When Isse woke up next morning sandwiched between her two favorite sisters, she felt different.
She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it felt as if she was more… whole? Like she’d had a wound inside that she couldn’t feel up until then, and now she was healed. More herself than she’d been since she’d arrived in this world.
It made no sense though. She’d done nothing special yesterday other than training with Grandmother in her soul, and if anything that grueling training should’ve ripped her apart. As for Siidi, she didn’t know what had transpired with her. She only knew that her soul half had been extremely tired when they’d finished up and had gone to ‘sleep’ immediately after they were out.
Still…
Siidi, did you do something?
The voice in her mind didn’t answer immediately. First she heard a giant and very unladylike yawn, followed by the sound of a mouth smacking, before she said: Good morning. As for the answer, I did.
She didn’t say anything else and Isse saw, in her mind’s eye, that she was stretching. She knew it was all for show: she was a construct in her mind with no physical body, after all. It was all just a memory of routine.
Care to elaborate?
Well, I may or may not have bound our souls together better.
Isse blinked in her sleep-addled state, and it wasn’t to get the sand out of her eyes, although she managed to do that too.
That not only doesn’t elaborate on anything, it also scares the shit out of me.
Ok, first, rude! Second, I just sort of bridged the gap between our souls. You are a bit more like me and I am a bit more like you. Also, now I can feel my everything hurting, so I’m regretting it already.
The hell does that mean?
You mean Airm. And yesterday I met one of Grandmother’s old friends who, apparently, was ordered to teach me a lesson on soul fighting by beating the shit out of me.
…Did you learn the lesson?, asked Isse. For a moment there she had been about to ask if it had hurt, but obviously it had.
Ha, cute. You not wanting to ask stupid questions. Yes, it hurt. A lot. Still hurts right now, seeing how I’m more like you. The pleasures of having a physical body! Please don’t tell me I’ll have to eat and shit, I’ve yet to find a single toilet in our Mind Palace.
Anyways, she finished her little tangent, I did it. Learned the first lesson at least. And all I got was a jacket for the trouble.
..What?
Look.
Isse did. She looked, with her mind’s eye, at Siidi. And gaped in the waking world as she saw her soul half wearing her old, beloved, jacket. It looked worn, like it had the day when she’d died. Loved all her life, even after she had outgrown it. Her parents had never understood why she was so bound to that little garment. To them, it was just a jacket, one she couldn’t even wear. To her, though, it was days of playing around in the cold of winter or among the autumn leaves. It was hundreds of smiles and chuckles and laughter by the bucketful. It was climbing a tree and making her dad worry about it (although, again, there was something strange about that memory. She had always been so good at climbing. It was like her legs were stuck to the wood).
It was, all in all, her most beloved possession. And seeing Siidi wear it made her want to cry in both joy and nostalgia.
Now don’t get all emotional about this. If you cry I’ll also feel like crying, and I’m supposed to be the big strong warrior.
Isse sniffed back the snot in her nose and nodded: Sorry.
Nothing to be sorry about. You weren’t expecting it, is all.
And that was when Makira appeared over her, her smile slightly concerned.
“Is everything okay dearie? You’ve yet to rise up. And your sisters aren’t going to leave you alone.”
Isse hadn’t noticed because of the storm of emotions inside, but all her other sisters had woken up and skittered down from their perches in the trees. All, except for her, Anda and Sila, who were, in order, being hugged and hugging. Sila could’ve left, naturally, but she’d decided against leaving her favorite sisters.
In that moment, Isse had a very evil thought: what if she decided to test out one of her new Skills? She hadn’t had the chance to do so since she’d last Leveled two days prior and was extremely curious.
Well, you know what they say, curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought it back, she thought to herself as she disentangled one hand from the snuggling Anda and reached out towards Makira. The arachne, foolishly!, reached out as if to shake the spiderling’s hand, maybe lift her from the very comfortable hammock she slept in. Instead, when the two touched, Isse activated her Skill: [Touch: Transfer Emotion].
And she felt empty. Up until she’d used the Skill she had felt nostalgic with a hint of bitterness and sadness. Three emotions, which didn’t seem like much, but together they created one of the most complex cocktails of emotions one could ever imagine.
And now there was nothing. Just… a void. For a moment, Isse felt like she imagined dead people felt. She stared into the darkness and the darkness didn’t stare back, for she knew for certain that there was nothing in there that could.
Of course, she was wrong.
The emptiness came, it stayed for but a few seconds, and then panic took its place as Isse and Siidi shat their hearts out their spinnerets because they thought they’d somehow broken themselves.
Then came the relief as they realized everything was just fine.
All in all, in the space of two seconds they’d gone through four emotional states and they decided in unison not to test out that rollercoaster again. Ever.
Meanwhile Makira’s smile had become waxy as, suddenly, emotions that distinctly weren’t hers flooded her mind, making her feel things she knew she wasn’t supposed to feel in this situation. She, obviously, didn’t like this. At all. Especially the nostalgia and sadness. She’d experienced enough of that in the past, after she’d been the last survivor of her clan.
It was wrong in many ways and, for once, after the foreign emotions had disappeared into nothingness, she decided to let her anger out. Just a tiny bit.
She reached down towards a quite panic stricken Isse and, faster than the eye could see, she snatched the spiderling’s ear and pulled.
“Now there, Issekina Silksoul, here’s your first and last warning. You may be a prodigy when it comes to Soul Magic, but no amount of ‘being good’ excuses one testing out a Skill on another person without asking. Do you understand, Issekina?”
Isse, for her part, shrieked in pain and fright while Siidi cursed in her mind as she, too, felt her soul half’s pain.
Still, the spiderling managed to answer in the affirmative.
“Good. Because if I ever hear from anyone, be it one of your sisters or another arachne, that you tested a Skill on them before asking, kindly, to do so, I will come looking, I will find you, and I will spank your little abdomen so much you won’t be able to keep the spidersilk inside yourself, understood?”
Isse nodded again, which was a bit of a mistake since Makira was still pulling at her ear, but at the moment she couldn’t see herself talking.
“Good. Now, down, the lot of you.”
She crossed her arms and watched as Isse and her sisters rapidly skittered down and away from her.
When they were out of sight and hearing range, she sighed.
She had not liked doing what she’d done, but it was important that the little spiderling there learn the lesson. Some things were just unacceptable. And while she could’ve just explained things calmly to her, she knew that, now, she wasn’t going to be doing that anytime soon, if ever. After all, ‘fear the anger of the calm woman’, as they say. And Makira was, if not calm, always cheerful and, seemingly, without a care in the world.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
She climbed down the tree. Another day, another job well done.
----------------------------------------
Isse was not what you would call a ‘positive person’.Oh, sure, she liked to smile and have fun and not worry about things like everyone else, but that didn’t mean anything. When things were said and done, she tended to have a grim view of life and how things worked.
That’s why, after what had happened this morning, she expected things to begin going downhill.
What she hadn’t expected was for Grandmother to dismiss her when she arrived for her morning lesson and, instead, tell her to go visit Arunielle, the [Seamstress] who’d crafted the dress she was wearing.
“Why?”
“She has completed a commission. It is for you. You are to see it and appreciate it,” and then she went back to staring into absolute nothingness, like she always did whenever she wasn’t talking to her or Makira. She wondered for a moment if there was anyone else who could get the elder’s attention, but dismissed the question as unimportant.
A few minutes later she reached Aru’s clearing and, as always, remained transfixed for a while.
The place had changed since she last was here: no longer was there a wolf carcass near a tree: now, in its place, a silken ribcage stood, with a silken skull that looked nothing like a wolf’s abandoned nearby. The birds in the trees had built a nest out of little straws and twigs, decorating it with small bones taken from the wolf’s paws. Little eggs were being incubated by a colorful bird that reminded her of a parrot with a too big beak.
The family of rabbits had expanded, now that the predator hunting them had been killed, many small cutesy bunnies playing with each other wearing straw hats and pirate hats. That made her chuckle a little.
The trees had also changed, the leaves just as colorful as ever, only… brighter? And slash or duller? As if the leaves couldn’t quite decide what to do with themselves.
Autumn is getting closer, and it seems our dear Aru wants it to show, said Siidi with a smile in her voice.
Speaking of the devil: Aru was, as always, working at her table at the edge of the clearing, many little spiders made of spidersilk and just as colorful as the forest around her climbing all over the piece of furniture’s legs and making small webs.
“Hello!” said Isse, her voice low. It seemed nearly sacrilegious to speak in this place of art and beauty.
Aru stopped what she was doing, turning around to see who had disturbed her… and smiling when she saw it was one of the little ones.
“Hello Isse! How nice to see you again! Come here, come here, I’ve got something just for you!” she beckoned her over, tussling Isse’s hair when she arrived.
On the table, as expected, was a dress. It was a beautiful yet simple design: the bodice was a bright green to make her eyes and hair stand out, with short puffy sleeves that reached just over her elbow, a root and branch motif embroidered all over. The back was conservative, showing only a small amount of skin.
What surprised her slightly was the presence of a skirt instead of the flap that she’d learned was typical in their culture. Which made sense, seeing how difficult it would be for, well, anyone, to make a skirt that could cover an arachne’s abdomen. Also, it would be extremely uncomfortable and get in the way of her movements.
So you can well imagine her surprise when she saw just that.
“Um… Aru, I simply love this dress but… I don’t think I’ll manage to wear it. The skirt is too small.”
Aru, for her part, just smiled one of the biggest smiles Isse had ever seen her smile, and tutted: “Isse, remember this: always trust your seamstress. Do you think I’d spend a month crafting something you couldn’t wear?”
Well, that was true, but still, she couldn’t see herself wearing that incredible dress. If only she were still human…
“Come on, spiderling, try it. You will be surprised,” that smile was only growing.
Well, nothing to lose. Apart from the seams, that is, agreed Siidi.
Isse sighed, but agreed with her and, after a moment, took the beautiful dress in her hands and began putting it on, wiggling her head of relatively ruly hair inside and out of the hole at the top. She began pulling the dress down and felt… nothing. No constriction around her spider abdomen, no seams straining and breaking. She danced a gig with her spider legs and felt them move around freely under the skirt, touching only slightly the fabric as if there was an impossible amount of space underneath.
She looked down.
And shrieked, falling to the ground. She had legs! Two normal, human, legs! She was human aga -
Oh, wait, no. She counted, and came up with six too many legs. Right. Still an arachne. No magical dress that turns you into a human. But the point was, she looked human. The dress fell around her waist and reached down to the ground, covering her feet and her spider abdomen completely, but it didn’t deform to show it. It was just… flat. As if underneath there was only a set of human legs.
“H - How is this possible?” she asked, staring transfixed at the place where her very monstrous parts should’ve been. Siidi was silent as well, surprised beyond belief.
“I’m a [Seamstress] dear, if it’s clothes I can do anything!” her smile had turned proud and satisfied.
And she wasn’t surprised when the little spiderling hugged her with all the strength in her growing muscles. She was already trying to predict how much the girl in front of her still had to grow, a simple job for someone with her set of Skills. Isse was a growing girl, sure, but in probably two weeks she’d hit what passed for pubert with arachne, have her final growth spurt, and then settle down comfortably into her body.
She was curious, in the same way that a man watching an imbecile handle a grenade was, to see how she’d fare during that final period of changes.
Already the girl was at a heigth of one meter and fifty. If all went well, she’d come close to a meter and ninety. And afterwards, who knew. Arachne never really stopped growing. The more they lived, the more they grew. Slowly, sure, but the numbers went up. That was how Grandmother had reached her… imponent heigth.
“THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!” shouted Isse into the hug while Siidi laughed in joy in her head.
Aru was considered by many one of the oldest arachne in their clan. Older than Makira, older than their local [Alcoholist]. Her Skills and the way she worked her craft made her feel even older to the others. Yet, at the same time, she was sort of like a ghost. A presence in the background that didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things.
People went to her all the time to get their clothes fixed or to commission new ones, and they were always grateful. But never on this level. They didn’t see the work that went behind even the simplest dress, the passion she put in each and every one of them. They just saw the finished product and its beauty.
This little one though: she’d come to her when she’d been desperate. She’d watched her work filled with childlike curiosity, learning from her even, if the little designs on the clothes she wore that weren’t the dress she’d gifted to her previously were anything to go by. She saw in her someone to look up to, someone that was important.
And it warmed Aru’s heart in a way she hadn’t felt since Makira had joined their clan, arriving bloodied and broken, her mind halfway towards that Red, creeping, insanity that would’ve destroyed her together with those she deemed to be her enemies.
She hugged Isse back and tried not to cry.
In the end, they were separated by someone coughing behind them.
They both turned and saw… a rainbow arachne.
Wow, didn’t know we could come in such a palette, Siidi whistled in appreciation.
The arachne who’d just entered the clearing was a spectacle for the eyes: the fur on her spider half had been painted all the colors of the rainbow and then some, leaving not a single hair of her original color visible. Meanwhile the hair on her head had been painted a solid, eyesearing, pink. Her eyes, on the contrary, were a deep brown that clashed horribly with her sunshine yellow dress.
“Hello Pochi,” said Aru with a guilty smile on her face.
“Hello Aru!” she waved hello, smiling herself. Isse was also sure she was blushing a little, probably embarassed for having interrupted the moment.
“I see you gave the little one her dress. Looks like she liked it,” she added, trying to divert the situation to any other argument.
“YES!” shouted Isse, “We love it!”
Ok ok, calm the fuck down, I never said I loved it - oh who am I kidding, I love it.
Isse chuckled like a girl hearing a joke from the boy she liked, putting her hand in front of her mouth.
“Good good. Wanna bring it for a test run?” asked Pochi, a devious little smile on her face.
Isse’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she heard that.
“Really?”
Instead of answering, Pochi moved her hand towards a pouch at her side, managing to fit her entire arm in what, she realized, was a bag of holding. A few seconds later she took out a long dress that looked just like the one Isse was wearing, only in yellow.
She unceremoniously shrugged out of the one she was wearing, exposing her breastband, before putting it on.
Wow, girl is stacked.
Siidi seemed to appreciate the spectacle.
I didn’t take you for a lesbian Siidi.
Ha, foolish girl. But you’ll understand soon. Here’s how I always saw it: boys are for eating, girls are for loving.
…What?
As I said, you’ll understand soon.
That wasn’t ominous at all.
Isse looked away from her inner conversation back to Pochi. And found herself looking at a quite stunning woman in the prime of her life. Her hair was still as pink as ever, but her dress had shifted color, from the clashing yellow to a technicolor nightmare that would probably give a stroke to any clothes designer worth their Class. And yet it fit her perfectly.
She tugged at one of Aru’s sleeves: “Why can’t I change color too?”
“Because we don’t know if you’ll like walking among the humans. I’m not going to put in the extra effort for a Shifting Fabric like hers only for you to say you’d rather stay in the forest with the others all the time.”
“What’s not to like about humans?” she felt a little offended on behalf of the race she was once a part of.
“Well, they are violent, lack manners, are perverts -”
“Not like we can’t be all of those things, especially the last one,” added Pochi as she finished setting the dress in place.
“- they’re touchy for all the wrong places and, most important of all, they’d kill you on sight if they understood what you really are.
“Still, Grandmother said that everyone must be given the choice. So far Pochi was the only one who agreed to this. Spent a few years away learning to be a [Strategist], somehow managing not be discovered, and then came back as her much more colorful self.”
“Hey! I had a realization during my journey!”
“Yeah, that you really missed home,” she chuckled, shooing both of them away.
“Now go and have some fun, or whatever you do among humans.”