Meghan: Webs

It’s quiet, so quiet in the place where the webs are kept.
Always alone, seeing yet blind, they spin their gauzy threads on the dripping rocks of the cavern.
But for their keeper, cursed and saved, the girl who watches webs twine around her but will never spin her own.
She makes candles day after day, using bits of the white wax to stick the lights around the endless cavern. It’s impossible to light up all of the vast darkness, but she tries, sometimes burning the tips of her fingers in her hurry.
Because if she didn’t make the candles she would just sit in the darkness, listening to the soft shushing sounds that the webs made as they spun.
Waiting; wondering when they would spin over her in the dark. The sticky soft masses would wind around her waist and tangle her arms and legs, climb down her throat and film her eyes as she screamed into them.
And she would live. In that cocoon she would live because this girl without a web could not die.
So she lit the candles.
In the center of the cavern was a deep pool, with a surface like black glass. It was by this pool that she often crouched, in between tending her candles. She would gaze, mesmerized at the surface of it where she could almost see her face. It was the only thing she knew that was hers, solely hers, not consumed by the webs.
She smiled at the pool, leaned close to let her long hair trace on its surface. She let her hand hover above the dark surface and bit her lip, hesitating. She had never touched the water, not wanting to take away the only thing that was hers, but the bright mirror-like surface drew her fingertips and she dipped them in.
The water was deliciously cool on her fingers and she closed her eyes in bliss. But she felt a tug of resistance. Frowning, she opened her eyes and lifted her hand out of the water. There, dripping and entwined in her fingers, were webs.
They grew there.
They grew in her lake.
Crying out in disgust, she stumbled back and tried to scrape the substance off. Her knees bled on the rough rocks as she crawled into a circle of candles nearby. Sobs wracked her chest as she tried to gently remove the strands from her fingers.
Mustn’t hurt it.
The thought made her hesitate. And why not? The webs had hurt her.
Don’t hurt the webs
The thought was ingrained in her mind, pressed into her being.
She had removed the web and looked at the thing as it dangled from two of her fingers.
Don’t…
Lips parted, breathing raggedly, she reached over to pick up one of her candles. Almost ceremoniously she stuck it to the ground in front of her and lit it. The flame danced brightly in her vision and threw sparkles off of the web in her hand. She stretched it carefully between two of her hands, a smile stretching on her face at the same time.
Delicately, gracefully, she lowered the silver web into the candle flame. As it grew nearer she could almost hear it shriek under her fingertips and she hummed with pleasure. The bottom of the web caught and it went up in flames so fast that it was almost as if it had evaporated in her hands.
Too fast, it was too fast.
She looked around her at the room full of webs
Well, she had plenty more to practice on.
She would make the next one last


“Life is just a chance to grow a soul.” -A. Powell Davies

-Meghan