Moth Ch. 005byellynei©
Copyright of Nanna Marker 2010.
"If you have to sleep unguarded, then find a predator's nest and kill the inhabitant. If its likes are unaware of its death, you are likely not to be disturbed. The beast's neighbours would take your delectable scent to simply be the aroma of the predator's dinner."
The old, scarred, bat-hunter had with a wide grin tapped the side of his nose as he delivered that statement. Lei missed him achingly as she missed so many others back home. She didn't allow herself to miss her family.
Lei had made herself a camp one branch below the spider's web. If a freshly dead predator's home was a fairly safe place to spend the day, having a live predator merely a branch away had to be even safer. Assuming it wouldn't change its mind about not eating you.
The first days, she had had trouble sleeping. Her mind had overflowed with images of hard black spiderlegs caging her. Then, in the fourth night, she managed to find Oli's knife on the forest bed. Sleep came easier when she held its hilt.
The spider seemed to always be hiding at some edge of his web. Sometimes she would catch a glimpse of him being under a leaf or crouching in a crevice. She'd always avert her gaze rather than catch a second glance. Her imagination fed her more than she wanted to know, or guess, of how manly features manifested on a spider that wasn't a beast.
Lei was happier not knowing.
If Oli had survived, if he and her had mated, then something like the spider might have spawned from her womb. Oli had insisted that he would love any outcome of their love, and so had she. But, how could anyone ever love something like that creature?
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It was almost absurd that the spider had criticised her looks. But, if one didn't consider how he looked, his comment had been well-placed. Lei should have grown to near maturity that summer, instead she had starved and worked herself nearly out of her skin. She had only enough meat and blood in her to survive night to night. That wouldn't suffice for a winter-cocoon.
Lei ate everything edible she came across. Her stomach had shrunk in the long distance between home and Altwar and she easily felt full, but she learned to force herself past that. If she didn't fatten soon, she wouldn't survive winter.
To Lei's luck, Altwar was having an unusually rich fall that year. Food was plentiful. Her stomach soon bulged. First with undigested food, later with hastily accumulating fat. It was as if her torso had no time to evenly divide the wealth between her limbs and instead kept it all to itself. It was a worrying state for the young moth, who couldn't keep track of her feeding state when all her winter's fat was in one place.
Near fall's end, she was woken by a touch. Startled she swung her knife even as she opened her eyes. The blade met only air, but her eyes made out a huge black form in the blinding daylight.
"Nice reflexes, Scrawny," said the spider.
Lei jumped into a defensive crouch, with her ragged wings spread and ready to fly.
"What do you want?" demanded Lei, angrily squinting at the black form. Her heart was still pounding with fright of being unexpectedly woken.
"You don't see very well in daylight, do you?" asked the spider.
"I see well enough," lied Lei, menacingly swinging her blade at one of the spider's legs.
The spider didn't move, but Lei's blade met only air. He wasn't as close as her eyes had misinformed her.
"Moths are too weak to live alone," said the spider, despise in his voice. "You should be with your kind. Especially in your condition."
"What's that supposed to mean?" snarled Lei.
"Or do you intend to leave it to die?"
The despise in the spider's words was so thick that Lei imagined it dropping from his mouth, or jaws, or whatever he had, in big slimy drops.
"Leave what to die?" she asked.
"Your baby," said the spider and without warning simultaneously grabbed the wrist of her knife hand and pushed her to her back. "You fucked something other than a moth, didn't you?" he demanded.
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"Let go," yelled Lei, kicking at the dark mass above her but hitting nothing but air. His legs were longer than hers.
"You fucked something," snarled the spider, and pinned down her legs too.
Lei moved her free hand to her knife hand, but the spider took hold of that too.
"And now," continued the monster. "You fear what is inside you. So you've gone into hiding to find out."
Lei, feeling something touch the bare skin of her belly, closed her eyes and sobbed with disgust.
"Do you intend to let it die no matter what it is?" snarled the spider. "Or are you waiting to see if it's something nice before you decide?"
"I'm not pregnant," sobbed Lei. "I didn't fuck him. He died before I could. He died."
"Don't lie to me," hissed the spider.
"I'm not lying," screamed Lei. "And I'd never let my baby die if I had one. Not even if it was something like you."
The spider again prodded her belly.
"It's fat," said Lei.
The spider poked at it and made it wobble. Lei grimaced with disgust.
"Maybe it is," said the spider and released her. "I guess I should pity you, Scrawny. You're even uglier than I am. All skin and bones and belly."
"I don't need your pity," hissed Lei.
"Sure you don't," commented the spider, crawling vertically up the trunk of the tree. His tone was sarcastic.
"What's that supposed to mean?" yelled Lei after him. "All you ever did for me was not eat me."
The spider made no reply.
Lei curled into a ball and wept. Long before she fell asleep, she promised herself that come night she would find another place to camp.
Well past sunset, Lei drowsily opened her eyes to the pleasently dimmed light of night. For a moment her daytime visit seemed to have been nothing but a bad dream, but then she saw a light bruise on her wrist where he had held her and fury heated her blood. She was in a right mind to sneak up on him and... Lei clutched her knife tight but tempered herself. Risking her life to avenge such simple humiliation was nothing but stupid, especially when there was so little chance of success.
There was a scratch mark next to her bedding. Lei involuntarily shuddered. The spider could as easily have scratched her as the bark. She'd pack what little belongings she had made herself in the months she had spent at his tree and leave. She threw the twig she was conditioning for a bow, the snailshell pieces she was sharpening for arrowheads, and her not-yet-finished thread-weave onto her handwoven grasscarpet. While she was rolling all of it into one tight bundle, her eyes again fell on the scratches.
Four diagonal lines.
Lei frowned. Those scratches looked more like something a lizard would make than anything else. She put down her small bundle of belongings and more closely inspected the scratches. Each was as far apart as the width of her hand.
It couldn't possibly be what it looked like: scratch marks made by a lizard desperately grabbing for a solid hold on the branch. If a lizard had been by while she slept, she wouldn't be alive to inspect the marks.
Lei peered out from the branch in the direction the marks pointed, crawling forward till she could see straight down. Many bodylengths down, there was a broad old branch. On that lay a lizard, belly up. Lei scrambled backwards, grabbed her bundle, and held it tight staring at the lizard scratch marks. The spider hadn't been her only visitor that day.
What crazy luck had saved her life?
She took a while to stop shivering and even longer to gather enough courage to go inspect the dead animal.
On its underbelly, the dead lizard had eight matching bruises. Each as wide as the one on Lei's wrist. Looking for a cause of death, Lei rolled the beast over. The only injury she found on its backside was two small holes on the back of its neck. The tissue around the holes was swollen.
"Poison," whispered Lei, and finally understood the spider's parting comment. He had saved her life.
She jumped off the old branch and flew up to the spider's web.
"Hello?" she called, hovering in the air, careful not to get close to the sticky strands.
"What do you want?" snarled the spider.
Lei turned in the air to face him. Most of him was hidden behind a still green leaf.
"You killed that lizard, didn't you?" asked Lei.
"I thought it would be tasty," said the spider. "I was wrong."
"Thank you," said Lei.
For a few moments she waited for a reply, but none came.
"Did you get hurt?" she asked, expecting that even a poisonous spider would have a hard time killing a lizard.
"Do you really think I'd risk myself to rescue you, Scrawny?" commented the spider, spitting out his nickname for her.
"My name is Lei," said Lei, struggling to retain a friendly tone. "What's yours."
The spider didn't reply.
A sudden gust of wind pushed Lei toward the web. A few decisive flaps of her wings brought her back out to a safe distance.
A moth-beast following the wind, passed Lei and flew into the net. Finding itself stuck, the mindless beast frantically flapped its wings, only managing to stick itself even tighter to the trap. It was a pretty beast with brownish fur and an intricate yellow and brown pattern on its wings.
The spider left his place of hiding and soundlessly skittered across his web to his prey.
Lei remained in the air. Her mouth dried out as she watched the spider secure his prey with a minimum of fresh white web, before biting into it's soft underbelly. The fight was swifter and more intelligent than that of a spider-beast.
There was very little man in the shape of the spider. She had caught a glimpse of a man's face with skin as shining black as the armor of his eight purely spider legs. What she had seen of his body was pure spider too.
Lei fought herself not to be disgusted by what she saw. It wasn't easy. The moth beast, which was almost as large as her, relaxed in his hold. It was still alive. It's antennae fluttered. The beast looked to be in ecstasy rather than pain. It could still move, she saw, yet it was no longer trying to break free. The spider was sucking the life out of it and it didn't seem to mind.
She wished he would kill it and put it out of its misery. Eating something alive was too beastial an act for anything with a mind.
The spider's legs were curling around the moth exhibiting a spider-beast's intimate hug of death. His manly face was hidden against the moth-beast's belly. At that moment, Lei could see nothing to proof that he was anything but a beast.
She turned her back to him and flew down to her own branch. She had intended to ask his permission to skin the lizard, but she couldn't talk to him now.
If he had objections, she would give him the hide later.
Posted on literotica.com with permission of author: Nanna Marker; literotica ID ellynei.