Keith Windham did not believe in fate--but, as he looked at the buttons laying upon his dressing table, they shimmered in the red evening sun, and seemed to spell out a message in sparks of gold thread. That night, he dreamt of things both strange and familiar, and somehow meaningful: deep water and feathers, mountains and infinite skies, all their shades twisting and merging together naturally--yes, like the true colours of fate. When he woke up, the dream still held him, like a friendly hand, like a gentle tide, and in the early morning, left upon him a memory of blue, of red--a thread of one colour, a thread of another.