The First Fate: “The birds! The birds! I seemed to hear the night birds twittering to bring in the dawn.”
The Second Fate: “The birds do not bring in the dawn. The dawn comes.”
The First Fate: “But always and always before the day, we hear these voices.”
The Third Fate: “World after world threads its time through our loom. We watch the pattern grow. Days and eras and ages pass. We know nothing of meanings. We only weave. We know that the pattern brightens as new days come and always voices in the dark tell us of the changing pattern of a new day.”
The First Fate: “But the birds–the birds! I seem to hear the night birds’ voices that make the dawn.”
The Second Fate: “They are not birds calling, but the whistle of shot and shell and the shrill, far cries of man in air. But still I say the dawn comes, the voices do not bring it.”
The Third Fate: “We do not know how the awakening voices in the dark know that the light is coming. We do not know what power moves the loom. We do not know who dreams the pattern. We only weave and muse and listen for the voices of change as a world threads its events through the woof of time on our loom.”
The stage is dark. The weavers weave time into circumstances and in the blackness the world moves on. Slowly it grays. A thousand voices rise. Then circumstance begins to run brightly on the loom, and a million voices join in the din of the dawn. The loom goes. The weavers fade. The light in the world pales the thread of time and the whirl of the earth no longer is seen. But instead we see only a town. Half of it shines in the morning sun–half of it hides in the smoke. In the sun on the street is a man.