PART I

The Veils of the Setting Sun found the corpse of the specter. It was not so far deep in the cave, but while the rain was harsh and beat down outside, it failed to reach the corpse.

Fly found it sprawled on the ground, face up. She drew her lantern closer, warming its heat to its chest. “He is missing a heart, does he not, sister?” It was not a question.

Infecta knelt down solemnly. “He was handsome,” she said. “And with a pretty voice. I’m certain he has a heart here somewhere,” she touched its gaping chest. “It’s a shame he died so quickly.”

“As they should. It is only proper.” The veil slipped her knife off the scabbard. Her cloak billowed in all directions from the chill wind, rustling the light of her lamp, casting long shadows. “Come now. There’s no pretty face left to gawk at.”

“I have no doubt of your astute observation sister, but let me reminisce,” Infecta chewed on her lip. “I can’t seem to remember his face.”

Fly ignored her. She placed the lamp next to the specter, wondering how this man came to be. With dexterous and expert fingers, she sliced off his skin, and began to lick the blood gently, which was thickened and aged, and smelled as much as dead cheese dripping in grease. A fly landed on her nose. She paused, then smiled. Flies pop with its juice in your mouth, and she had a very deft tongue.

Infecta continued to inspect the missing heart, without pleasure. “He told me, upon his death, that he would never yield his heart to anyone but the veils. Now he’s dead, and his promise is only as good as his corpse. Sister. Can’t you keep your stomach on a tight leash?”

“I have. Would you care to join me?” Fly looked up to see her sister’s unpleasant face. “Our journey’s as unpleasant as your face, sister. The roads were tenuous and brittle. My robes wore down to faded grey, while I forced myself to swallow those vile swamp water and carrion corpse. I am no less than a weed as you are. I am a flower, and flowers require certain elements and standards to uphold. Are we in a hurry?”

“I would prefer it so,” she said. “I don’t like this cave. It’s too dark.”

“As caves tend to be, yes. Did the darkness disarm your reason?”

Infecta picked up the lamp and looked around, refusing to rise to the bait. It was a small cave, with eggs from spiders, insects. When she raised the lamp overhead, she saw red, glowing eyes. Blood bats, watching, cautious, hundreds of them. In low whispers, she said, “Let us be done with it in prayer and leave.”

“Shall I burn this cave to the ground? Some of these spiders might turn into weavers.”

“They can?” For a moment her fear was forgotten.

“Spiders, worms, maggots, flies, centipedes. They’ll take the form of their victim to metamorphosize into a combination of forms they’ve acquired. Eventually, they’ll set their eyes on human settlements, and it’ll be a problem for both of us. More unpleasant work. Less beds to sleep in. No more warm fire and clean blankets. Just imagine the horrors.”

Infecta set down the lamp. “And these... weavers. How do they. You know. Handle venom and poison?”

“Ah,” it dawned on Fly. “Yes, they can,” she said, dryly. “If it’s a poisonous pet you want, sister, I know people—“

“—whom shall all demand extravagant prices on animals that are strictly bound to their biological forms.”

“It will please you more, and it will be a gift from me. You can have as many pets as your room can offer, and no other sister will harm you for it. This, I can promise,” she reached for her sister’s hand. “It will be safer, and just as true as any poison.”

“I can have a hundred different pets,” Infecta reasoned. “But not an infant weaver with the blood of a specter’s fresh heart. I believe you’ve forgotten nothing of our terms when I agreed to this journey?”

“I have not. But no one has ever tamed a weaver. If they did, I’ve yet to see one succeed. Sister, this is folly. You’ll doom us to the depths of the nether.”

Infecta brushed her fingers against the lamp. “It’s my poison that keeps us alive, sister,” she said tensely. “It’s my poison they fear, which is why they haven’t yet desecrated our temple. Why they cower at the our feet and refuse to breathe our air.” She stood up, and said, weakly, “They’re not brute men. They will knock on our door and dispell my poison. They will make slaves of our sisters. They will burn our temple down, our tomes and our tradition. There will be nothing left of us, sister. It is only a matter of time.”

“The weavers,” Fly said, gesturing. “They’re snakes with an intelligent skin. They can’t be tamed.”

“It’s not its loyalty nor love I want,” Infecta said. “It’s its power. And once I’m done with it, I’ll burn it. There won’t be a bone left to remember it by.”

“Or it’ll burn us, after it’s all done and over with.” Fly sighed as she took the lamp and raised it around the caves. The flames danced with their shadows in the walls. “Very well. I hope your voice of reason is as sharp as you make it out to be. Otherwise, we’ll be food to these weaver of yours.”

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PART II

Call him Dusk. He was our weaver, and he was resting. During the brief time in which he, and his partner, Dawn, descended on each other in filthy brawls, sleep had taken over as the priority of their functions. They were asleep more than they were awake. As an attempt to each other’s safety, they constructed cocoons for themselves in a small crevice of the cave, skin to skin, mildly aware that they could be attacked by predators.

When Dusk left his cocoon, he was a different specie of spiders. The heart of the specter morphed his body to accomodate his growing soul. A spider would not suffice. It did not suffice now. A human body was the its ideal, but it was because the soul was accustomed to it; in fact, the intelligent mind was its necessity above all. When that time comes, tell me you’ll miss my voice, why don’t you?

Communication had been a necessity for evolution. His eyes were more expressive in their eyelids to clearly signal his expressions. His vocal cords developed an imperfect ability of mimicking voices, while his mandibles split into flexible sharp points to assist it. His limbs were sleeker, but he was just as agile. He could fit into the palm of your hand and you could turn him into a pet; an ideal arachne human companion. Arachnophobes would squirm at your feet.

But if he was fast, Dawn was faster. She was smaller than him but her limbs were sharper, her mandibles could crack hard shells, and she was, as Dusk would intuitively describe it, smarter. But she was less curious than him, and would rather lounge in their cocoons if he did not so much as move, and he would never hear a screeching complaints. She had become very vocal about leaving their nests.

Dawn would follow him into their hunts for centipedes. She would join him up their climbs over the walls or drink in a small stream in the cave. He would often find preys to attack first, or eggs of other arachnes, but it was Dusk who would leap into the fray, eat the eggs, and narrowly escape the fangs of their hunt. She would skitter back to Dawn, and by then Dawn had learned to accomodate for her recklessness by setting up traps to immobilize their prey.

He was curious, and often lead their travels near the blood bats or the centipede nests or other arachne homes. He would find narrow spots to set up their traps, and he would wait. He was weaker than his partner, and he did not like it.

When Dawn returned she did so with hard-shelled beetles that skittered into his floor traps. She did not know of the trap, but she reacted instinctively and jumped into the wall. Then, they both descended on their kill.

When they rested on their own cocoons facing each other, Dusk expressed his desire to set up traps near the beetles’ nest by gesturing to their direction with a web.

Dawn stared, hard. She had as much expressive abilities to communicate and she never deigned to use it. Instead, she expressed her dissastisfaction she knows best: sending him a pheromone spit. It would be an invitation to mate, but it irritated him, and she knew that.

Dangerous, she signaled. No more danger. We stay here.

He chittered angrily. He did not want to mate, he signaled. He knew she would eat him once they were done, and his newfound instinct rejected that very notion.

She looked at him as if he was stupid, turned away, then shut her cocoon.

They were surrounded by an intricate design of webs around each other, one for passing preys and the other to communicate. At several clicks of his limbs on the webs Dusk informed her that he would hunt. Don’t come, he signaled. Rest.

He waited for a reply, but none came, so he left.

At this point, Dusk was aware that without Dawn’s cooperation, his survival would be much harder. He remembered their first meeting and her offer to be a partner. He would do the same now, as way of apology.

He climbed near the blood bats to gauge his target. He looked into deeper streams, followed the ants to dead insects, marked places unfamiliar with webs. He was very cautious.

He found his hunt eventually. It was another spider, a giant, we would call them, being twice as large, and with stronger fangs and destructive limbs. They had encountered one before, and Dawn signaled him to run away when she first saw them. Since then, she would never let him near their nests. Now that he was alone, he could benefit from a stronger body with his next metamorphosis. He needed better meals than rats and eggs, and his instincts believed he could be better.

Dusk hunted differently alone, and it was rare that he did. When the giant spider noticed him, it noticed his webs too, dangling and stretched too thin. It cautiously walked closer, watching him. It was sensing a trap when it experimented his webs. Dusk realized it had fought other spiders before.

The giant spider snapped a web string. And then another. Dusk moved back, slowly, while the giant got progressively more and more aggressive. And then, sensing the fragileness of his webs, it sprinted.

There was never any chance that Dusk could escape the giant. He was very weak, and when he retreated, he was twice as slow. But the giant spider was dumb, and he was smart, and he knew that. The giant sprang one web and then another, until each string thickened in shape, and slowed it down to almost a halt. It realized its mistake, backed away, and found its prey missing.

By then Dusk had disappeared, bit the spider on its belly, and transferred his venom inside. He could not fight as Dawn would fight, but he was very proud of himself for taking the time to scramble his traps. He ate its legs and abdomen, and when he was full, he went back to his home carrying a web-wrapped head as an apology.

Food. Food here, he signaled, dropping the head into her web. Then, hastily adding, Partner?

Dusk moved closer to her cocoon. It was empty. Several of her webs hung like loose threads on the wind. His head formed a connection between, ‘she just left’ to ‘danger’ in a span of a second. He looked around. She was smarter than him, he told himself, so she would leave something behind if she was in danger.

There was a thin thread extending past the crevice. He followed the thread, until light broke through, and her web extended into the moving light. It was two unfamiliar giants holding a small wooden box, waving lightly at the palm of their hand, and a faint screeching of a voice he never heard before, but was sure it was his partner.

Dusk considered his options, which was to save her, or to hunt by himself. It was never an option. He knew the risk, so he ignored her, and tried to adapt hunting on his own. He would cut his losses and adapt accordingly, as per the specter’s heart guided him to do.

He watched as the light faded into the distance, wondering if she expected him to save her. And here, he felt, at the corners of his soul, an aching of guilt. He chose to listen to it, and sprinted hastily across the walls to save her.