u/Consistent-Hippo-210

Gaia, the eternal queen in her ethereal beauty stood upon her kingdom of Etheron, gazing down on the Earth at her children. They were her purpose, her essence. She was forever watching, probing……. forging. 

Like a potter, she had molded them with clay and breathed her life force into them.

In her hands she held seed born from the forbidden tree that stood in the middle of her garden. 

Suddenly……….

One of the seeds slipped through her fingers and rolled out of her hand cascading fast as if propelled by an intangible force that had aligned itself with the law of motion.

 It rolled past the infinite crystal waters whose waters shone like a mirror in the heat, like melted glass through her forests called ‘Goodness’, with its singing flowers that swayed with a gentle symphony with the light breeze, until…… 

…...it toppled upon Earth with a thud as if dropped into a dry well.

 Then….  

Boom.

It sounded loud and chaotic, churning the waters and all that there was.

Gaia stood motionless, staring as it tumbled. Remembering the law that bound even the gods—a fallen seed could only be retrieved by them after a great span of time, she sank into her throne, her eyes suddenly darting across the chamber.  

Gabrib, her servant, came flying into her massive hall and landed a foot away from her throne with a massive ‘thud’.

"Long live Gaia who furnished Mount Tazamah with her purity and delight in her children. My Queen, a seed has fallen upon mankind—the seed of Mollariah. Should we journey below to retrieve it?”  Gabrib gave his salutations gracelessly, clearly out of breath.

The seed of Mollariah was a seed of darkness, birthing destruction upon anything it touched. It had the power to quicken time as mankind knew it. 

Gaia, in her white crystal adorned robe, drew a couple of breaths that shook the great mountain around her. Her voice, loud yet sweet, descended like a thousand waterfalls,  

"No, Gabrib! It is up to mankind now to retrieve it and send it back to us.” 

"How, my Queen? It is impossible. How would they even see it? 

With her face shining and her eyes ablaze with seriousness she replied, "They will see it for its fruits. I have chosen a few men to retrieve it. We are bound by law not to go down there.”

“Is this perhaps the slip of the hand, my Queen? Or the will of the stars?” Gabrib asked, his face peeking with interest.

Gaia looked beyond him. A smile slowly anchored itself across her face.

“It is yet to be seen, Gabrib. Etheron does not make a mistake.” And with that, she dismissed him.

“Then long live my queen, in her infinite wisdom”. 

Gabrib quickly vanished from her presence, with a whoosh and a slight wobble of his knees, dipping his magnificent translucent wings as he flew.

When the seed fell, those who had the eyes of Tazamah saw it. 
When it fell, the people of the shadows saw it as a bolt of light. 
The people of the dry sands saw it as a fountain of water.

“If they fail this quest, its fruits will poison the world below,” Gaia thought.

My name is Charles, Charles Bushrock, and I am ten years old.  I live in a tiny town called Wayly. Forgive me if I cannot enunciate my words properly. I lost my teeth, some of my teeth—the summer we went snockly doodling in Creek Hill. Me and my friend Jack had been cascading down the rocks when a tree at the side lunged at my front teeth hard, and I lost my front teeth. Of course I wailed hard all the way home to Papa. I had never experienced pain like that. Anywho, that's that about my teeth. I want to tell you folks why I love Wayly. 

We in Wayly, we love to hunt. We hunt bush buck in the summer and roast it out on our backyard patios. I like watching Pa roast buck meat. Pa is a big man with a big belly. I reckon he gets it from eating too much buck. Ma says he is just big boned like his Poppa. Ma says one day I will be big boned too like Pa and Poppa. But who knows? Maybe I will be little, like my uncle Ray. He is short and has a big mustache. I reckon he does not eat enough buck like Pa. Anywho  that's that. 
Have you ever had buck meat? Well, I reckon you do not have buck where you come from. Pa says buck has been around us for centuries. I ask him if we will ever run out of buck and he quietens slightly then says, 

 “We will never.” 
He must be reassuring me and I believe him. I suggest to Pa that maybe, sometime, we must hunt rabbits. Pa laughs hard and shakes his fists at the idea of eating rabbit. He scoops me on his knee and laughs again,

"We Bushrocks are buck people son. We will only eat rabbit when we are desperate." 

“What does it mean to be'despleate Pa?” Pa rubs my chin and says,  

“des-per-ate. means only when we are starving, son. As long as we keep looking after these forests we will never run out of buck”.  Anywho  that's that. 

I tell Ma about my dreams about buck sometimes. Ma can interpret my dreams by how buck be moving in them. One day I had a dream that I saw a big buck, one with them big horns drinking quietly by the stream. As I got near he did not move but just stared at me. I woke up and told Ma.
 
"Why you think he did not move Ma. He wasn’t even scared or nothing?" 
Ma says this kind was the spirit of the forest. It was no true buck. She ruffles my hair and says, 

"It mean, you must be the protector of the forests, and it will reward you son."
 I promise Ma that I will. Anyhow that's that. Anywho folks I have a lot to tell all you about Wayly, like that time the big trucks drove through our town. Anywho, Jack is calling me to go fishing for trout. He has been waiting since morning to go. He is my friend and I promised. I will come again to tell you about trout fishing in Wayly. Poppa taught me how to catch it.  Anywho, talk to you later about Wayly.

It is a Thursday afternoon, and here I am in my therapist's office for my appointment, sitting on her brown suede couch. The couch sits proudly with three stuffed seats facing the window and looking at it, I wonder where she bought it from. It's the kind of couch you can sink into and suddenly sleep has taken over you.  I am convinced this is one of her secret weapons which she wields against me to get me talking about my childhood. It is quite a beautiful couch. I trace the fabric gently and the suede slides between my fingers smoothly. Who knew such a simple act could provide such comfort.

"You were talking about your mother….” She says softly.

I ignore her and continue to run my hands through it. In every conversation, we have to talk about my mother. If I am to be honest, I think she is the one obsessed with her. It must be something that wacko Freud said that got her talking like a bird. I wonder what his childhood was like for him to express such bizarre ideas and consequently subject me to this unwarranted scrutiny. I wonder if she, too, my therapist, thinks it is the tension with my mother that led me to be how I became. Who cares? I still think Freud had weird ideas.

I look at her eyes, which somehow match the color of the couch, and I turn away from her gaze to answer her      "I loved my mother.... I just didn't trust her decisions," I say.

"Oh, how’s so?"

I glance at my feet and do a quick swipe at hers.  She has such an impeccable timeless taste in shoes. I wonder where she bought those shoes from. Blue shoes. How serene. Blue.  The color was unpleasantly nostalgic reminiscent my mother's favorite blue cardigan. She was profoundly attached to it and was always reluctant to part with it. I must have frowned at the thought for my therapist to ask  

"What are you thinking?"

I hesitated then said, "My mother liked blue. I notice you wear blue quite often. Anyway, growing up, she acted as if she was not fond of me. Nothing I did ever made her happy.”  
Maybe… 
“Just maybe she loved me in her own twisted way."

I rub my hands together as I say that. Noticing it, my therapist scribbles in her book quickly. Umm, she always seems to scribble in there. I wonder what she writes.

Mother.

Maybe this explains my insatiable need to mother everything and anything, too much to my detriment. My shoulders tremble with the realization.                                                                                                                      

"Do you mind if I lie down?" I asked, my voice suddenly quavering. I lunged my shoes off and slowly descended flat on my back on the couch, my face facing upward at the ceiling.

 Heaving a sigh of relief, it at last dawned on me why I smothered affection to my children with such intensity they saw it as control. Tears cascaded slowly down my cheeks as it slowly dawned on me. It all was because of Mother.

When Eglo’s spinnerets tightened and his silk glands swelled against his abdomen, he knew it was time to spin his web. The web, an extension of himself to the outside world, would help snare passing prey and shelter his family. So with his legs scritching, he scurried beneath the wooden table where he had hidden towards the kitchen window—a prime hunting ground where bugs streamed nightly to catch the warm glow of the kitchen light. There he anchored himself to the frame's corner and wove.

Day after day he wove, each silk thread delicate yet fierce as it transformed into an elastic net that intertwined intricately into a funnel shape. Each knot woven with expectation for the future he hoped.

 Finally the funnel gleamed complete, but as he locked the final knot, a strong wind gushed through the window and shredded the web, ripping it into a mess. Eglo, dangling overhead, was thrust by the furious wind to the edge.  His legs dipped in weakness, his front legs trembled mid air as his web tumbled towards the vast floor below.

Exhausted and broken, Eglo dangled for days in stunned silence as the last remnants of the web disappeared. With his eight legs stiff  he crept slowly to the windowsill, towards  the kitchen cabinet. There he anchored in its inner  corner and never wove again. The silk inside him remained unspent, calcifying.

 In the inner corner though Eglo's eyes dimmed, his spider-senses constantly pinged. His leg hairs quivered to the faint tremors of his  brother Ergen as he skittered across the outer right corner of the kitchen cabinet where he wove his own web. He sensed the menacing wind whispering Ergen’s way but Ergen’s legs sounded resolute as they continuously drummed underfoot. 

As summer nudged into autumn, Eglo felt the air shifting. One moment the cold draft would slip cunningly through the open windows, licking him , then a bolt of humid air would suddenly sway in,blanching his abdomen as it slowly settled. As Eglo watched Ergen, this shift did not seem to faze him as he continued to skittle across the kitchen counters with the intensity of a spider impervious to the elements. His little scuttles always drummed the surface in quiet determination, his thin gangly legs quavering in search of a mate to sire sons. By late autumn, Eglo would receive tremors of Ergen having found a willing partner.

Determined to be free as Ergen, Eglo  at one point extended his stiff thin legs and took three steps towards a small patch that glowed with light towards the door, but as he neared the door the light from outside the cabinet slanted directly into his dull eyes and he retreated  into his corner. When he next stirred, the kitchen had gone grey and biting. Somehow it was winter.  Every part of the kitchen surface stung with cold.  When spring finally came, Eglo breathed a great sense of relief.  

Spring brought with it the eager skittles of Ergen's spiderlings, their feet drumming against surfaces as they made their way to and from in search of prey. Eglo felt his heart palpitate at the shift. Suddenly, his days, long mum in silence, vibrated with the chatter of eager feet.

One day, pacing a few feet from his corner, he felt the sudden skittles of Erbolden, Ergen's son, making his way. The boy was sturdy like his father, yet light on his feet. In his hands he held his silk thread, which he slowly extended to Eglo.

Taking it, Eglo's hands quavered with the excitement of showing the young boy how to weave, remembering how he too had woven his first web. He took the strands and wove slowly as the young boy's eyes looked on in wonder. As he twisted the knot across the knot into a half-moon shape, he remembered the silk pulling smoothly and warmly from his swollen glands. He felt the pleasure of the throw, as his body dangled weightless in mid-air between anchors. The radial lines singing faintly as he touched them, each one a path he had made and could travel again. The spiral growing beneath him, sticky and gleaming, was his own architecture becoming shelter, becoming home. For a moment, hanging at the funnel's mouth, he had felt full—not of prey, but of purpose. The kitchen light had felt warm on his abdomen and the world alive. Then he remembered the wind, and his legs stopped. He abruptly extended the thread back and shifted uneasily back into his corner. For a moment the boy remained transfixed, then moved slowly away towards home.

Time crept along in Eglo’s life until the day the silk threads around Eglo stilled. The Great Spider Spirit drew him upward on a single thread to the Spirit Web, where he stood to be judged on how he had lived.

"Tell me, Eglo, were you satisfied with your life?" the Great Spirit asked.
But Eglo cried, "Great Spirit, why did you deny me a fortunate and full life like Ergen's? For he built his home and fulfilled his dream."

The Great Spider looked at him with compassion and opened the book of Eglo's threads. "Look, Eglo. Here are the threads you wove."

Eglo looked into the book and saw how he had lived, anchored in the dark corner, his heart calloused by the brutality of the wind that had destroyed his web once. He saw his limbs stiffen and his silk calcify, unused. At the corner of his eye, he caught the eager scritching of Ergen as he continuously rebuilt. He watched as Ergen took a mate and sired sons. He saw how the wind still raged, yet Ergen persisted. Living.

As he looked, Eglo was overcome by a great sense of sadness as he understood the threads he chose not to weave.