Her name was…
It doesn’t matter anymore! said the little voice in her head.
…Right. Well, anyways, she was dreaming. There was no other way to put it. She was certain of it. Like, come on! How could any of this be real? The trees all around her were so green that they redefined the concept of the color green. If she put her arm under the sun, she could feel summer’s heat not so gently touching her skin. And she was quite sure it was autumn when she’d… fallen asleep!
Oh oh! And if that wasn’t enough, there was the part where the lower half of her body was that of a giant spider!!!
Would you shut up?
Again, that little voice. Yep, she was definitely dreaming. She was actually in her hospital bed, half dead, having the upgraded version of a fever dream! Give her a few minutes, or hours, and she would wake up, her parents by her side, the doctors saying that it had been a close call but that now all was well. Maybe they’d say she was starting to get better, that they’d found a cure and she would soon be going back home. Yes, that’s exactly what was going to happen!
Again, would you shut up? And stop spouting nonsense.
She tried to shut the voice out of her mind. Had she known how, she would’ve crossed her legs and started meditating. Problem was, in this dream she had eight legs, which made the action a bit more complicated.
She tried anyway, just for the sake of it.
Blah blah blah! Don’t you dare shut me up you little thief! This is not a dream and you’re not supposed to be here.
Well, at least she and the voice in her head (which, she now noticed, had a distinctly different pitch to hers) agreed on that last part.
Yeah, right, see, you’re not stupid, now, please, would you leave and give me back what you stole!?
Would you shut up!
Finally, she had enough, and screamed back at the voice.
Unfortunately, she didn’t pay attention, and did that not only in her head, but with her mouth as well.
Fortunately, the only thing that came out of her mouth was a little high pitched screech that sounded a bit combative. A nearby arachne heard that, looked at her, and cooed:
“Ooohhhh, look at her! She’s got the spirit!”
Then went to tell the other women about it with a big smile on her face.
Well, now, that was underwhelming. Deep down, she felt the slightest bit offended.
Finally, her majesty the thief of bodies acknowledges me!
What the hell do you mean by that?
She thought back. Of all the things she had expected to be doing in a fever dream, talking to a voice in her head that accused her of having stolen a body was… well, it wasn’t actually at the bottom of the list. At the very bottom was ‘having a tea party with her math teacher while amiably playing chess with Cersei Lannister’.
Yes, that was actually in her list. Yes, she had a lot of free time in the hospital, how did you guess?
The more I dig into your memories, the stranger it gets. Who the hell is this Cersei Lann… oh, nevermind, found the information. Jeez, that’s some twisted shit you’ve got here.
… Wait a moment!
Are you looking into my memories?
Duh, of course I am. You’ve stolen my body, this is the bare minimum.
I didn’t steal your body! If it wasn’t clear enough, I was in a hospital up until a few minutes ago. No, scratch that, I’m still there. I haven’t left my bed in months. How, for the love of god, do you think I managed to walk away, go to some cemetery, dig up a body, and steal it? No, even better, why? Actually, wait a moment, why am I even arguing with a voice in my head? None of this is real.
Who ever said you stole a dead body? You stole a live one. This one. My body. And please, stop saying this isn’t real. It is.
Our nameless protagonist was about to come up with some witty comeback that would prove none of this was real, but was stopped in her tracks by a ripping sound, followed by the sound of something rolling, followed by the sensation of something hitting her spider half at what felt like terminal velocity, and taking her down. Cherry on top, the thing kept giggling the whole time.
What do they say where you come from? Oh, right, STRIKE!
She fell to the ground face first, the legs of her spider half curling up around her body protectively. Which nearly caused her to start rolling herself.
She immediately turned around and stood on shaky legs. They weren’t strong enough to carry her whole weight yet. She looked down at the giggling thing that had hit her and, of course, it was another arachne. This one had short black hair, her big eyes, which were staring at her, of the same color. It was like staring into the void, while the void stared back, only without all the existential horror that should have caused. She looked down and saw that her spider half was also black. The kind of black that on earth could only be imagined while staring for long enough at a shade of blue. Was it stygian blue? Something like that.
Then she noticed another detail. Something that hadn’t crossed her mind until that moment. The little arachne was naked. And covered in slime. That wasn’t the problem. Or rather, it was. For her. Because, she realized, if the little girl, who had just come out of an egg, was naked, then she, as well, was naked.
The realization hit her hard. She felt her face burn as she covered herself with her hands, her spider legs wrapping around her lower body again, as if trying to cover something of which location she was not sure.
The little arachne girl’s eyes seemed, impossibly, to widen even more, as she observed her first case of ‘tomatification’, and seemed so satisfied she started to laugh. Which was more akin to an insect’s chittering.
Feels pretty real to me.
Said the voice in her head. And oh, the amount of smugness in her tone.
Before another mind-discussion could begin, an adult arachne walked over (Let’s call it walking for the sake of my fraying sanity) and noticed the two.
"Already making friends?"
She was the same arachne who had stopped her a few minutes ago. The smile was still there. If anything, it was wider. Happier.
Then she glanced down at the girl covering herself, and an eyebrow shot up in amusement and, if that was possible, questioningly.
"You a shy one, eh?"
----------------------------------------
She didn’t know how long she stayed there, looking around as more little arachne broke out of their eggs, rolling out and, usually, being stopped by the adults before they hit something. Or someone.
The Smiling Woman, as she had decided to call her, was always there, examining the little ones, playing with them, and gossiping with the few other women that passed by sometimes. Her energy seemed endless.
And, all the while, our nameless protagonist kept walking around, looking at the world around her. For a fever dream, she thought, this was very detailed. She had realized that what she believed were oaks and birches were not, in fact, those trees. Not all of them. The leaves weren’t right, being far too large and segmented. And that’s without taking into consideration the bark’s color: in some places it was a bright, almost artificial, red, while in others it changed to dark blue and even black.
The impression it gave her was that a bored kid had just decided to paint all those trees every color of the rainbow and then some.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
All the while, her new friend kept following her around, looking as much at the forest around her as the chestnut haired girl in front of her, those black eyes peering a hole in her skull. She looked curious, almost amazed at all the things around her. Which was fair, considering everything was new to her, a newborn.
Ah, I had missed these sights.
The moment would have been perfect, wasn’t it for the little voice in her head.
Yeah, yeah, it really looks good and all. Let me guess, now you’re gonna tell me I should appreciate the sight and all that, right?
She answered back.
You said it yourself. It’s not every day you can look at the world as if it was new to you.
You talk as if this wasn’t for you.
It shouldn’t, but since you had to take my place in my body things went wrong and now I can still remember things about… before. Details, forms, random images. All in all, it makes this place look familiar and old. And that sensation isn’t helped by the oceanic amount of cynicism and excuses about this not being real in here.
Because this isn…
Stop saying it’s not real. You feel the ground under your feet, you’re seeing and touching those trees and their leaves, and that girl is creeping you out with her staring. Which, by the way, is a natural thing. You should be doing that too, instead of walking around with legs that are not yet ready to completely sustain your weight.
And, as if on cue, her legs gave out under her. She didn’t feel tired, she just felt like they were incapable of moving anymore. Immediately, the girl following her sat down beside her and kept looking, reaching out a hand to touch her very short hair, while she went for her spider half with the other.
She felt like recoiling, but the sensation of the hand on her spider half wasn’t that unpleasant. Tentatively, she moved her hand towards the other girl’s spider half, and touched. It felt, well, silky. The layer of black hairs covering her wasn’t unlike a cat’s fur, if a bit more stingy.
See, not so difficult. Let your instincts take over and feel like a child.
She recoiled as the thought struck her.
The other girl physically drooped a bit as she saw her reaction, her eyes sad.
Out of guilt at seeing her like that, she went back to caressing her, and immediately she brightened up and went to hug her. She bristled, but didn’t have the heart to push her away.
That’s how the Smiling Woman found them.
"Oh, look at you two!!! Already soulmates, and you’ve just hatched! This is a sign!"
She laughed in delight and went to hug them both, somehow managing to lift the both of them. For how small she looked, the arachne was incredibly strong.
She put them down, then nodded.
"Well, I wish I could leave you be like this, but it’s time. You and the other little ones are gonna meet our boss around here!"
She chuckled and turned around, taking them both by the hands, leading them somewhere.
"Don’t worry. She’s a bit grumpy, and old, and she can be scary, but she’s good. Most of the time. When it’s not a Grasei. That’s a day of the week by the way. She seems to dislike that day in particular. But today is not that day so that’s not gonna be a problem. Oh, and she’s gonna do the most important thing of all: she’s going to give you a name!"
If she had had any doubt about the Smiling Woman’s endless amount of energy, she no longer had any. In the five minutes it took them to reach a clearing where they stopped she never shut up once.
I’ve yet to hear her take a single breath. Does she have some kinda Skill? [Expanded Lungs]?
...What?
Oh, right, Skills, Levels, Classes, it’s all new to…
The voice in her head stopped dead in her tracks. Which… was understandable.
The dark clearing they were in was, well, white. Spider silk covered every single tree and most of the ground, creating something that felt like a moquette under her feet.
When she looked up she understood why the place was so dark: over her head, stretching from one end of the clearing to the other, was a giant web blocking the sunlight.
But that wasn’t what had stopped both her and the voice in her head. No, that was the giant of a woman calmly, no, coldly, looking their way from the very center of the open space.
She, like all the things around her, was white. As in, her hair, the fur on her spider half, and her very skin, were snow white.
All the hatchlings’ mouths were hanging open. The giggling that had followed them while walking here had stopped completely, the clearing falling in a reverential silence as even the trees stopped moving in the slight wind.
The giant spider woman looked from left to right at all the little arachne, her gaze reminiscent of that of a general examining their troops before a grand battle. Then, she sighed.
"Are you already talking their ears off Makira?"
The Smiling Woman, Makira, smiled widely and shrugged.
"I’m preparing the little ones, Grandma. They’re usually scared when they first meet you, so I tried to reassure them that you’re not some kind of evil spirit."
The white arachne, who was, it seemed, Makira’s grandma, crinkled one side of her mouth up, then went back to being serious, as if that was too much effort.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Give their poor ears some peace and make them walk closer. My eyes are good, but I want to See them, not just look at them."
For some reason she felt like the ‘see’ there had a capital S. How did she know that? She wasn’t sure. It was… an instinct inside her. That new part of her that sometimes took the form of that little voice.
Makira nodded and motioned for the kids to move forwards, smile still on her face. The other women who had followed the little procession just sighed, exasperated.
The old arachne watched with keen eyes the newborn, her face emotionless.
When they stopped a few meters away she nodded.
"I am Grandmother. I have a name, but it’s old, and it never fit me anyways. I won’t make the same mistake with you. Now, without further ado."
…Wait, so Grandma was her actual name? Well, it certainly fit, all things considered.
The white arachne bent down, the human part of her body forming a ninety degree angle with her spider half. Her hair fell down around her face, so long they nearly touched the ground. So long, in fact, that they covered the spiderling she had bent down over, creating the world’s strangest privacy curtain. She stayed in that position for all of one minute, then lifted her head with a nod and went down the line. The girl she left behind had her mouth hanging open in… she didn’t know. Fear? Awe? Surprise?
Grandmother continued on, her face as uncaring as before. And, as she got closer to her, she started hearing something: whispering.
Until, finally, she got to her. She saw the hair falling to cover her, the world becoming a white void where the only other forms of color were the chestnut of her hair and her spider half’s fur and the off white color of the old woman’s face. She looked up, and saw that her pupils, too, were white. She seriously started to wonder if someone had somehow bleached her completely.
Grandmother, on the other hand, looked her up and down. Then her eyes stopped for a moment and stared at something right by her side.
She looked down… and saw her little friend that seemed to be darkness personified (spider-ified? Arachne-ified?). She hadn’t noticed how she hadn’t let go of her hand up until now. She also hadn’t noticed her slight trembling. Was she scared?
Grandmother looked at her, lowering her head further, the hair now touching the ground, and stared her right in the eyes.
"Little one, it is not your turn yet. Let go of your friend and leave us alone. Nothing will happen to her or you. I promise."
Her voice was soft and kind, a complete contrast to the way she had spoken up until now, even though the emotion didn’t reach her eyes. But that wasn’t something arachne kids noticed. On the other hand, our protagonist wasn’t a kid. She was young, sure, but her time spent in the hospital had taught her all there was to know about reading a person’s true feelings. She saw it most when the doctors came in saying that the latest therapy hadn’t worked, and then lied saying it wasn’t a problem, that there were still many chances. She had come to hate those lies and, at some point, even the doctors. Then she had understood it wasn’t their fault, or rather, that they were doing everything in their power and then some.
So, she saw how the kindness in Grandmother’s voice didn’t reach her eyes. Truly, they were… empty. Still, those words were enough to, if not calm, at least convince her friend to let go of her and walk out of the hair curtain.
Then Grandma swept her gaze back towards her. She murmured something inaudible, and her pupils shrunk to literal pinpoints. Then, in a whisper, she spoke.
"Ah, now that’s interesting."
A shiver went down her spine.
The arachne stared at her, craning her neck, looking from every angle.
"Indeed. Unexpected. There are two souls inside you. One old, one new. Has Death decided to increase our numbers further? Or was it something else?"
A pause, as her face came closer.
"Hmmm…. determination, and denial. Intelligence, and chains to the past. Knowledge, and the wisdom to use it right. Yes, you’re quite the package. You have potential."
She stared, those eyes looking deeper and deeper… where? If she didn’t know better, she’d say she was looking at her soul. But that was impossible, right?
For once, the little voice in her head didn’t answer back.
"If… if. Maybe. But first, you’ll have to learn to be one, not two. For that, I name you Issekina, little ones."
The moment the words left Grandmother’s lips, they left an impact. They felt so right. The name, that simple, seemingly nonsensical word, filled her, made her feel complete.
As she moved on, the voice in her head simply said:
Wow, she’s good.
And that was it.
That moment, when she felt the name filling her with certainty, with purpose, she had to accept it. This, all of this, was real. The forest, her spider half, the giant woman seemingly made of snow, the girl beside her who trembled as Grandmother lowered herself to See her, the voice in her head. That was real. It wasn’t a dream.
She had died, and the world had listened to her prayers, giving her a second chance. In another world. As an arachne.
You know what they say: Don’t look a gift pegasus in the mouth.