Monday Word prompt response for Arachnid
I've just done a quick sketchy thing here, but hopefully it's alright. The paragraphs switch between a modern and an older setting, I'm not sure if it's too ADD or not. XD There's definitely more to this, but I wanted to keep the weird on the modern down to a minimum if possible, so, eh. Thoughts, boos, yays?
Back and forth the shuttle scuttered, drawing the delicate pinks of dawn through a warp so dark it could have been night. Her pale little hands flicked with a determination that was mirrored in the set of her childish chin. I think it was not so much the fact that no offer had been made for her hand as it was the comments people made in the market. It is not only children who can be hurtful, my sister and I were both well aware of that. Mother died almost five years ago, and father has almost forgotten how to live. Arachne weaves her pictures and I cast nets to the sea. We can live, but we shall never marry, there is not enough money. That is what the women in the market say as she passes, "Poor girl, it's a shame she's worthless." Things like that. In the fire light I patched my fishing nets and watched her work.
Her screen name is Blackwidow18. She makes damn good money on the Web, enough to pay her part of the rent plus some. The World Wide Web, that is, I don't know what other web I would mean, but she thinks it's important. "Bro, I cast my web on the Web, don't you get it?" She said one time, flicking her black braid back over her shoulder as she rolled her eyes at me. I don't ask her how she makes her money, and she does me the same courtesy. All I know is that she spins with words. I mostly go in for phishing schemes. When we started, it was desperation, neither of us knew how to get by after dad came to the end of his savings and was still not working, I think he still blames himself for the accident that killed mom. We lost track of him once we got ourselves out of the section 8 housing he was about to get evicted from. We both pass for older than we are, and back then we tacked on a few years to our ages when we moved out. We said I was 19 and she was 18. Plenty old enough to live on our own.
As I walked away from the weaving booth one morning, I heard the old woman who sells figs and grapes remark to my sister that it was a shame she had no skills to help her marry. Then Arachne did something extremely foolish. "I can weave. I weave better than any woman here, and I'll outweave any woman who cares to test me, even Minerva herself." The wind seemed to echo with the word "DONE" as the fog rolled in from the ocean faster than I had ever seen it move. It was no natural fog, I could see that right away from the way that it surrounded the marketplace but did not drift into the area at all. From out of the fog walked a figure. It was certainly not human, though it had an unearthly beauty that I can hardly describe. Arachne stood defiant as the women around her hurried to show respect to the goddess, for it was certainly Minerva herself.
One day I came home to an empty house. On the door was an official-looking piece of paper informing me that the police had been in the apartment to execute a search warrant. Inside was a note on the dining room table in my sister's spidery scrawl. It said that she had gone to see someone named Minerva, and told me that there was more information on her account. She even gave me the password, Grandma. That could only mean one thing. Arachne. The family name. I logged on. I never knew there were so many just sleazy people in the world, and all of them seemed to want to give my sister their credit cards. I ignored all the offers and comments that seemed to be directed to her mailbox, and hunted instead for anything that would lead me to Minerva. Finally I found it. The mail said that it was a virtual reality machine, and it needed operators like my sister. It would be another week before I found where it was located.
For a week Arachne did not sleep. She did not eat. All she did was weave like a woman possessed. Her delicate beauty faded into sickness, her eyes burned bright with fever, but still she would not leave the loom. When she was done, she had created a masterpiece, the world in her tapestry was so real I felt i could walk into it and never leave. The only creature in the whole thing was a lone spider, her signature. The rest was flowers, forests, and forgotten paths. Minerva's tapestry was so fine, it was alive. Little deer wandered in and out of the fabric. Squirrels hunted nuts in the gently waving branches of her trees. My sister had lost. She became the spider on her tapestry.
The warehouse looked like it had sat empty for at least 50 years. The metal fence had been cut so many times it seemed like a joke for the old thing to still be standing, and it was hard to tell what the original building material had been under all the tagging. I went on in through an especially large hole, and found the newly hung door set well away from the street. It opened when I pushed it. The inside was almost as lonely as the outside, save for the humming of machinery. I followed the sound left and then right until I came to small room. Inside was a simple-looking metal box roughly twice my size. I could see a control panel further into the room. As I started examining the controls, I b ecame aware that the light in the room had changed, the machine was turning on. I lifted my head just in time to see the front of the big metal contraption open. Inside was my sister, suspended from hundreds of strands of wire and electrodes, just like a fly in the center of a spider web. I tried to go to her, to get her out, but the men in suits and shades were too fast for me. Now I sit in this little cell all day, wondering what Minerva is and whether my sister will ever be free of it. They say I have no sister. Liers.
Back and forth the shuttle scuttered, drawing the delicate pinks of dawn through a warp so dark it could have been night. Her pale little hands flicked with a determination that was mirrored in the set of her childish chin. I think it was not so much the fact that no offer had been made for her hand as it was the comments people made in the market. It is not only children who can be hurtful, my sister and I were both well aware of that. Mother died almost five years ago, and father has almost forgotten how to live. Arachne weaves her pictures and I cast nets to the sea. We can live, but we shall never marry, there is not enough money. That is what the women in the market say as she passes, "Poor girl, it's a shame she's worthless." Things like that. In the fire light I patched my fishing nets and watched her work.
Her screen name is Blackwidow18. She makes damn good money on the Web, enough to pay her part of the rent plus some. The World Wide Web, that is, I don't know what other web I would mean, but she thinks it's important. "Bro, I cast my web on the Web, don't you get it?" She said one time, flicking her black braid back over her shoulder as she rolled her eyes at me. I don't ask her how she makes her money, and she does me the same courtesy. All I know is that she spins with words. I mostly go in for phishing schemes. When we started, it was desperation, neither of us knew how to get by after dad came to the end of his savings and was still not working, I think he still blames himself for the accident that killed mom. We lost track of him once we got ourselves out of the section 8 housing he was about to get evicted from. We both pass for older than we are, and back then we tacked on a few years to our ages when we moved out. We said I was 19 and she was 18. Plenty old enough to live on our own.
As I walked away from the weaving booth one morning, I heard the old woman who sells figs and grapes remark to my sister that it was a shame she had no skills to help her marry. Then Arachne did something extremely foolish. "I can weave. I weave better than any woman here, and I'll outweave any woman who cares to test me, even Minerva herself." The wind seemed to echo with the word "DONE" as the fog rolled in from the ocean faster than I had ever seen it move. It was no natural fog, I could see that right away from the way that it surrounded the marketplace but did not drift into the area at all. From out of the fog walked a figure. It was certainly not human, though it had an unearthly beauty that I can hardly describe. Arachne stood defiant as the women around her hurried to show respect to the goddess, for it was certainly Minerva herself.
One day I came home to an empty house. On the door was an official-looking piece of paper informing me that the police had been in the apartment to execute a search warrant. Inside was a note on the dining room table in my sister's spidery scrawl. It said that she had gone to see someone named Minerva, and told me that there was more information on her account. She even gave me the password, Grandma. That could only mean one thing. Arachne. The family name. I logged on. I never knew there were so many just sleazy people in the world, and all of them seemed to want to give my sister their credit cards. I ignored all the offers and comments that seemed to be directed to her mailbox, and hunted instead for anything that would lead me to Minerva. Finally I found it. The mail said that it was a virtual reality machine, and it needed operators like my sister. It would be another week before I found where it was located.
For a week Arachne did not sleep. She did not eat. All she did was weave like a woman possessed. Her delicate beauty faded into sickness, her eyes burned bright with fever, but still she would not leave the loom. When she was done, she had created a masterpiece, the world in her tapestry was so real I felt i could walk into it and never leave. The only creature in the whole thing was a lone spider, her signature. The rest was flowers, forests, and forgotten paths. Minerva's tapestry was so fine, it was alive. Little deer wandered in and out of the fabric. Squirrels hunted nuts in the gently waving branches of her trees. My sister had lost. She became the spider on her tapestry.
The warehouse looked like it had sat empty for at least 50 years. The metal fence had been cut so many times it seemed like a joke for the old thing to still be standing, and it was hard to tell what the original building material had been under all the tagging. I went on in through an especially large hole, and found the newly hung door set well away from the street. It opened when I pushed it. The inside was almost as lonely as the outside, save for the humming of machinery. I followed the sound left and then right until I came to small room. Inside was a simple-looking metal box roughly twice my size. I could see a control panel further into the room. As I started examining the controls, I b ecame aware that the light in the room had changed, the machine was turning on. I lifted my head just in time to see the front of the big metal contraption open. Inside was my sister, suspended from hundreds of strands of wire and electrodes, just like a fly in the center of a spider web. I tried to go to her, to get her out, but the men in suits and shades were too fast for me. Now I sit in this little cell all day, wondering what Minerva is and whether my sister will ever be free of it. They say I have no sister. Liers.