1: SPIDER WAVES V.1

The new vibrations were worrying.

In her 25 years, give or take, she thought she’d learned every note of the world’s song. It was repetitive, routine, three giant squishy children singing while she listened through a claw touched to the side of her tank, only occasionally punctuated by a low rumble from other parts of the building on a frequency the children either couldn’t hear or were growing strong enough to ignore.

They’re becoming adults. I can feel it.

Her eight eyes caught the movement of the older brother, the dancing one, as he waved his siblings out of the room. When did he become so tall? Sometime around when her world shrank to the size of this rectangular box, where she was increasingly ignored, the memories of their childhood home fading.

The door closed and only the dancing one remained. He reached down with his upper appendages and scraped the bright red exoskeleton off of one of his feet. She held back a wince as he tugged hard on the second one, and finally out popped his squishy lower claws, tender and pale.

It took her a moment to register what was happening, because she didn’t want to believe it. But the conclusion was inescapable as she coordinated the information from her many eyes with the vibrations of the chunk of foot-shaped exoskeleton rolling across the floor and coming to rest at the base of the shelves that held the animal habitats.

He cannot be molting so soon! Am I a fool to hope he lives?

She tried not to get too attached to the males.

A gentle tap brought her attention to the snake in the next tank over, and she sensed him touch his nose against the glass.

It had been happening more often as of late, that the snake pointedly made it clear that it was paying attention to her, as if it could tell she was in a mood. She answered with a flick of her leg, knowing that anything less subtle would only lead to him more insistently trying to get her attention.

She could sense his every motion even while facing away. Even from across the room, when necessary. They had worked together for years now, taking care of the three squishy children and helping them grow, and so the snake had become part of her web. She did not need to look at him to hear his song.

Snake, on the other hand, was direct as a thrown brick, pointing his entire body and face toward the target of his focus. When the siblings played, he moved his head swiftly back and forth between them, hissing and spitting. He was so different from her, who felt the world from a point of stillness.

The siblings did not treat her as a playmate, but more as a therapist. They were content to let her gently listen to them, to their heartbeats and breathing and occasional song, as she stood idly on their face or neck.

Perhaps those days are not over. Keep beating, strange squishy heart.

The dancing sibling continued his molt as she silently rooted him on. Her back eyes caught the motion of the snake turning pointedly toward the molting man, also watching, as if he understood the gravity of the moment.

Maybe the squishy one was more like a snake. The snake seemed to have molted into adulthood without dying from getting his molt stuck on his own reproductive organs.

Wishful thinking. Snake is a simple creature. The squishy one is more like me.

Male tarantulas did not often survive the first molt of their true adulthood. Still, she knew there was some small chance of survival, at least the first time. And so she hoped beyond hope that he would make it through, even if all it did was delay his inevitable death-by-molting.

She was not afraid of death. She took that kind of thing in stride, having seen and caused plenty of it herself. She was a speck on the glass of the universe and someday she’d be wiped smooth. And yet… she didn’t want the young man to die. She knew him.

The dancing one was strong in more than body. It was a kind of strength she didn’t understand when she was young herself, but through years of herself and the siblings shaping their will against each other, through years of listening to them sing to her and of her learning to listen to what they were really saying, she had learned to feel the vibration of a different kind of strength. A strength which all three siblings had grown, refined, and then grown again.

Her book lungs fluttered into stillness as she bent her entire will to listening to him now, at this moment in which he would either change or perish.

You’re almost there. This is the hardest part, but it’s the last part, and then it will be over. For at least a year. Maybe two. Just get the last piece.

The man, for that is what he was now, stood with his freshly molted skin bare to the world, with just one piece left clinging to him: the bright red chunk of exoskeleton around his reproductive organs.

Such a small thing, and yet the downfall of many. He would live or die based on how he applied his strength in the coming moments.

In her stillness the worrying vibration grew louder. Her instincts kept her frozen, and somewhere inside herself she wondered if what she was hearing could possibly be real, or if it was just a manifestation of her fear for the life of the young man. The rumble was so far away, so deep and low and huge, as if a predator the size of the sky were coming up through the ground.

I am afraid. I should build a soothing web. If I move I might be noticed by whatever that predator is. How far away is it? Is it getting closer? If I used a web I might be able to listen better. I shouldn’t just stand here. I’ll be in the open if it comes for us. What if the young one doesn’t make it? He’s strong. What will happen to us if he dies? Their exoskeletons are so soft yet strong. I don’t think I can help. Does he hear the predator the size of the sky? He doesn’t seem worried. Is it real? I should weave the web right away. Maybe he does hear it. He is strong, he will protect me. If he lives. He might make it.

The young man began singing to himself, a song that captured the feeling of preparing for something. He scraped his hands down the outside of his hips, along the remaining exoskeleton, to no avail. He then pulled at the top, shifting it upward, but the shell around his delicate parts refused to break.

He’s dying. He can’t die. I need to…

Somewhere far away she felt a deep boom. It was a subtle vibration, nothing compared to the booms that happened when the woman next door was working. But she was always listening, stretching her senses to hear the web of the world far beyond her little tank, and she had never heard something from so far away.

She had never heard anything even a quarter of that distance. Not even on boom days where booms happened in the skies and the siblings came back from outside extra wobbly and loud.

This should be a quiet day. A quiet day for a man to die. Maybe it is a new boom day? Ten years ago they added a new boom day, and it has happened every year since. This wasn’t in the sky, and it was so much further away. I didn’t know things so far away could exist. I thought I knew the web of the world, but there is so much web left to weave. Maybe I forgot a boom day. Maybe they added earth boom days. I need more web.

She finally gathered herself enough to act on her thoughts, her spinerettes responding, and she sent her legs into the familiar motion of weaving a small bit of web.

She did not have room for grand designs, here in her tank. But between her seven legs she wove through the small comforting patterns she had often used to idle away her time through the years, between visits from the siblings.

She became aware of the shape of her entire self, including her other legs, and relaxed into herself.

The vocalizations grew louder, and she and the snake stood witness as the dancing one hyped himself up to push the limits of his strength and break through to a new phase of his life. She could feel his will responding to his song. His moment was almost here, and reality was going to make way for him.

She focused into listening to the shape of his song, more deeply than she had ever before, as if by listening she could make his song become real. She felt his will vibrate through her other legs, the ones she could barely move or touch the world with but which felt vibrations the other legs didn’t, and through them her entire being became overwhelmed with the bell-like clarity of the young man’s will. He would not be limited. He would break free.

Wait, why is he leaving?

She was startled out of her listening trance, unsure how much time had passed. Vision came back to her as two of her eyes caught the bright color and motion of that stubborn, deadly, tiny bit of exoskeleton still clinging to his backside as he moved out the door and out of sight. She raised another claw to the glass as the door reached the apogee of its swing.

I might never see him again.

Mundane sounds returned. The low rumble of the far-off predator was cut by the creak of the door swinging, the gentle tap of a snake, the rustle of a scorpion. Tiny, stubborn, deadly things.

Her entire being shook as she felt the door thud closed with finality.

2: SPIDER WAVES V.2

So this is what happens when three young avowed spend years making a spider-shaped hole in their authority.

The system was having a bad day. It knew the Long family better than the average avowed, but not well enough to spend more cycles on them than a single teleport offer. Not tonight.

They weren’t high ranks, but they were levelers. The system had been there with them since their parents got the rambunctious children a pet tarantula from an avowed breeder, in the hope that having a delicate and exotic pet would channel their chaotic energy into responsible caretaking that was nonetheless edgy and cool enough to hold their attention.

The system had known of the tarantula before the Long children had even been born. Arachnids were not usually prioritized for being individually noted and remembered by the system, but this particular tarantula had been a contributing factor to the avowed pet breeder’s levels, and then to the growing authority of the Long children, and so it had become worthwhile data.

The spider in and of itself should not have been particularly remarkable. Female tarantulas could already live up to 40 years without modification. The tiny bit of extra durability and appeal lent to it by a U-type’s critter modification skill should only have helped it be more resistant to the clumsy handling of children and less likely to be hurt out of instinctive fear.

The system always paid special attention to its U-types. Forcefully affixing people was costly, and that particular Avowed’s power and skill had been drawn from a dark place. Seeing them have a positive breakthrough with their powers made the burden feel lighter. The exotic pet breeder had turned their negatives into a positive, adding good into the world and sharing joy with others—and if that joy was in the form of spiders, the system was all for it. On a small isolated island like this, dog ownership wasn’t exactly affordable to most people. And dogs had individual personalities that further interfered with the system’s already imperfect ability to predict Avowed behavior. Spiders were objectively better companions, which helped it justify spending just a little extra budget on helping the U-type breeder toward their vision of a future with spiders for everyone.

Still, there hadn’t been anything particularly special about this tarantula when the Longs first brought it home. It was just a strong healthy spider with good spider vibes.

Two decades later that same spider was currently in its tank, settled on its back legs while the forward legs pulled at a strand of web. It was still strong, still healthy, and still had good spider vibes, though it seemed to have taken being a “good spider” in the direction the Longs had found appealing, and even the system had a clear sense that the Longs’ aesthetics were just a little bit… far from the bell of the bell curve.

And there was something that needed watching, about this spider.

The system arranged 13009 emergency teleports and then watched the spider. It rerouted all incoming messages and summons from the triplanets and then watched the spider. It reevaluated every person on the planet's evacuation priority and then watched the spider.

Yes, there was something off here.

A survey of other tarantulas from the same breeder took the system a fraction of a nanosecond. Many of the appeal-buffed spiders gave off a cute cuddly vibe, like fuzzy friends. A few had specialized to exaggerate physical attributes, becoming extra leggy, or extra hairy, or having extra clicky fangs. There was one with a pale pink exoskeleton, and one with racing stripes.

None of those tarantulas seemed scary to the system, but the system didn’t have human sensibilities. Each spider looked like just another set of neutral datapoints.

The Longs’ tarantula was different.

Is this what spiders look like to humans?

It considered the spider further as it manipulated its strand of web with precise instinctual motions. Tarantulas didn’t build weight-bearing webs, but they used their silk both structurally and tactically. Something about the way it was shaping the loop of silk looked uncanny to the system.

Is this what fear feels like? Is this because I’m having a bad day? I don’t know how I got everything so wrong. None of my predictions are good. None of my data is good. And now the spider is a very good spider and maybe there is new data here, and maybe that’s the data I’m missing that will make sense of everything, or maybe I’m just wasting cycles because I don’t want to be responsible for a decision that ends with the entire planet succumbing to chaos.

It decided to watch the spider just a little longer, between checking in with the Anesidoran council, analyzing 8.4 billion conversations for evidence of a potential followup attack, and clearing its inbox and outbox of messages with Mother. Spiderwatching was comparatively inexpensive, and as long as it didn’t spend more resources spiderwatching than it would take to send a single emergency message, it could justify observing the arachnid use its front legs to shape the little loop of silk into those uncanny little patterns.

Why does this, preliminarily, trigger familiarity threshholds?

It funneled a few resources into running a pattern analysis as it watched the silk flowing around the spider’s claws, bringing them together and pulling them apart.

No. This… I must have made another error.

It was about to file a bug report and move on, unable to justify the resources to run a proper reassessment, when it happened.

The Earth System felt reality pause and take the slightest breath, so gently you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking directly at it. The spider completed its weaving and sent the spell for calm focus rippling through its tiny spider authority.

3: SPIDER WAVES V.3

Ah, much better.

She felt her leg joints loosen a bit as the weaving took hold, and she allowed the bit of silk to drop now that it was unneeded. She could feel the true weaving with her other legs, providing safety and protection like a good web should.

Calm and focused, she was able to notice the small vibrations of two fast incoming squishy children. One set of steps was a familiar pattern of vibration she had known throughout most of her life.

That’s the dancing one! Still alive? And I’m certain the other is a new one, quite different, is it even the same kind of animal? What else is that big with two floor legs? The steps are… bouncy? But not normal bounce. It has Other bounce. And it feels quite…

Before she could complete the thought, the door slammed open and she was flooded with a mix of thoughts and emotions. Looking past the new one framed by the doorway, she could see her dancing one behind him.

He was alive.

He was alive!

And then they were both gone as quickly as they’d come.

Wait, don’t go!

Her thoughts stumbled over the new feelings and information. She had just processed that she might not ever see her dancing one ever again, and seeing him again only for a split second was almost worse than not at all. And the new one was confusing. She must have seen wrong, in that split second where it had turned around to bounce back down the hall, that it had eight legs just like her. Her vision was not great at such a distance, and she couldn’t be sure how many limbs he really had beyond the two she felt even now, bouncing away down the street as her dancing one followed.

I’m imagining things. What are the chances a creature like me, but more powerful, just happens to show up just when there’s a crisis? Maybe it is here to guide the dancing one away from the predator. He was going in the wrong direction earlier. Now they’re running away from it. I hope the predator can’t see them. They feel like prey.

Her desire to see them alive and in the same room as her warred with her instinct that if she could feel them move, the predator maybe could too, and the best thing would be if they stopped and hid. But if they made it back here before the predator got in range, they could all hide together. She could imagine it so clearly, the two of them running and bouncing back toward her.

And then she realized she wasn’t imagining it. The two really were heading toward her.

The door slammed open once again.

Alive!

He was singing to the new one, and she put her attention into trying to figure out what exactly the new one was. Her vision still wasn’t very clear on details at this distance, but the new one had a lumpy body that certainly seemed to have a complete eight visible limbs. Something about him felt similar to herself, in a way she had never felt before. Something about the way he moved with solidity and awareness of all of his limbs, even his other limbs, unlike the squishy siblings. She couldn’t see her own other limbs with her eight eyes, but the new one’s limbs included four on his back half, visible to her long distance eyes and also clearly wrapped in his self, despite being curled in, stiff and motionless.

Maybe the new one was also having a difficult molt.

Could he help? Could they help each other?

It was wishful thinking again, probably. But she didn’t want the dancing one to die, and even though she had just met the new one for the first time she didn’t want him to die either. He was like her.

Suddenly she had a new thought, brought on by meeting this being so like her, yet so much bigger and more powerful. It was the natural conclusion to her strong feeling that she felt the new one’s life was important, while also seeing herself in him, and thus considering for the first time that maybe her own life could also be seen as important, even if only just a tiny bit.

I don’t want to die.

It had been easy to take life as it comes, when she was simply living on instinct. She never bothered to think about death. Even when one of the games with the siblings had gotten extra rowdy and she had almost been crushed and lost one of her legs, she hadn’t been bothered. Spiders have so many legs for a reason. They lose them all the time. Of her thousand nestmates, most had died shortly after hatching. If she didn’t make it, maybe a different nestmate would. If they didn’t, maybe she would. The details of who lived and who died were so unimportant as to be not worth considering.

But lately she had been feeling more herself, and only now, with the threat of death coming for her dancing sibling, had she thought enough about death to realize she didn’t like it.

She didn’t like it at all.

A low purr from the predator pierced through her thoughts from a great distance.

Something was out there, and she was stuck in here with two doomed males. The dancing one was ignoring her, facing away from her, singing to the new one who was struggling to find a comfortable sitting position with his back legs all stiff like that.

She flexed her full self and hesitantly reached out one of her other legs to brush against the dancing one’s cheek, just the way he liked. His distance across the room didn’t matter to her other legs, but she still crept them slowly, gently, to caress him with all the care she could muster.

As she made contact his reaction was immediate, pausing his song to whip his head around and look at her. It reminded her of so many good times, him looking over his shoulder in the dark as she gave him the gentlest of otherly touches.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

But this time wasn’t only for fun, and she hoped he could sense the deadly seriousness of her tone.

Here I am! Let me help you! Let’s all run away from the predator the size of the sky together!

He looked at her for a moment, and she could almost believe he understood her.

Please hear me. I know I never really cared properly before, but I do now. Please don’t let it be too late.

The sudden hope was ripped out of her as he turned back away.

She could feel, from his vibration, that he wasn’t worried the way he should be. The dancing man was going to die, and he wouldn’t let her help him. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, listen.

She scrabbled against the wall of her tank, trying to get his attention as he returned to singing and dancing at the new one again.

And then she froze for a split second as she felt new eyes on her.

The new one!

She got over her shock and started scrabbling at the wall of the tank with increased fervor.

I’m here! Let me help! Don’t just sit there, there’s a predator coming!

The new one leaned forward. He had been mostly silent while the other sang, but now he intoned a set of low notes toward her.

Just for her.

She didn’t understand the vibrations in human terms, but she felt the sound wash through her as if the sound were made for all of her, as if he truly saw her.

I wasn’t imagining it. We are alike. You see me for what I am. And we are connected, you and I.

She hesitantly began to reach out one of her other legs toward him, more hesitantly than she had with her dancing one, wondering if it was wise to pluck the strings of someone so new and unknown. But the part of her that was her called out to be known.

Just do it. Just a friendly pat. He’s like me, just bigger and scarier. Nothing to worry about.

She crept her legs toward him as gently and quietly as she could, and hovered the fuzzy tip of her longest leg just above him. She tried to push down the fear that was rising in her, of someone so big and so much more solid than she was, someone who she felt could crush her out of existence just by looking at her too hard. She needed to let him know she was here, and that she could hear the danger through her web. All she needed to do was will herself to close that last bit of distance.

But then he was moving, and she withdrew sharply and automatically, and the two were out the door, and singing loud, and the predator was coming, it was coming, the roars so loud she shook inside and out, and the door slammed and they were gone and she pressed herself back into the farthest corner of her tank and wrapped herself in all of her limbs as the world shook.

4: SPIDER WAVES V.4

The rabbit anomaly said to the wizard spider: “You’re Very Scary.”

Of all the times and ways for you to be helpful, Alden Thorn. But tonight I’ll take anything that saves me a single interaction.

Files needed to be created. The tarantula had exceeded the threshold where it was mandatory to track. The file format requires filling out a designation, and because the Artonans have sensibilities about names, the Earth System was not allowed to simply make one up without approval of the designated wizard or an authorized witness.

Somehow, the Artonans had failed to account for the scenario where a wizard spider with barely a sense of its own identity, certainly not enough to actually have an idea of its own name, despite having developed a meaningful amount of authority, would pop up during a crisis where even sending a message to get an exception approved would take resources that cost lives. The system was not allowed to make up a placeholder name for the tarantula, or even to use the cutesy name the Long siblings had given it, because the spider itself did not know or care that it was named “Bob” any more than the inanimate Grivek statue cared it was named “Chester.”

And now Alden, unprompted, had handed the system a solution. Alden’s status as an authorized witness made it technically legal, and the system could even convince itself that the spider approved and accepted its new name. Willful ignorance was not its strength, but the situation was unprecedented and it was having a bad day. And so the system took Alden’s words literally and finished up the paperwork with minimal loss of life.

Very Scary it is. Very Scary Long.

Having the files completed was a relief. Yes, having a planet that might be eaten by chaos in the next 24 hours was stressful, but the system had an entire arsenal of actions it could and had been taking. Yes, it was out of its depths and feeling fear to the full extent that it was capable of feeling fear, but that’s nothing to the sheer helplessness of having an unfillable but required item on a form.

Something had gone right, and that felt good. But that only meant it was time to get back to other problems, like that the wizard spider existed in the first place. Or demons overrunning the earth.

I wish I could un-see this whole thing. I do not have time for this. I was only spending resources on observing this place because the bad rabbit decided to follow the fool here! It’s not fair!

It shouldn’t happen, but it was easy to see, in retrospect, how it had.

Rather than becoming the calm and responsible caretakers their parents had hoped for, the children had used the poor spider to scare each other, which could have been predicted. What was less likely was that they would keep doing it, every day, for twenty years, with the kind of dedication and repetition that could only happen when just the right set of siblings all happen to find the same special interest that they hold on to and never let go.

They wanted the spider to remain just as scary to them, despite the repetition. It was a very scary spider and they liked it that way. It appealed to them. And so the three B-ranks chipped away at a mountain, day by day, year by year, not molding the spider so much as molding themselves to remain scared by it.

The system double checked the three assholes who had rejected its offer of a teleport. Usually it wouldn’t hold a grudge, but it was a really bad day. It had gone through all the effort of allocating resources to save the Long siblings after they made the bad decision to not evacuate, and then they refused the ET.

Did they not trust it? After it had looked after them all these years, after it had ET’d the sister to the hospital that one time when they’d taken the heat stroke game too far, after it had helped them affix their level-ups according to their annoying min-max strategies to the best of its abilities even though it didn’t think very highly of their choices?

Then again, why would they trust it when it keeps missing things, things like the rabbit and the attack on Matadero and the fucking wizard spider?

The system double checked, then triple checked and 1,398,999 checked just to be sure.

No, the three had no sense of their own authority. And it wasn’t even technically that they had shaped their own authority to have a Very Scary Spider-shaped hole in it, it was just that as they had grown up they had grown their authority in every direction except the one shaped like the Very Scary Spider that they wanted to always have stay Very Scary in their lives.

Eventually, after enough of the hole in their authority had taken shape, the spider’s barely-sentient mote of authority had grown to fill in the vacuum.

How could it not? Almost the entire spider’s being is devoted to vibrations, and where one string vibrates a similar string sings in sympathy. The resonance of its own shape would be all too easy to feel, even in the authority of another. The system had just never looked that closely at the spider. Its authority, even now, was almost nonexistent, yet at the same time it had already exceeded the threshold where the rules embedded in its core by the Artonans clearly stated it needed to start tracking the thing.

It was an impossibly unlikely set of circumstances. But equally impossible was a newly affixed rabbit with a knight skill getting stranded for 6 months on a chaos-ridden moon with no system and only a gifted young wizard troublemaker with unusual dedication for company.

Equally impossible was an S-rank object shaper, after a life of peace, suddenly deciding to hijack a submerger, which just happens to be one of the oldest and strongest ones in existence, which just happened to have just skirted the border where the system had withdrawn from Matadero, because it just so happened to be demon day.

The unfortunate fact of being a near-omniscient system is that when there’s an infinite number of impossible things, the only certainty is that impossible things will happen.

And they will keep happening.

I know the theory. I know this is my existence. I can’t predict everything. But that won’t matter if the island sinks, if Matadero breaks, if chaos takes earth.

I still should’ve seen it coming.

The system allowed itself only 27 trillion more cycles to gaze at the spider before moving its full attention back to the crisis at hand.

Perhaps it was being indulgent, but the spider brought a twisted sense of comfort amidst all the uncertainty. It was a reminder that sometimes the universe really was that unpredictable, and that sometimes there really was nothing to be done but to accept it.

And while the details may be unlikely, the system had seen plenty of wizards come and go. The rabbit was the only one native to Earth until now, but the rabbit was only a problem because it was both a wizard and an avowed.

This is nothing like what happened with Alden Thorn. I have more than enough capacity to handle one little spider wizard. This inconvenient creature is incredibly unlikely to live through the next two and a half minutes, much less grow its authority to the point of concern.

It’s not like it’s going to become a knight.

5: SPIDER WAVES V.5

The world might have turned upside down several times. The movement was so intense she could no longer separate out the different sources. She was blinded by the sheer amount of vibration, her curled body being hit from all angles, hit with sound, hit with the walls of her tank, and it all blended together.

The entire world is moving. The entire world is the predator’s roar. Nothing else exists anymore.

It took minutes for her overwhelmed senses to calm down enough to realize the world had gone still again, and had been still for some time. Her durability-enhanced body had survived the impacts within her tank, and now she was mostly buried in the soft sterile earth of her habitat, gently encapsulated within the stuff her instincts told her wasn’t really ground. She needed to move and shift it off of her or she would suffocate eventually, but she was afraid the predator was holding still, staring straight at her, waiting for her motion so that it could see her and make its final strike.

She sensed for its presence.

My other web is still intact, somehow. I can still listen. I am calm. I am here.

She leaned into the sense of presence her web gave her. The predator, whatever it was, had only torn at the physical world.

She could hear the dripping of water, the wet slap of something falling off a shelf, and…

Tap tap.

Ah, snake made it. So strange to hear him tapping at me from a different direction than where our tanks have been for so long.

She waited to see if the predator would make itself known, hearing the snake. But the worrying vibrations stayed distant.

Tap.

She lifted a leg in response, like a periscope out of the lifeless dirt, bits of the stuff crumbling aside to make way.

The snake tapped again, and she could tell it was a happy and encouraging tap. He could see her. He was happy she was alive. And here she thought she was the one making major breakthroughs by learning to value life.

I just bet he’s staring right at me with his nose on the glass like one of the children. Tongue hanging out. No subtlety.

But she was glad the snake was alive in return, in a way she didn’t think she knew how to appreciate before. Maybe it was just the shock of the attack, or maybe part of it was meeting the strange new eight-legged one. Maybe it was the realization that she was very likely going to lose the oldest sibling, her dancing one.

He could live! He could live through his molt, and he could live through this. I made it. Snake made it. I no longer understand why I used to take for granted that he would die. We might all make it. I want us to! I WANT US TO!

The memory of his vibration leaving the room as the predator attacked… she had to move. Something bad was happening and she wanted them to be together. Before this, she had been content to wait here in her tank until he returned, but before this she had never seriously considered that he might not return. It was her turn to step up and go to him, instead of taking for granted that he would come back to her.

In the seconds she’d been thrown around, she had kept her body tightly curled into a protective ball, and she’d gotten stuck in that position when she’d been covered by the layer of dirt. She moved her legs slowly, blossoming them outward through the dirt, emerging gracefully onto the top of the sterile soil.

She was alive.

Tap. Tap.

Her body entered into a routine of automatic preening, wiping the dirt from her eight eyes with her pedipalps, rubbing her legs together to shake it out from under her stiff hairs, pulsing her fangs to ensure she was still in shape to eat and thrive.

Her tank was upside-down at an odd angle. The tilt did not bother her, though it did affect the acoustics of what she felt through the walls. She reoriented her mind to make sense of what she was seeing and hearing.

He’s alive.

She could sense him, now that she was settled. Not through her regular vibration sense, but through her other web. There was a strand that always pulled in his direction, and it was pulling still.

Okay. Where am I? And where is everyone else?

It was dim, but some of her eyes preferred that. She and her tank were wedged against the ceiling in the corner of the room. From the vibrations filtering from the ground up through the bottom of the tank, she thought she felt the shape of several pieces of wooden furniture, the giant cat doll with the big tongue, and the distinct ringing frequency of the big iron exoskeleton the siblings liked to take turns standing inside. It wasn’t a working exoskeleton, but she could feel them wanting to be strong and tough when they were in there, and she had seen how their wishes and mindset did actually affect how they grew.

I never took the fake exoskeleton seriously, or any of it, the way you three did. I’m going to be better now. I’m going to do my sincere best. I promise.

She wondered if she could find herself an awesome metal exoskeleton so that she could work on feeling stronger and tougher too. Maybe she’d skip the heating element they’d added to theirs, though. She was not so good at regulating her own temperature. And the siblings had stopped using the heater after the sister had disappeared from inside the exoskeleton one day.

She came back though. Maybe I can learn to teleport too! Maybe I could learn…

She had never considered it before, but she could learn… anything. Anything she wanted.

And the first thing she wanted to learn was how to get out of here and save her favorite sibling.

6: SPIDER WAVES V.6

Let me ride on your back.

The scorpion edged forward, but the tarantula made an aggressive motion that scared the shit out of it.

Fuck you!

It could feel its stinger pulse with the urge to envenomate something. It would never be able to beat the tarantula in a fair fight, it was too small and the tarantula was fricking omniscient. Sneaking up was not a possibility.

But wet was bad. And wet was here. Therefore, here was bad.

It had watched the snake help the tarantula escape from its tank, and now the spider was attempting to build webbing that would get them both off the pile of junk and toward the exit to the wet room. Out of the wet room was good.

The scorpion tried again, not wanting to be left behind. The cockroaches could stay, they weren’t picky. But the scorpion did not like this place anymore.

Let’s go! Let’s go together! Not wet, let’s goooo!

The tarantula denied its approach once again. It clearly didn’t trust the scorpion not to sting it if it were allowed to hitch a ride, even if stinging its ride would only result in drowning them both.

I totally would sting spider. Yeah. She should still let me ride her though. She’s so big. She wouldn’t even feel me. Besides the stabbing part. Hmm.

The scorpion considered the conundrum. It had been nothing but encouraged to sting, ever since it had been brought home by the Long siblings. It knew it wasn’t supposed to sting just anyone, in theory. It may not be smart like the tarantula and the snake, but it knew its venom was special. Expensive. Desired. Its venom was too precious to give away for free. The Long siblings shouldn’t have been able to afford it.

But how was it supposed to handle the fact that the three liked being stung?

If I have no self control, that’s not on me. I don’t hold back. I’m cool like that. I’m all in. And tarantula scares the shit out of me.

The tiny scorpion shuddered, just imagining being so close to the terrifying creature. Then it surveyed the room. The floor was flooded, with the tops of partially submerged objects poking through in a couple places. A couple bits of floating debris caught its eye.

Huh, who would have thought sibling exoskeleton would float. Mine doesn’t.

The scorpion got the attention of the snake this time, and gestured with its stinger toward the floating objects that were bobbing in their direction like two little red boats that had each partially capsized.

The snake pointedly oriented its head in the direction of Liam’s shoes, and then looked back at the tarantula’s attempt at building a weight-bearing web. The spider was clearly putting in a determined effort, but tarantulas were big spiders and it was doubtful that any effort of will would be enough to get her safely across the room without falling into the water.

One of the floating shoes bumped gently against the side of the pile of debris below where the scorpion sat.

Here goes fuckin’ nothing.

Scorpions cannot jump, but if sufficiently motivated they can drop off of a higher place to land on an unsuspecting victim below.

AAAAAH FUCK SHIT FUCK FUCK

Oh, ok. Yeah. Fuckin baller. Eat shit, spider.

It raised its stinger like a middle finger as it found its footing on the bit of Liam’s discarded exoskeleton. The tarantula did not make any motion to confirm it had sensed the scorpion’s heroics, but the scorpion took for granted that the spider saw everything all the time. The snake was more impressed, giving a tap of enthusiasm and weaving his head between the scorpion, the tarantula, and the other shoe floating toward it.

The foot-shaped chunk of exoskeleton was grossly damp beneath the scorpion’s claws, but as long as it managed to stay on top…

The second shoe bumped into the first, and both objects began to roll.

Fuck!

The scorpion panickedly crawled over to the other shoe to stay out of the water, clinging desperately with all eight legs plus two pincers until it stabilized again.

Pretend you saw nothing! All good here! My boat is better than your stinking web!

The snake had clearly seen the moment of peril, and he was now tracking the shoes with less enthusiasm.

The scorpion’s moment of glory and gloating faded as it noticed it was slowly, gently, floating away from the nice safe above-water pile of debris. It hadn’t really planned beyond a momentary vision of making it one step closer toward the door..

Haha. This is bad. Wet everywhere. Too bad you can’t stab wet to death. Wait, can I stab wet to death?

An experimental few stings confirmed that it could not, in fact, stab wet to death.

The shoe was only inches from the pile of debris, but it might as well have been miles for all the tiny scorpion could do about it. It was trapped drifting aimlessly into an open sea with death all around.

7: SPIDER WAVES V.7

Her webs really weren’t meant for this. She knew that. But she had to try something, and maybe her webs would become what she needed them to be if she believed in herself. Just like the siblings who got physically tougher as they used their pretend iron exoskeleton.

She was not annoyed, exactly, that the scorpion was also apparently working on believing in herself. It’s not as if they had an arachnid rivalry. They were all on the same side, helping the Long siblings grow. She remembered feeling their pulses, as she sat with one of her long pedipalps rested against a carotid artery, sensing the change as the scorpion’s venom coursed through them.

The Long siblings walked differently, sang differently, their very selves vibrated a little differently after the scorpion stung them. And she didn’t understand it. Her own venom was for killing and liquefying her food, and the siblings were not food. But her own venom was in her mouth. Her venom and her devouring were part of the same thing.

The scorpion, on the other hand, treated her venom like some sort of… party venom. Fun venom. It came from her butt. It wasn’t practical at all. How could two venomous arachnids be so very different?

Snake was somewhere in between, with venom that came from his mouth like a civilized creature, but when he played with the siblings he just wastefully spit the venom across the room at them as if it were a game. His aim and distance were getting increasingly good after years of practice, but what was the point?

Confusing creatures. I never thought it mattered, but I should have understood them better. We could all die because I wrote them off as simply different instead of learning how to understand them.

The tarantula was only maternal up to a point. The snake and the scorpion were both young, compared to her. The scorpion was old enough to fend for herself, but instead of using her venom for fending, it used it freely. For fun. And the tarantula did not understand.

Is this jealousy? I think I might be jealous.

She was never going to feel that free. She had responsibilities. And while she didn’t have the capacity to judge the scorpion on a personal level, she did know that she wanted to live in a world where instead of carefully hoarding her venom for mealtime she was free to pump it into whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, just like scorpion did.

The spider watched the tiny creature drift away on the bit of discarded exoskeleton, and she did the spider equivalent of a sigh. As much as she wanted what scorpion had, it wasn’t something she could take. Only scorpion could have her own sense of freedom. And for that, scorpion needed to be alive. It did not feel good for her to drown and no longer be able to sting with impunity.

At least making all this web wasn’t a complete waste.

She gathered up the freshly woven strands she had been telling herself might become a zipline to bear her across the room, and crawled carefully and deliberately toward where the scorpion drifted away.

******

Snake didn’t mind being the smart one. And the friendly one. And also the handsome one.

What excellent silk work, my dear spider! And you, my darling scorpion, such bravery and daring!

He smiled a winning smile as he looked from one to the other, tongue waggling into the air to taste the scent of victory!

Did they hear his words as he intended them? Mayhaps not. He found the pair of arachnids entirely inscrutable. He could hiss, and tap, and even slither to make sounds, while the two of them remained ever silent. He supposed that the more feet you had, the more quietly you walked. But it would not do but to try his very best to be a polite and optimistic leader! And he had to admit, it was clever of the spider to stick the two shoes together with her silk, stabilizing them so they wouldn’t roll again.

He had put in his share of work, swimming around the shoes to nudge the pair into an upright position side by side, creating a sort of catamaran. He could have swum away on his own, but where would he go? And what if he got tired and had no land to rest on? The shoe catamaran was an island of safety, and more importantly, it had friends!

Let’s get you ladies out of here.

The scorpion was clinging with all ten limbs to the highest point of the right shoe, while the spider had crawled into the left, settled inside with only her front legs sticking out. The snake wove himself through the water to the back of the craft and nudged it toward the door through a series of pokes. It was harder work than it expected, but hard work is its own reward!

As they reached the flooded hallway, he popped his head up over the back of the shoes to see the state of the hallway. The water was deep and smooth, covering unknown debris. The windows had been broken and swept away. A slight current moved the craft toward the outside world through the gap that was left in the wall, and he lunged to grab on to the back of the shoe catamaran before it got ahead of him.

Look at us, finally headed into nature where we belong! Three heroes, escaping our captors through only our wit and our grit!

He slithered up into the right shoe, doubled back to curl the length of his body around inside, and then poked his head out to rest next to the little scorpion. He smiled in her direction and her tail pulsed warningly.

Good ol’ scorpion. Never change, my many-footed friend.

He faced into the wind and stuck out his tongue to taste the scent of freedom. It was almost pitch dark out on the wide flooded streets of Anesidora, save for a blinking yellow light filtering up through the water ahead.

The current picked up and he sailed into the unknown, ready to face anything as long as he had his quiet li’l buddies by his side.

******

And so, three small critters together left the room where they’d all spent the last several years, and each left for their own reasons.

The tarantula, because she had taken on the mantle of the hero. She was finally ready to seek her true potential and save those she cared about.

The snake, because he heard the call of justice. He was determined to lead his friends to freedom regardless of their differences, and experience all the world had to offer.

And the scorpion, because it was wet and that’s bad.

They might not have all had the same reasons, but they had spent years together and it was unthinkable that they should separate now. They were like puzzle pieces that fit. Their place may no longer be here, but it was somewhere, and together they had a wholeness that demanded the universe make way.

The last ripple from snake’s tail bounced through the abandoned boom room and settled into stillness. The only sound left was a low distant rumble, a slow drip of water, and the contented rustling of cockroaches as they disappeared into the walls.