactly counts."

"Why not? Is it not Written in the Halls of Destiny?" Dimos asked, doing their best to impersonate the booming voice of their cloud-guide. They tossed the pen into their pack and threw their arm around Tibba's shoulders. "Listen, kid. Like I tried to say before we came here, 'Fate' and 'Destiny'... We're better off writing our own, don't you think? So what that you and your homeland hasn't mattered to a bunch of thunderheads with their snoots stuck in the clouds? It doesn't need their dumb poetry to exist! Besides, it matters to you, doesn't it? And your people back home? And don't forget me," Dimos pointed at himself with their thumb. "I get to have a say in whether the sixth best place in the world goes ka-poof or not, don't I? Besides, we're adventure-buddies now! We're gonna see this through to its happy end together, right?"

Tibba choked back a reaction that was a mix of laughter and tears as he leaned on Dimos for support. "I thought said we made your top five?"

"Well, y'know, Frollop does have a way of growing on you..."

Tibba laughed as he playfully shoved Dimos away from him. "You're unbelievable, you know that?"

"Maybe. Hey, if seeing is believing, is the reverse of that true as well? So does that mean I'm invisible now?"

Tibba covered his mouth to keep from laughing as he walked to the edge of the desk. "Would make you nicer to look at, at least. C'mon, Dimos, let's get out of here."

"Did you say Dimos?" rumbled one of the last cloud-scribes as it drifted past on its way out of the hall. It moved closer and waved a vaguely hand-shaped wisp of itself over them. Tibba scowled and tried to shake off the uncomfortably cool droplets of condensation that it left behind.

If the reaction was considered rude, the scribe didn't seem to care. If anything, it brightened slightly. "Hey, everyone! Dimos is back!"

"Back?" Tibba hissed quietly, shooting Dimos a sharp glare.

"Yeah, a funny story there. But how did you think I knew how to cast that spell to get us here? I was hoping they wouldn't recognize me, but..."

"Really? Dimos is back? Don't let him leave, let me get..."

"The Dimos? The one who-?"

"Wait, Dimos is a real person? I thought you just made that up!"

Dimos put a hand on Tibba's back and leaned in close to whisper urgently in his ear. "Okay, no time to explain, but you do know how to Banish yourself to get back home in case we get separated, right?"

Tibba blanched. "What?! No! Why would I -?"

They were interrupted by a wall of cloud that fell between that was somehow strong enough to push them apart.

Dimos looked up at the cloud-beings that loomed over them. Their forms were fuzzy and somewhat indistinct, which made it hard for Tibba to tell where one ended and the next began, but he guessed that they were surrounded by four or five of the giants.

"Dimos!" one boomed as a trio of scrolls clattered onto the ground. "Take a look at what I wrote about you!"

By the look on Dimos' face and the pale green hue of their crests, Tibba guessed that this wasn't exactly the reaction that Dimos had expected.

A different giant hand swept the scrolls away and dropped an enormous leather-bound notebook in their place. "That's nothing! I wrote an entire epic poem about the time you go across the sea to meet-"

"LA LA LA LA!" Dimos yelled as they clamped their hands over their ears. "NO! NO SPOILERS! CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"Can you at least tell me what you think of this picture I made of you facing off against the bugblatter beast?" asked a third one that was trying to find a way to prop up a carved stone tablet using the materials on the desk.

"EVERYBODY! STOP IT!" Tibba screamed. He panted heavily as the room suddenly went quiet again. Four - five? - cloud giants all turned their featureless heads to stare at him.  Tibba thought he saw lightning flicker inside one of them. He gulped, but his resolve hardened again when he glanced down at the miserable scrap of paper that he still held in his hand.

Tibba gestured at Dimos as he stared down the giants. "What's the big idea, huh? Why do they get all... all this, when I'm the one..."

"Hey, kid," Dimos said as he gently placed a hand on Tibba's shoulder.

The cloud giants rumbled amongst themselves for a moment. Tibba was pretty sure that they were going to be smote on the spot by lightning, or just swatted like bugs any second now. But standing in the centre of a whirling mix of fear, anger and hopelessness, Tibba found himself on a strange island of calm. "Is this an interesting enough way to die for you?"

"Kid, I'm sorry, I should've told you I'd been here before. See, the last time-"

One of the clouds leaned down to face them. "Dimos showed up with a bunch of other little blue lizards, but do you know what he did?"

Dimos opened his mouth and took a breath, but was cut off before he could respond.

"Nothing!" the giant yelled. "Can you believe it? A landbound, temporal being who did not seek their fortune here?"

"Yeah! I got to keep that one on my desk all afternoon while the others read and discussed theirs!"

"Yeah, and then we both nearly got fried by the head honcho when we were caught," Dimos snapped back before looking more carefully at the assembled giants. "I thought for sure I was persona non grata 'round here after that."

A rumble passed through the giants that Tibba thought sounded almost like laughter. "The Dean is always like that. You get used to them," one said.

"And you are my favourite mortal to write about! If not for you, I would never have discovered how much better it is to write about beings that one has actually met! Are you sure you will not read any? Not even the one that includes the one-eyed star goat?"

"That one is my favourite," a giant on their right added.

"This is, uh, really unexpected," Dimos answered. "But you already know what I'm gonna say. I'm not the type to peek at the end of the story to see how it ends, and if you've been getting all inspired by me then you know I'm not going to make an exception now, right?"

The cloud giants seemed to slump, looking almost dejected.

"Hey, look. Tell you what. Let's make a deal," Dimos said, hopping across the desk to the pile of blank papers. He whipped out the cloud pen and quickly scribbled out a short note.  "There! All signed, sealed and official-like, right? One destined promise from me to you, and in exchange you can escort us out past that Dean fellow so that we don't get into any more trouble. Deal?"

A hand swept down to pick up the sheet of paper and hold it close to one of the featureless faces. Tibba got the distinct impression that it was squinting at the page. "What does it say?"

"Says that the day before I die, poof! I somehow land in here, and I'll get to spend my last hours going over all these stories of my life with you. Sound good?"

The giants seemed to consider for a moment.

"I am not sure that something like this has ever happened before. We accept. Now come, let us return you to your home existence."

"Perfect, thanks," Dimos said. They hopped up onto a giant hand that formed on the table and held out his own to help Tibba up onto it. "You ready to go home, kid?"

Tibba sighed. "Yeah..."

"Everything alright?" Dimos asked as they were lifted up into the air as the giants started to drift toward the exit.

"It's just...  Why do you get... everything and I just get..." Tibba's voice hitched as his fist tightened around his worthless scrap of paper.

"Hey, trust me, if I had any idea how all this works, I'd tell you! But look. Apparently it's people that catch their interest that get a bunch of words wasted on them, right? So now that you're known, maybe that'll be you too." Dimos looked up. "You will write something nice about the kid here now that you know him, right?"

"Hmmm? Oh, sure," the cloud rumbled. "And we have arrived at your place of departure. Do not forget your promise!"

A wall of fog descended on them.

"Hey! I'm serious! You'd better give him a five-gold-star top-notch cookie of fortune before-"

The fog rolled back, revealing the bustling markets of Constansa, not too far from the basement where Dimos had cast their portal spell.

"Huh. Well, I'm out of ideas. What do you say?"

Tibba carefully unfolded the piece of paper he still had clutched in his hand. His one, useless Truth in all of this madness.

The fortune had no more ideas, either.