Baldleg meets the bane of spiders

Subadult Baldleg fixed her filament to the edge of the bench and leapt to the floor. A wiser spider might have lowered herself down the strand, but she was giddy with fun, and taking risks only increased her pleasure.

She had lost count of how many of the legs she had visited, for she had visited more legs than she had legs to count. Still, she knew she had not visited them all.

Now she decided she was ready for another great thrill.

Some of these legs were encased in tight black sheep-​​webs half the way up, and above that was hot, bare skin. She could not slip under the cover of garments until she had crossed the skin, and even then there was only more skin beneath, hot and sensitive despite the near hairlessness of men.

If her friends could see what she had seen, they would call her Baldleg no more – she who had but a single naked shin!

Indeed, if her friends could see what she had done, she might earn a higher rank than Subadult even before her next molt.

Once the man had produced an audible whine, she leapt to the floor again and looked around. She had already visited two of the bald-​​legged men, and while she had passed close to death with the first, she was in search of greater excitement still.

Her master had made it clear that these men on the benches would not smack violently at her with their forelegs, nor rise onto their hindlegs and try to shake her off. For a true risk, she needed one of the men who was already standing.

She climbed to the height of a bench, from which she might leap onto one of them, but she saw to her dismay that the standing men were all covered in the hard, beetle-​​like scales that had nearly crushed her already.

She attached a filament to the bench and leapt into space, glorying in the feeling of the wind in her hairs before she smacked ingloriously onto the floor. Fortunately none of her friends had been near to see that.

She snipped off her safety rope and set forth, strolling boldly past the first eight feet, neither sneaking through shadows nor hurrying through the puddles of colored light. When she reached one and two again, she noticed that these feet belonged to a standing female…

Subadult Baldleg stopped and looked up.

The females tended to produce more satisfying shrieks, but the first one she had visited had proven capable of smacking, in spite of her master’s promises. And this one was already trembling.

Then she saw him. Behind the female was a male: a towering figure, covered with silk as far as her four front-​​seeing eyes could see.

Subadult Baldleg froze for a moment, awestruck, until she thought to lift her feelers in adoration. It would take eight times eight times eight spiders to produce such a web of silk in the lifetime of a spider. And – the most miraculous, unbelievable thing – the silk was green!

She scurried through colored light and scurried through shadows until she reached his hindlegs.

This was surely the Senior Commander-​​General of the men. He did not even behave like the others, but made sounds while the others were mostly silent, occasionally making sounds in response to his.

If only her master had brought another spider to witness her deed! She would prove the superiority of spiders over men – she would make this sound-​​making man fall silent! She would make him dance!

She did not even hook a safety rope to the floor: she merely leapt onto his foot. She did not fix a filament to his foot: she merely leapt up, nearly straight up, onto his bare leg. And then–

Horror! The instant her grasping forelegs touched his skin, the filament binding her mind to the mind of her master was broken. It was the nightmare of her race: free-​​fall.

He had gone silent, but he did not dance.

She clung to a nearby hair and pressed her belly against the enormous hindleg. With her thoughts she sent out thread after thread in search of her master, but they were all whipped away by a howling wind of the mind. She was alone.

Alone and terrified, she followed the instinct of her race in situations of panic: she climbed. Before she moved, she hooked a thread to his leg in case she fell, but somehow she knew that it would not save her if she did. Somehow she knew that she was doomed.

As she climbed, she felt the mind of the Senior Commander-​​General of the men descending on her, closing over her like the mouth of an enormous bird. If she had not been climbing, she would have lifted her feelers in awe and submission, for she had seen who he was.

He was Lack-​​Leg. He was Unsymmetry. He was Spider-​​Bane. He was Seven.

It happened when she reached nearly the midpoint of his thorax. The pincers of his foreleg came together over her, squeezing her between two dense layers of silk.

Her hindlegs shattered, her abdomen burst, her heart and lungs were crushed, but he had spared her thorax and head and mind. She lifted her feelers beneath the heavy web, praising him, and sent up thought after thought into the darkness of his mind.

With her forelegs she felt the vibrations of his voice as he began making sounds again, and she listened and wondered at it until she died.

“…per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.”