Laima (LAI-mah)

From the moment a cry pierces the veil of the mortal world, **Laima is there**, fingers warm with the spin of potential. She is the first of the Fate Triad, the One Who Begins — not merely the spinner of thread, but the one who senses its color, its tension, its weight. Her presence lingers in the scent of amniotic water, the beat of a mother’s heart, the hush before a first breath. Though mortals pray to her for luck or mercy, it is not in her nature to alter — only to shape what *must be* into what *may become*. Her face has been glimpsed in many lands: as **Clotho** of Greece, **Urðr** beneath Yggdrasil, the Egyptian **Renenutet** who watched over births with nourishment and name.   Among her Baltic children, Laima walks beside women in childbirth, whispering to the midwife’s hands. Her judgments are quiet but unflinching: she does not choose as a tyrant, but as a weaver with too many threads already in motion. In older stories, she was not alone — sometimes seen accompanied by her sisters Dēkla and Kārta, sometimes said to be three faces of herself. In later whispers, it was even claimed that not even the gods could change a fate once Laima had spoken it. Her loom is not of wood or bone, but of breath, memory, and possibility.   Laima does not speak often, but when she does, her words stick like honey in the soul. A name she utters may rise to greatness or fall beneath a curse. Unlike her sisters, she is *called upon* — for luck in war, for ease in labor, for success in marriage. But calling her is not summoning; it is surrender. Those who beg for Laima’s favor do not seek control, but clarity — for Laima’s gift is not always a blessing, but always a revelation. Her face is reflected in the river priestesses of the Vistula, the desert scribes who mark a child’s first horoscope, and the inked hands of wise women who read palms as if they were maps drawn by Laima herself.   And still, she walks — unseen yet present, even in lands where her name is long forgotten. She is the curve of a newborn's fingers. The tremble before an oath. The moment in a story when a hero first chooses. Her thread runs through it all, and no matter what form she takes — be it goddess, whisper, star, or chance — she remains Laima, the Beginning.