What do you do when you’re sad?
What do you do to fight off that creeping black monster that is sadness? Most people hate it. A few, the ones that need a helping hand, just try to bottle the emotion up and not think about it, hiding it in a dusty corner of their minds, hoping it will forget itself. Those unlucky souls always forget that emotions don’t just disappear. So they keep bottling and bottling until, one day, the glass breaks and they’re flooded with all the negativity they’d been trying to forget.
Most of those, after the first time, change method. Others, idiots that they are, keep going, thinking 'Well, if it happens only every once in a while I can live with it'. And that’s how, ever so slowly, they poison themselves, destroying their bodies and their minds in a futile attempt to escape something that should be natural.
Then there’s those that live through the passing storm. They’re the brave ones: courageous souls that should find a way to teach others how they can simply live with it.
Then there’s the junkies. People who thrive on sadness. Or rather, other people’s sadness. They see it as a drug, a medicine to their own emotions, because, if taken in the right dosages, and from the right people, it lets them think that maybe, after all, their lives aren’t so bad. And if that helps someone else in the meantime, well, all the better! They have to be careful though, because the wrong amounts from the wrong people could lead to things getting worse. After all, it's the dose that makes the poison, am I not right?
That’s the three categories. Naturally, most people will explain it in a completely different way.
Isse had always found it funny how, for example, people said that someone was “running from their sadness” or any other emotions. Because that meant nothing. You couldn’t escape from yourself.
She knew that, because she was one of those runners. Once upon a time, she’d been a ‘bottler’, but after she’d exploded the first time she had immediately changed. Better to cry a few tears every once in a while than feel like tearing your heart out of your chest while you cried what felt like enough tears to fill a small sea.
That had helped her. Had she remained a ‘bottler’, she would’ve probably died well before she had on that hospital bed.
She was alone now. Makira had left to go do something important, asking her to wait in the clearing where they let her and the other spiderlings play. She had said she’d get another [Carer] to come keep her company in a few minutes, but she had yet to arrive.
So she was alone. Even the Voice wasn’t talking, probably sulking somewhere in her mind.
The anger she’d felt before had completely drained out of her, sadness rapidly taking its place. Well, it was more complex than simple sadness. It was layered. A bit of self-hatred here, a small amount of anger at Siidi for not leaving her alone there, not understanding what the hell had happened on that fake battlefield. It was the happiness on Siidi’s face when she’d fought and killed those people, her glee at seeing those women, her sisters, helping her. It was her inability to pass that stupid trial.
Really, she should’ve felt angry.
Instead, she was sad.
And, seeing how she’d long since thrown the bottle away and watched it break apart, she decided to do the one thing she had always done when she was sad, the thing that always gave her a chuckle. The thing she’d been unable to do ever since she’d ended up on that hospital bed.
She ran.
She’d been alive for over two weeks now. And yet she hadn’t ever tried to do the one thing that had always given her some joy. Just… run. As fast as she could, until her lungs stung and she tasted iron on her tongue and her legs burned and screamed and the world started to swivel as if her head was on a little merry-go-round.
She ran.
And after a short while the sadness began to burn away, leave her, giving her some peace and quite. Joy replaced it soon after.
Because it had been nearly a year since she’d last had the chance to run. Because she had forgotten how beautiful the sensation was. And, best of all, she didn’t tire!
Her mind may be old, but her body was young. She was full of energy, and to her great satisfaction her spider half didn’t seem to require a lot of it. What it did need was attention and a great deal of self control, because if she did anything wrong her legs would likely entangle and make her fall.
And oh boy did she fall. Multiple times. Face first right into the ground.
Yet she always rose and began running again. Because who cared about a few scratches on your face and hands? Compared to ‘Queen of the Tree’ this was nothing!
She ran, and the joy didn’t leave her. Instead it just seemed to swell.
[Would You Kindly] stop this rollercoaster of emotions little thief? Someone here’s trying to mourn her sisters.
She felt a strange compulsion in her mind to stop running, to stop being happy and go back to being the sad mess she was before.
She imagined flipping off Siidi in her mind and kept running.
She passed by a few adults on her way to… wherever the wind in her hair brought her. They looked at her, wondered for a moment why she wasn’t at ‘school’, then, seeing how nobody was running behind her screaming for her to get back to class, shrugged and thought she was given permission. Which, technically, was true.
Problem was, Isse hadn’t been given permission to run away from the playing area. Which now contained a very anxious arachne who was about to start hyperventilating and have a panic attack.
Until she remembered about her tracking Skills from her secondary class, [Hunter], and used them to start looking for the lost girl.
It would take her some time though, since she was just a measly Level 10 in that Class.
As she started her little hunt, the System took note of the unconventional use of her Skills, and decided to reward her the next time she fell asleep. That is, if she succeded.
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Issekina was lost.
Well, not a big surprise. It happens if you run deep in a forest without looking where you’re going because you’re trying to pass out in sheer exhaustion while trying to also outlast your emotions.
So it was no wonder that she didn’t know where she was.
Of course, she was in no real danger. After all, sooner or later an adult would find her.
So she ran.
And stopped.
Because, apparently, she’d reached her body’s limit and couldn’t run anymore. And however safe this forest was, she wasn’t stupid enough to pass out outside the designated areas.
She sat down, her spider legs bending underneath her and acting as some sort of cushion. It was surprisingly comfortable. Even more so with the grass underneath. One could say a lot of bad things about being an arachne, but their ability to feel comfortable anywhere was probably one of the race’s greatest assets.
No, that would be our near endless stamina, our proficiency with soul magic, the difficulty with killing us, and I could keep going.
Shush, those are boring.
Don’t shush me, you silkless midget, and don’t reduce an entire species to ‘We can sit anywhere’!
The woods were silent. Well, they really weren’t: birds chirped, crickets played their little songs that drove most people to madness, especially when they somehow entered your house and started ‘singing’ in the middle of the night.
Those sounds, though, blended into a background noise that didn’t register in her mind. It was always there, and because of that is also wasn’t. No, as she sat there, breathing slowly to calm her heartbeat, she listened for anything different. It was an instinctive part of the arachne side of her that did so.
And it was said part, which normally took the form of Siidi, that noticed the shouting first.
Not shouting. Screaming.
Isse whipped her head around, trying to understand where the sound was coming from.
Another detail about arachne: all their senses were sharper. She could smell the meals prepared by the [Cooks] and [Carers] from hundreds of paces, see a hole carved by a caterpillar in a leaf at the top of a tree if she concentrated enough. And could certainly hear someone screaming at the top of their lungs, even if that someone was quite far away and the forest sounds covered it up.
Leave it be girl. It’s either an animal, which means the [Hunters] are doing their job, or someone from another race being hunted down and killed. In both cases, not something we should be worrying about.
But Isse didn’t care. Usually, she listened to the Voice and what she had to say, but after the Trial she didn’t want to. Not after hearing what Grandmother had told her about Siidi’s intentions. Not after seeing her fight and massacre those people. That girl was a monster, and she would turn her into one if she let her.
Since when can animals scream that way? she just asked, before she lifted herself from the ground and began walking.
I don’t know, but this forest isn’t normal, so the animals probably aren’t too.
Yeah, well, my body, my choices.
And she tuned Siidi out. If she had anything else to say, she didn’t care.
So it was that she slowly walked towards what she believed to be the source of all this racket. It was getting closer, but not only because she was walking towards it. No, it was moving closer.
She climbed up a tree and began swinging among the branches. If whatever she was trying to find turned out to be something hostile she did not want to be face to face with it. As the [Carers] liked to say, 'Nobody looks up at first'.
Which had been proven to her multiple times, when they’d decided to spook all the spiderlings by falling on them with nets of spidersilk, trapping them all and cackling all the while.
They’d since learned to always keep an eye to the branches, ‘less they be pranked again and again mercilessly.
She kept going towards the source of the sound. It sounded distinctly feminine. Was it one of her sisters? No, that wasn’t possible: none of her sisters sounded so… grown up? Yes, that was the word. The shrieking voice was feminine, childish even, but not as much as the spiderlings. Who was here?
She got her answer a few seconds later, when a small girl ran under her.
She was wearing practical clothes: a tight brown shirt, brown leather pants and brown boots with a green tinge to them. All in all, it looked like a bad attempt at mimetic clothes. Judging by the fact the girl was screaming her lungs out and running away from something, it seemed they hadn’t worked too well.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Human. That’s bad. We have to kill her.
Isse froze as she heard Siidi talk again.
Are you mad? I won’t kill an innocent girl!
But what if she knows about the arachne in the forest? She’ll talk to the adults, and they’ll send people to try and kill us all! And then we’ll have to leave this forest for good. Don’t be selfish!
Isse ground her teeth audibly, but before she could answer with some snarky comment, she saw something running behind the girl. A wolf. The fur was greenish, like the ground it was running on. It passed over a set of roots, and she saw the fur change color to match the red of that particular tree.
A mimetic wolf. A mimicolf! No, wait, that sounded stupid.
Yes it did.
Shut up!
She began running behind the mimolf (nope, still didn’t sound good), trying to find a way to help the girl running away.
She looked around and spotted a rock on the ground, small enough to fit in her… petite hand (she was not going to admit she was small), but big enough to actually cause some damage if she hit someone. She took it as she passed by it, then kept running, preparing to hit the wolfetic (nope, even worse. Now it sounded like some Wolverine rip off).
Idiot, don’t just use the rock. Make a sling and use that, or that wolf will bite your hand off.
Ok mum!
Don’t you… you’re having fun you little shit, arentchya?
Who? Me?
Siidi fell silent. A strange sense of… was it approval? She couldn’t tell. Anyways, this strange sensation pervaded her mind, and she felt a bit calmer.
She reached back towards her spider half and took some spidersilk. With one hand she wound it around the rock and, after mere moments of work, she had a functional sap.
Now, Issekina wasn’t exactly a stealthy girl. She was a girl who, thanks to her spider half, reached up to a grown man’s shoulders. She also wasn’t exactly silent, even if her spidery legs made it difficult to break anything in her path simply because they were slender. All that was well and good, but you forget the most… prominent part of her anatomy: the spider abdomen. It was big, bigger than her human body by a small margin. And she wasn’t exactly making sure she didn’t bump into anything.
Still, the Mimehound (that actually sounded good. Yes, that would be its name from now on!) wasn’t looking for her. He was concentrated on the easy prey in front of him.
A girl who hadn’t noticed him, had been bitten, was losing delicious blood all over the forest ground, and was clearly marked.
Now, you may be wondering, why was this Mimehound, whose actual name in this world was Rainbow Imitators (yes, that’s the actual name, do not ask why, nobody knows or dares to answer), alone? Wasn’t it some kind of wolf? The answer is: yes. But, since this is a fantasy story, it doesn’t make sense! Now, while we repair the fourth wall, let us explain.
Rainbow Imitators, which will, from now on, be called Mimehound because it sounds way better, are a particular species of wolves that live alone. They are deceivers who mimetize with the colorful forest around them. It is because of their very nature that they do not trust each other. So they prefer to live alone and attack each other if they meet. They have a tendency to stay very still in a place, going as far as not moving for two whole days. Because of that they’ve since been dubbed ‘Forest Mimics’. A very appropriate title. Luckily for every adventurer outside the forest of Tusca, they were very territorial and didn’t like leaving the place they chose to call home.
If you’re wondering how these animals reproduce if they’re so solitary, well, as with many things in nature, rape and law of the stronger are an easy solution. Let’s not delve deeper now, shall we?
When they eventually found prey, they tried to bite any part of them as a means of marking them. This way, no other Mimehound would try to catch them. They may be deceivers, but they had honor! Of a sort.
Another detail, which wouldn’t help their survival outside this forest, was their extreme single-mindedness. When they began doing something, they would concentrate only on that, without giving a thought about the world around them.
That was what helped Isse right now.
She ran and, finally, the screaming girl decided to stumble on something. For being so loud and, apparently, stupid, she was extremely agile.
She fell to the ground, hands extended in front of her to at least not hit her face. Not that that would help her if she was devoured by a wolf!
Which, by the way, pounced on her.
She felt the heat of the beast first, then its weight as it landed fully on her back. She tried to move and shove it off, reaching with one of her hands to a knife latched to her waist, but the creature wasn’t stupid. It tried to bite her, and she had to use all of her strength, which was rapidly dwindling away, to keep it from tearing her face off.
That’s when she felt a strange sound, like skittering. Followed by a wet and soft thud.
Followed by the Mimehound suddenly stopping and going slack. Suddenly his full weight, unsupported by the legs, was on her arms, and they buckled.
She shouted and groaned and tried to shove the beast off again. It was still breathing, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon.
Then she heard it again. That skittering sound. And someone, or something, lifted the body slightly and moved it off her.
The girl stared. And was filled with wonder.
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The girl was named Ama. It was a simple name for a simple girl. A name like many, one that wouldn’t be noticed among hundreds of others. Ama liked that about her name. It made her seem unassuming. Inconsequential.
She was all those things. The name just helped hammer it in.
She wasn’t really sociable. She didn’t have many friends. One could say that, outside her own family, she had no one to call a friend. Except for people presented to her by her parents. It was ok. She liked being alone. Sorta. When one had two older brother and a younger sister, the concept of loneliness was nonexistent. Together with the idea of privacy. Not like she had a lot to hide. She was only ten. She wasn’t like her brothers, who’d try to kill her if she snooped around in their rooms.
Which, by the way, she had done. Like any dutiful sister should always do.
Then she’d proceeded to use the knowledge of her brothers’ sins against them, blackmailing into serving her every whim for two entire weeks. Just like any good, dutiful, and slightly opportunistic, sister, should do. She knew her little sister would do the same to her one day. She would be ready when the day came. Her brothers sure as the Stars had failed in getting their revenge on her!
Sometimes she thought about it, and realized that this wasn’t exactly the way a child should be raised. A good parent would’ve probably told her to stop with the blackmailing. Instead, when they’d found out what she was doing, they had laughed and told her to proceed.
That’s who her parents were: fun people, with an easy laugh who put their nose in their scuffles only if things got violent.
Which they had never done. So far.
They’d come to this forest to spend some quality family time. Which meant camping, some walking outside the forest, evening eating animals caught by her mother or father, and night being told old stories. Very old ones. From father’s old book. It was honestly surprising how the thing wasn’t falling apart. Probably the work of Skills.
On their fifth day of camping, Ama had decided to have a walk in the forest. Even after their parents had told them multiple times they were forbidden from doing it, that they’d probably die horribly in pain, devoured by something, or get lost and die of hunger or thirst.
And she’d gone right in!
Notice how in no line so far has anyone said she was smart.
Yeah, well, she wasn’t. Or rather, she was, a lot, but she had no sense of self-preservation. Like all children did at her age. No, wait, that was only a small part of them.
Well, anyways, she had been stupid enough to walk into the forest. Naturally, she’d gotten lost while looking at all those wondrous colors. And naturally, she hadn’t seen the Mimehound.
That’s more or less the reason why she was here now.
Looking a girl in the eyes, noticing how her body was half spider, and staring with wonder as a single, overpowering, thought crossed her mind: That fur looks soft. I want to touch it!
As stated before: no sense of self preservation.
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Isse stared at the human girl.
Ama stared at the arachne.
The former saw that which she desired, which she so would’ve wanted to become in this new world.
The latter saw something new, something she had never seen, only heard about in stories. Bad stories, sure, but told with a sort of nostalgia, of understanding. And the very thing those stories of massacre were about was standing in front of her, sap in hand. And she had saved her life.
"Thank you," she said, because that what good girls do when you save their life.
The arachne smiled and nodded.
She then extended her hand, and Ama took it. The arachne lifted her off the ground, then shook her hand, smiling all the while. Ama shook back, her grip firm. She was still looking at the half spider with wonder in her eyes.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Dumb question. She should’ve asked her name.
Isse, on her part, smiled at the girl and motioned at her mouth. Then she tried to speak, only managing to produce a little shriek as the air passed through her throat and moved through her still too rigid vocal chords. It would still take a while before she managed to speak properly. Makira said it would take another week at least. Then they could gossip together. Isse wasn’t sure if she couldn’t wait or if she feared the moment.
"You can’t speak?"
A nod.
"But you can understand me."
Another nod.
Then she looked around and found a stick in the ground. She used it as a sort of pen, and wrote in the ground her name in Irevian.
Ama, on her part, watched in fascination as the arachne in front of her drew something in the ground.
Slowly, she walked behind her and looked at things from her perspective. She also reached up with her hand and patted the girl’s spider half. It was as soft as she’d expected.
Isse jolted, then turned towards her, and Ama just smiled sheepishly, not removing her hand.
The arachne made a sound like chuckling, then shook her head, and went back to writing, her smile only bigger.
In the end, she finished. And Ama read her name. Or tried to.
"You write horribly, you know that?"
She said as she looked up at the girl who, in turn, crossed her arms and scoffed, as if trying to say 'You try writing with a stick'. Which, truth be told, was easy. Isse just sucked at it. Sucked at writing in general. She was new to this language, okay? She had that excuse!
"I-S-Z-E. Isze?"
The arachne shook her head, then tried rewrote the second S.
"Isse?"
She nodded.
This is going surprisingly well.
Yes it was.
"Are you an arachne?"
She nodded.
"Will you try to hurt me?"
She shook her head vehemently, her hair flying around.
Ama seemed thoughtful, then nodded.
"I am Ama. Wanna be friends?"
And that is how, on Burei the 27th, during the month of Landorf, a human and an arachne, for the first time in millenia, became friends.
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We should kill her.
We won’t. I don’t want to.
She’s going to tell her parents, and we’re all gonna have to fight.
She won’t. Trust me
Siidi sighed. Then, after a moment, she said.
We really should. But even I don’t want to. Too much innocence in her.
So the heartless [Warrior] has a soft spot for kids.
Shut up!
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"Mum! Dad! I made a new friend!"
That’s how Ama began the conversation with her parents when she arrived back at camp. Back at camp, where the whole family was preparing for an expedition deep into the woods to try to find her.
When they saw her, they all had different reactions: her mother began crying in relief, her father fell to the ground, then proceeded to hug his wife, her brothers sighed in relief, then shouted as they ran to hug her, and her little sister just stared without understanding what was happening. She was three years old after all.
"Where were you?" asked her mother when she finally managed to calm down.
"I was with my new friend! And with a big bad wolf that changed color. But my friend killed it."
Isse had, in fact, killed the Mimehound. She’d broken its neck with her improvised weapon.
Her parents stared at her in disbelief. Who could possibly be in that forest?
"And where’s your friend?"
"She’s back in the forest!"
Now that was strange.
"And who was this friend of yours?"
"Oh, she was this big spider! She was so soft! And friendly!"
Her parents froze for a moment. Then laughed. A spider. Their daughter had made friends with a spider of all things. She really must be starved for company, they thought.
Luckily for Isse and her whole clan, that’s how Ama had described her. Had she added just another word, like ‘half-’, and things... wouldn't have changed actually. Not with Ama's family. But that's another story, maybe for another time.
Instead, now her parents believed that a spider had fallen on top of a Rainbow Imitator, scared it, and then stayed with her for a while.
"Her name is Isse!"
She’d even named the spider!
"Good, Ama, very good. But you should be making more friends among humans, first. Spiders can come later, ok?"
Ama nodded.
Two days later, she and her family went back home. She wouldn’t see Isse for a long time afterwards. But they’d both treasure that afternoon of swinging on swings made of spidersilk.