.....::Fly On The Wall ~ Short Story
The Fly on The Wall is a joint project between Biology class and English. In Biology, we caught an arthropod -- that being an insect, arachnid, or crustacean. After studying the creature for a while, learning facts about their biology and what makes an arthropod an arthropod, we wrote an entire story from the bug's point of view in English.
We had a series of pre-writing activities, in which we would write a detailed description of our room or describe things from our insect's point of view. We even responded to a blog as our insects, and we had a fun session in which we responded to one another.
My grasshopper was named Timmy, based on its scientific name Trimerotropis pseudofasciata. The names had to be based off of their scientific names, so Timmy's full name was Timoteo Fasciata. In the story, his companion was a mesh web spider that went by the name of Tynidae, though his full name was Dick Tynidae. This was also based off of a scientific name, being Dictynidae.
In summary, both Tynidae and Timmy were captured by a human (that would be me) and, through their cages, they talk and become close friends. Although, Timmy is quite skeptical of Tynidae's trustworthiness, he puts his faith in the spider regardless. In return, the spider puts faith in them, and combining their wit and intelligence, they manage to break out of their cages and escape to the garden together.
We had a series of pre-writing activities, in which we would write a detailed description of our room or describe things from our insect's point of view. We even responded to a blog as our insects, and we had a fun session in which we responded to one another.
My grasshopper was named Timmy, based on its scientific name Trimerotropis pseudofasciata. The names had to be based off of their scientific names, so Timmy's full name was Timoteo Fasciata. In the story, his companion was a mesh web spider that went by the name of Tynidae, though his full name was Dick Tynidae. This was also based off of a scientific name, being Dictynidae.
In summary, both Tynidae and Timmy were captured by a human (that would be me) and, through their cages, they talk and become close friends. Although, Timmy is quite skeptical of Tynidae's trustworthiness, he puts his faith in the spider regardless. In return, the spider puts faith in them, and combining their wit and intelligence, they manage to break out of their cages and escape to the garden together.
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The final in form of a doc file. Below is the full length story!
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Finding Home
Darkness. There was nothing but a lonely, piercing, and
invading darkness all around me. It was frightening. I struggled viciously,
clawing at the invisible barrier that contained me, which, for some reason, was
impenetrable. I lowered my legs in defeat, resting upon the one leaf I had left
of my sandy desert-like home. This leaf by itself was the very extent of what I
had left of home, presuming I’ll never be able to go back. I was at first
reluctant to eat it, but alas, there was only so long I could go without food.
I thought that the darkness would never go away. I could have sworn I was dead
if not for the swaying motion of the dark that left a sickening feeling in the
pit of my long abdomen. I didn't even want to try flying out now; there was a
sort of netted barrier up on the top, and though it wasn't invisible, it was
still impossible for my body to get through.
The last time I had emerged from the darkness, I felt like I
was in a completely foreign place. The light flooded my eyes, and I looked
around to see that I was once again outside. Although, after taking in my
surroundings, I saw the lake that I was so familiar with. So I hadn’t gone far
from home. I breathed a sigh of relief. The large pink giant emitted high-pitched
sounds of awe, most likely communicating with those of its kind. The second
giant had said something too, and I was submerged back into the darkness.
I came forth from the darkness again, this time in a much cooler setting. The change in the light was nearly blinding. Light filtered in through a large hole in the wall far off in the distance. Just beyond the hole I could see the outside, the sanctity filled with grass and trees, which I was somewhat familiar with. Yet it was so far away, it would take me hours, maybe even a day, or maybe even a whole moon cycle to get there! Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. My compound eyes trailed all around the room, taking in the unnatural purple walls. Was I in a large rare flower? I only wondered how delicious it could be. What seemed to be a shiny dung-colored object sat in the middle of the room, and the pink giants were sitting on it watching more pink giants trapped inside a black box. The pink giants were truly monstrous, trapping even their own kind.
The one that handled me migrated to a darker room, and I felt as if the world was zooming past me. I had never before gone so fast in my life, and I looked down to see my legs unmoving. I began trembling. I never recalled jumping so high. Yet wasn’t I moving? I sat immobile in my clear coop, unable to take my eyes off of the ground. Well, if there was a ground. There was nothing below me. In my panic, I looked up in a desperate attempt to see solid ground once more.
What was this? I approached a large rectangle filled with water. It was like I was at the side of the lake back at home. My stomach seemed to churn with nostalgia, and I wanted to regurgitate the leaves I had previously eaten. The fish looked so much bigger up close; in fact, they might have been a lot bigger than the ones I’d seen before. They were certainly more colorful, too: they were orange and blue and silvery instead of the brown mud color the fish at the pond shared with me. Only one thought could breach the fear that filled me and made my body tremble all over: ‘I’m going to become fish bait.’
I squeezed my eyes shut in my fear and pointed my head downward, silently thanking and apologizing to the ones I loved back at home. I would never be seeing them again, and I braced myself for impact with the water. This was it. This was the end. Well, I had a good life. Three months since I hatched, and now I was in the face of death -- a puckered-lipped, sharp-toothed, unblinking-eyed, scaled, water-borne death.
“Oh stop it, you drama queen.”
I opened my eyes, all five of them, one at a time. I looked around, rather bewildered by the sudden voice of another creature.
“Over here.” I turned my body a full circle, until my eyes met with eight of a spider. It was a white spider with a green abdomen, and its black fangs hissed at me. Although he obviously appeared much smaller than myself -- about half of my body -- I cowered away a step or two, as far as I could go before crashing into the barrier. “You’re not going to be the fish’s next meal. You’ll be mine,” he sneered darkly, pouncing toward me. I screamed, but luckily he was trapped inside a barrier too. This forsaken barrier that had caged me had provided a safe sanctuary. I sighed in relief.
The spider scowled, and scrambled around his cage. Now that I was able to see it, I could see that he shared the same pink mesh at the top as on my cage, and the container was small and cylindrical. He continued to run around, climbing upon the orange flower in his cage and clawing at the mesh. He stuck his legs through but was unable to fit the rest of his body.
I relaxed my body and sighed. I was safe. “Hah! Haha, you can’t get me!” I sang and teased, and that only made the other guy fume in anger. He grunted and turned the other way and began to tackle the other side of his cup. I blinked my eyes and peered just past him. There was another cup beyond the spider’s. From what I could see, there were a couple of small pillbugs living together with a beetle, and piled on top of them were some rotting pieces of an orange fruit. The spider, in his anger toward me, turned away and tried to target the poor little insects. I wanted to defend them, but those little things were two cups away!
I began to look around more, taking in my surroundings in yet another foreign place. It was only then that I had really realized I had been set down. I looked at my feet, hoping to see the sand I was familiar with. I was very wrong. It was clear beneath me, and now it was like I was floating atop the lake, just above it. The fish swam idly, but sometimes the orange ones would try jumping up at me or the other arthropods. I felt sick again, and I averted my eyes from the terrible sight. I looked at the direction from whence the pink giant had come from to set me beside my neighbors above the rectangular lake. From my vantage point I could see another black box like the one I’d seen earlier mounted on the purple wall -- or petal, whichever it was. Unlike the other one, there were no pink giants trapped inside. There were large holes to either sides of it, and the giants would pass through them. These holes did not lead outside like the one I saw earlier.
In the middle of the room sat an odd figure. It was flat on top, and it had four legs to hold itself up. Come to think of it, everything here had certainly been lacking some legs. The figure in the center only had four, and the pink giants only walked on two! What did they do with their other two legs? These were most likely questions that I will never find answers to. Anyway, surrounding the four-legged object were six identical ones, with four legs as well but high backs. They all sat completely still, and I had a hard time distinguishing them from animal or plant! But they were likely plants... they had the same yellow and wooden color as the floor, too. They were indeed very large as well.
To my right there was only more wooden walls, so I was certain I was next to a light colored tree. To my left were the other two cups containing the spider and the pillbugs. I couldn’t see much past them. I looked behind me and--
I gasped. Behind me, this whole time, was a large hole. Outside was just... just a hop or two away! Just one leap of fate over this dreaded lake! It was right there. The sunshine filtered in, and the green-leaved trees bore fruit heavy upon their branches. It was like I was looking at heaven; it was right there, and yet I simply couldn’t reach it because there was some sort of invisible barrier that held me back. Instinctively, I tried to jump, but my face only collided harshly with the clear walls. I heard a rude snort coming from my next-door-neighbor.
I turned my pout toward him and rubbed my face with my front-most legs. “What?” I groaned irritably.
“Nothing,” The spider scoffed cockily, turning away from me. I bet he would have been sleazily whistling a tune to himself if he could sing as beautifully as me. But alas, a spider is not part of the cricket family like me!
I sent him a glare. “What?” I barked at him. I didn’t like his attitude. Spiders always think they’re on top of the food chain, those arrogant arachnids.
“We’ve all tried it.” He shrugged with two of his legs. “We tried to get out, and...” The spider ran swiftly around his cage before dashing up to the top in an instant and jamming four of his legs through the top netting. “It ended up no use.”
I frowned. “You’re giving up too easy,” I said, and I clawed my four front legs up at the sides of the barrier, using my two jumping legs to support myself as I stood up. “There must be some way out.”
“No way. They’re never going to release us,” the spider frowned. “Believe me. I’ve been here for five days already. They have never once taken off this stupid pink thing,” he growled and again tried to stick his legs through. I couldn’t help but laugh at how pessimistic his words sounded yet he was so persistently trying to squeeze his body through the small holes.
“Who are they?” I asked curiously. “Are you talking about the pink giants?”
“Pink giants?” The spider laughed. “You mean the humans? Of course I know who they are. I lived in the flower patches just outside. Just a regular mesh spider, eating bugs as usual, and suddenly the human who’s always out there around the flowers captures me,” he grunted.
“Hu...humans? Is that what they’re called?” I asked. Pink giants was just so much more fun to say.
“Yeah. And I’m darn hungry. I can’t eat those loud and annoying pillbugs, and you look a lot tastier but I can’t get to you either. All I have are the lame little flies,” he scowled and grabbed a fly off of the flower, stuffing it in his mouth and swallowing it. I cringed.
“Well, I’d never imagined I’d talk to a spider. Isn’t it nice to talk to tasty meal for once instead of eating them?” I mocked with a grin. He grunted again and turned away. Spiders aren't that scary when their fangs couldn’t reach you. Instead, this one was like a sore loser. He refused to talk to me for another long while, and I contentedly gazed out of the hole to the outer world.
…
I’m not sure how long I had sat there, but I had fallen asleep and awoke to another bright day. It was nice to fall asleep for once and not worrying about being eaten by another animal. I stretched my limbs as far as they could go and stood up, and began clawing at the walls again. Today was the day I would get out for sure! I would find home again, wherever home may be.
I had awoken to a considerable amount of noise, and just began making out what I had heard. “You can’t get us!”
“Loser!”
“You’re not scary!”
“You’re just a wimp!”
I looked to my neighbors. I looked beyond the spider to see the rather tumultuous pillbugs shouting insults and laughing. The spider sat in his flower, facing away from the pillbugs. He instead faced me, though he paid no mind to my presence. In fact, upon closer examination, he even seemed to mope a little bit. This baffled me. Spiders moped? They had feelings?
At first, I wanted to join in and throw insults at the now not-so-threatening predator that we shared. Selfishly, I thought that the pillbugs could be my friends, since they were fellow insects. I wanted to shout something like ‘What’s wrong? Did they hurt your feelings? Do you even have feelings?’ But really, I began to think, they did. The spider’s eyes were closed, and he looked so angry yet sad and just... and just that he wanted it all to stop.
Of course, I would do something about it. “Hey.” The spider cracked an eye open, only to see that I was addressing the pillbugs. He tensed and seemed to physically brace himself for more insults. He simply looked too tired to deal with it, and I could not help but feel bad for him.
“Hey, grasshopper guy!” The pillbugs shouted over the two cups.
“I heard grasshoppers are notorious for causing trouble.”
“Help us out! Let’s show the dumb spider what he deserves!”
“Are you as cool as everyone says grasshoppers are?”
“Come on!”
I frowned at them. They were the smallest among us but that didn’t stop them from being huge jerks. “Hey, that isn’t cool, guys.” The spider perked up. He opened his eyes wide and stared at me. The pillbugs seemed to stare at me too. “This is coming from mister cool grasshopper here. Mister cool here says that what you’re doing isn’t cool, and you should stop. Making someone feel bad is never the right thing to do, you know.”
The pillbugs stared at me before laughing and they began throwing insults at the both of us. I frowned. That was the complete opposite of what I intended to happen. I turned to the spider. “Hey...”
He sighed again and rested the bottom of his cephalothorax on the flower. “It’s useless,” he said exasperatedly. “They’ve been doing this every day. It’s so annoying.”
I frowned at him. “You’re giving up too easy,” I said, echoing my words from earlier. He perked up once more. “You’re still a predator,” I reminded him, and a large grin seemed to spread across his face, his fangs clearly visible and his eyes almost filled with bloodlust.
He ran around his cage a couple of times, as if to warm up and stopped in front of the pillbugs. They seemed to freeze in place. He let out some profane words, as well as some threats that seemed to the seething with poison. I stopped really listening, but the pillbugs began to cower and burrowed back into their fruit to hide from the arachnid.
The spider turned back to me, a proud and smug smile pasted on his face as he walked toward me with a head held high. “You’re not that bad, kid.”
I smiled. Maybe I misunderstood the guy. I merely judged him for being a spider, and maybe he judged me for being a grasshopper. That’s kind of how the world of insects went anyway -- we never ever got to know other creatures unless they were our own kind. It just wasn’t how things worked. But in this weird environment the spider and the pillbugs and I were forced into, we finally had the chance to just sit down and talk. “You’re not that bad, either.” I grinned, and he seemed to return the grin, even if it had a malicious tint to it. That might have just been because he was feeling high and mighty, scaring off his bullies like that. “My name is Timoteo. Timoteo Fasciata. You can just call me Timmy.”
The spider blinked. He seemed to think for a moment, as if trying to figure out how to respond. “My name is...” He must not have been a very social creature, since the way he scrunched up the features of his face made it obvious he could barely remember his name. “Call me Tynidae.”
“You don’t have a full name?” I asked.
He frowned at me. “My name is Dick Tynidae. I hate that name though, so just call me Tynidae, okay?” he growled.
I laughed. “Okay. It’s nice to meet you Tynidae.” I paused. “I hope that we can be friends in the short time we’ll be here!” I added as an afterthought.
Tynidae snorted. “You too, Timoteo. But don’t count on it being short.”
“Oh, I’ll count on it.”
…
The lunar rock in the sky shined brightly, and I stared in awe. It was nice to finally admire the sky without worry of predators sneaking up on me. Speaking of predators...
“Those are some cool legs you have there,” Tynidae said awkwardly, in an odd attempt to start a conversation.
I perked up, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks! You got a pretty rad abdomen. It’s a nice green color.” He turned his head as if he didn’t even know what color his abdomen was, twisting a little before confirming and giving me a nod.
“Yeah, thanks,” the word seemed to roll awkwardly off his tongue. “Your legs are a cool blue. What was it, caerulean, is that the color? You are a caerulean-winged grasshopper, aren’t you?”
I stretched out my back right leg, as if to exhibit the fine limb I possessed. “Yes! You sure know your species,” I sang.
“I have to learn which ones are the tastiest, after all.” Tynidae rolled his eyes. “You’re lookin’ pretty delectable. Have I said that already?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yes,” I grunted. It was probably way too early to determine if making a friend in this wretched place so far from home was a blessing or a curse. Regardless, his comment effectively ended our conversation there, and we returned to a comfortable silence. Tynidae munched on the small fly nymphs and I continued to stare at the hole in the wall and daydream. Sooner or later, I’d find home.
…
“A-aaaaaaaaaaaah!”
My scream effectively woke Tynidae up from his slumber. “What is it so early in the morning, you dumb ovipositor?” He growled. I frowned. That was practically the meanest insult out there, especially for an insect! How would you feel if someone called you the name of genetalia? Geez, Tynidae was so rude. How could that arachnid say something so vulgar so easily? I shook it off. This was an arachnid I was talking about. He probably had different standards. I had to be a little more culturally sensitive. But, it couldn’t hurt if he was a bit more culturally sensitive too. Anyway, back to the dire matter on hand...
“My leg!” I continued to panic. I poked at my back leg with my front legs. No, no, no! Why did this happen?
“What’s up with your leg?” Tynidae grunted from the next cup over. He crawled out of his little hideout within the orange flowers and looked at my situation. He began laughing, and I glared daggers at him. “Hah! Haha, you lost a leg? Shame!” He teased, a wide grin baring sharp fangs flashed at me. “Ironic that we were just talking about it yesterday, huh?”
I wanted to blame him, but I knew that it would be ridiculous to blame him. He was a cup over, and if he was able to reach me then he probably would have just eaten me. I turned my attention back to my detached back leg with a frown. It was interesting, for one, to finally see it in full. The blue color was nice, as Tynidae had mentioned earlier, and I poked the meatier upper part of it. “Come to think of it, my back leg did hurt yesterday,” I muttered.
“Can you still jump like that?” Tynidae asked, looking at me from antennae to foot as if I was some freak-show -- the five-eyed, five-legged wonder.
“Yeah. Though, not nearly as far.” I jumped, my feet hooking onto the pink mesh that worked as my ceiling. I hung upside down and faced Tynidae. “It’s not like losing a leg hurt or anything. It’s completely natural. Grasshoppers tend to shed legs if they damage them. It’s just like moulting, it doesn’t hurt at all. We normally don’t live long enough for them to grow back, though,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Did you damage your leg?” The spider said aloofly, looking between me and the leg on the floor.
“Yeah. It must have happened when I was captured. The pink giant... erm, I mean, the humans, is that what they’re called? The humans grabbed me pretty roughly. It even chipped a part of my wing, not that it really matters,” I fluttered my wing to exemplify the damage.
Tynidae tried to look like he wasn’t listening, but I knew he was. “So if you manage to get out of here, you probably can’t hop very far, huh? You’d become an easy target,” he sneered. My eyes widened in shock because I could tell that though he tried to sound mean, there was obviously worry and concern littered in his voice. He wasn’t too good at hiding it.
“Yeah. If we do get outta here, getting home might be next to impossible for me,” I sighed, hopping off of the pink mesh and landing on the floor with a thud. It was a hard fact to face. I knew home was some place far, far away, and it would be very hard for me to find it again. Getting eaten was more likely to happen before I could ever returned home, especially now with a disability. I eyed my discarded leg warily. I wished it never came off. I almost even tried willing it to come back and reattach itself, but I couldn’t do that.
“We?” Tynidae frowned. “What the heck do you mean by we, grasshopper?”
I looked at him. “I mean that we’re gonna get outta here together, that’s what,” I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
He looked at me dumbfounded. “You are actually thinking of escaping this godforsaken place with me? A spider, of all things? Why not take the pillbugs? They wouldn’t eat you.”
“You wouldn’t eat me either,” I said, and he seemed to look guilty for even suggesting something of the sort. He knew I was right. “The pillbugs can find their own way out, I don’t care. I don’t even know who they are, and I’m all about helping strangers but I’m not about to help a bunch of bullies.” I raised my head in an authoritative way.
“Are you serious?” Tynidae laughed at me. He couldn’t seem to believe a word I was saying. His face seemed to be a mix of disbelief, incredulity, amusement, and hope.
“Yeah! Let’s get out of here together, kay? You and me.” I grinned as I put my legs up on the barrier, leaning toward Tynidae as far as I could. “You can be the brute and I’ll be the brain.”
“I’m smarter than you,” The spider jeered. “I know what a human is, and what species are and how to avoid things,” Other than getting caught, but I suppose I wouldn’t say that out loud.
I paused. “Well, okay, you’ll be the brute and brain. I’ll be the encouragement!” I smiled. My companion looked a little more than confused. “You give up too easy,” I said simply.
“Oh, I get it,” Tynidae said slowly. “You’re saying I could easily get out of here, I just lack the motivation?”
“Exactly!” I exclaimed. “We’ll help each other out. That’s what friends are for, right, Tynidae?”
Tynidae paused before a smirk crossed his face. “Right, Timmy. It’s what friends are for,” he said. Maybe he never knew what friends were for before, but he certainly looked joyful. He looked determined more than ever before now, and he dashed to the ceiling and tried to break the mesh.
I smiled. Soon, we would find home together.
…
“It’s useless,” the disgruntled moan of the spider erupted suddenly from within the flower.
“It’s only been a couple of days,” I said, yet I was unmoving myself. I sat at the bottom of my cup, stiff. Food was right there, and yet I didn’t want to eat it.
“I can see it,” The spider sneered at me darkly, “You’re losing hope, too...”
“I am...” I had no motivation to finish my sentence. Was I losing hope, or was I not? It was hard to tell at this point. What was I really to do? I glanced over to Tynidae. I was hoping he’d give me another snide remark, something to argue with him about.
I was shocked to see that he had curled up a little, and almost looked like a corpse. I immediately rushed over as far as the cage would allow me. “Tynidae! Tynidae!! Are you okay? Don’t die! Please just tell me you’re moulting!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
He winced, and I sighed in relief. “Relax!” He barked and waved an arm at me. “I’m fine. I’m just hungry. And dying, maybe.” I gave him a deadpanned expression. ‘I’m fine’ and ‘dying’ didn’t really go together at all. My spider friend was far from fine.
“Eat those bugs, then!” I commanded him, and he shook his head.
“There’s two left. I was hoping to save them for my last supper,” he laughed. I didn’t get why he found it funny until he coughed. “It’s a human joke. Of course you wouldn’t know.”
I frowned. How was it even remotely funny? I shook my head. Now was not the time to worry, anyway. “Eat them!”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
This guy was impossible. “Just eat them.”
“They won’t fill me up,” he said as he did what I told him, stuffing the last two in his mouth. “See? I’m still hungry. Whoopee. My dinner’s gone now. Thanks, Timmy. You’re helpful,” he said sarcastically as he looked back at me. “...Timmy? Timmy, what the heck do you think you’re doing?” He scowled.
I began to hoist my detached leg on my back. “Giving you dinner,” I grunted out, hooking two of my legs to it and hopping up to the netting, “what else?”
“You idiot!” Tynidae growled, crawling up to his netting too. “How are you expecting to get that to me?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I began jamming the leg through the mesh. “It fits though, so I can get it through to you. Be ready to catch it, okay?”
The spider frowned at me in disgust. He stuck his spinneret upward through the holes in the mesh, and in a few attempts, his silk caught on to the mesh on my cage. My face lit up. “You’re a genius, Tynidae!” I praised. He grunted and rolled his eyes at me, like it was the most obvious thing to do in the world. I carefully maneuvered the limb out of the mesh and wrapped it with the mesh spider’s webbing, careful not to get any of the sticky substance on myself. “Ok, good to go!”
He began to eat back his silk carefully, pulling the limb along with it. Fortunately, our plan worked, and the leg made it to my neighbor’s cage. He grinned and pulled the thigh through the mesh and began to feast. I smiled and began to eat my own leaves. It was fun to be feasting at the same time.
“You’re just as delicious as I thought you’d be,” the spider commented. “Woulda been better if it was live prey, though.”
“Please, Tyn,” I grunted, “that’s creepy. Don’t get addicted. You’re not getting any more of me.” The spider cackled as he munched away. I couldn’t tell if he was planning otherwise or thought my remarks were funny.
He tried to pull the leg down more, but it got caught in the mesh. He frowned. “What the heck?” he snarled. He was hungry, and it was easy to tell. “Why do your legs have to be so spiky?”
“Wait!” I called. I stared in astonishment, and he stared back in confusion.
“What?”
“The hooks on that leg... we could use them,” I grinned. The spider studied me curiously, egging me to go on with the stare of his eight eyes. “They’re pretty strong, ok? Maybe, if you could pull it along, and cut a hole along the top of the net...”
“If you could do that with your legs, why didn’t you think of it earlier?” The spider sneered as he did as I told him. The mesh began to snap and weaken.
“Yeah, like that! Keep going!” I grinned giddily. “Also, Tynidae, there is a certain way that we insects bend, and it is certainly not that way,” I pointed out as I tried bending my own legs to scratch at the mesh.
He snickered, giving the leg another tug. The bigger the hole became, the more excited he became, and the faster he worked. Soon, it was big enough for the spider to crawl through and triumphantly stand above the mesh, with renewed energy and pride.
I applauded him, jumping down from my mesh to see him. “Nice! Go Tynidae! Woohooo!” I cheered. He seemed to take it proudly. Although, I wasn’t sure of his next move; would he just leave now that he was free?
He hopped on over to my cage, weapon -- or rather, my leg -- in hand and he began to saw at the mesh of my own cage. I wasn’t sure what his motivation was. Was he just in it to eat me in the end? The mesh was opening wider and wider. Would I have regretted befriending a spider? At least I got to know the name of the creature that would eat me.
I doubted the integrity of my friend, it seemed. He opened up the top and peaked in, discarding the exoskeleton of my leg inside my cup. “Are you coming?” He asked, motioning for me with a spiny leg. I blinked, rather dumbfounded.
“Are you actually setting me free?” I asked. He frowned at me.
“Of course I am. It was your idea, wasn’t it? I gotta give you credit and a reward.” He said, rolling his eyes. What a total softie!
I hopped up and out in a jump. “We’re... we’re outside!” I grinned, and I turned toward the large hole and was ready to leap off to freedom. Tynidae grabbed my leg. Had I been deceived? I nervously swallowed the ball in my throat.
“Idiot,” he grunted. I scowled. “If you jump that way, you really will become fish bait.”
I laughed. “Did you know that was what I thought when I first came here?”
“From the look on your face, it wasn’t hard to guess,” Tynidae mused. “Drama queen,” he added as an afterthought with a playful grin.
“Hey, you know as well as I do that I am a boy,” I pouted. So spiders aren't as dumb and forgetful as I thought they were.
“Whatever, ovipositor.”
“Stop that.”
“Nope.” Tynidae began to tug on my legs. “This way.”
“What?”
“We’re getting outside. Follow me.”
I followed the arachnid, seeing as he seemed to know his stuff. After what felt like days of just crawling and hopping along the brown wooden yet smooth ground, we came to an opening in which we slipped out of the place.
Fresh air clamored with scents hit us with a gust that I had to hold myself closer the ground to avoid being blown off.
“Go, go, go, go, go!” Tynidae called. I looked up, rather bewildered. What? “Move! You’ll get crushed!” He shouted fiercely at me. I widened my eyes and jumped to the side as he said. Just then, a giant brown rock came crashing down on the wooden floor, only to soon be picked up again and another one fell. I looked back once to see it was the humans, walking along on their two legs. What was happening? Were they trying to kill us? What did we do to wrong them?
I dashed out of the hole just in time before the large wooden plank shut with a loud SLAM! I winced, and faced Tynidae. He seemed to be breathing hard, and now that I was resting, I noticed I was breathing pretty heavily myself. “Wow...” I muttered.
“We made it.”
“What?”
“Hah! We made it! We made it! Hahaha!” The spider was up and about in no time, jumping around in joy and laughing. He jumped around on the leaves around us, and his joyful laughter filled the air.
We... we made it. I smiled. “I told you! I told you, we would make it! We made it!” I began rejoicing with him, and we played around together in the free open space.
After a short while, the sun was beginning to set low and dip in the horizon. I sighed. We sat outside in the assortment of flowers. Tynidae sat next to the orange flowers, like the ones in his cage. It seemed that he grew an odd attachment to the color. I sat next to him.
“I guess I should be going now, huh...” I muttered. Tynidae looked up at me with a frown.
“Why?” He spat, though his tone betrayed his emotions. Tynidae seemed like such a clingy guy, now that I got to know him.
“I had a family at home. Mom, and dad... a kid, too,” I sighed. “Though... it is cold out. The swarm probably moved somewhere already.” I hopped off of the flowers and looked up at my companion. I’d miss him. Spiders weren’t that bad, after all. But that didn’t nearly mean I could trust every spider out there. “Is this goodbye?”
Tynidae frowned. “Heck no,” he seethed. “Don’t you dare bid me farewell, you little twat. Why do you always have to be so dramatic about everything?”
I laughed. “Looks who’s talking!” I teased.
“You’re the one who’s all, ohhh I have a family! Oh, the swarm, I’ve probably been left behind! You’re calling me the dramatic one?” What a hypocrite. “Let’s say yes, you haven’t been left behind. What are you actually gonna do though? Do you actually think you’ll find home, when you came from so far away?”
I frowned. “Well, they do always say it’s the journey that matters, not the destination...?”
“The journey doesn’t matter if you’re gonna get eaten,” Tynidae sneered at me.
“What do you want me to do, huh, Tynidae?”
“Find home here.”
“What?” Once again, that genius had me dumbfounded.
“Find your home here, Timmy,” Tynidae proposed. “You’ll be safer here, and I’ll protect you.” It sounded like he wanted to pay me back, like he owed me a huge debt. Was it because I helped him get out? Or was it because I became his friend? Was it because I defended him from the pillbugs? “Stay here.” It wasn’t even a question.
I looked down to the ground and pondered my choices. I could go home and find my parents, but how mad would they be at me? I’d been gone for a long while. I was an adult already, too. The children were merely eggs, and the one who hatched could fare well on her on. What reason did I have to go back? I wasn’t homesick. No, I was. I wanted to find home, but the place I wanted to go back to wasn’t home.
That’s right. This place was my home now. “Okay,” I smiled. Tynidae’s face seemed to light up. He invited me to have a seat next to him, and I hopped up upon the orange flowers once more.
Yes, I had finally found home.
I came forth from the darkness again, this time in a much cooler setting. The change in the light was nearly blinding. Light filtered in through a large hole in the wall far off in the distance. Just beyond the hole I could see the outside, the sanctity filled with grass and trees, which I was somewhat familiar with. Yet it was so far away, it would take me hours, maybe even a day, or maybe even a whole moon cycle to get there! Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. My compound eyes trailed all around the room, taking in the unnatural purple walls. Was I in a large rare flower? I only wondered how delicious it could be. What seemed to be a shiny dung-colored object sat in the middle of the room, and the pink giants were sitting on it watching more pink giants trapped inside a black box. The pink giants were truly monstrous, trapping even their own kind.
The one that handled me migrated to a darker room, and I felt as if the world was zooming past me. I had never before gone so fast in my life, and I looked down to see my legs unmoving. I began trembling. I never recalled jumping so high. Yet wasn’t I moving? I sat immobile in my clear coop, unable to take my eyes off of the ground. Well, if there was a ground. There was nothing below me. In my panic, I looked up in a desperate attempt to see solid ground once more.
What was this? I approached a large rectangle filled with water. It was like I was at the side of the lake back at home. My stomach seemed to churn with nostalgia, and I wanted to regurgitate the leaves I had previously eaten. The fish looked so much bigger up close; in fact, they might have been a lot bigger than the ones I’d seen before. They were certainly more colorful, too: they were orange and blue and silvery instead of the brown mud color the fish at the pond shared with me. Only one thought could breach the fear that filled me and made my body tremble all over: ‘I’m going to become fish bait.’
I squeezed my eyes shut in my fear and pointed my head downward, silently thanking and apologizing to the ones I loved back at home. I would never be seeing them again, and I braced myself for impact with the water. This was it. This was the end. Well, I had a good life. Three months since I hatched, and now I was in the face of death -- a puckered-lipped, sharp-toothed, unblinking-eyed, scaled, water-borne death.
“Oh stop it, you drama queen.”
I opened my eyes, all five of them, one at a time. I looked around, rather bewildered by the sudden voice of another creature.
“Over here.” I turned my body a full circle, until my eyes met with eight of a spider. It was a white spider with a green abdomen, and its black fangs hissed at me. Although he obviously appeared much smaller than myself -- about half of my body -- I cowered away a step or two, as far as I could go before crashing into the barrier. “You’re not going to be the fish’s next meal. You’ll be mine,” he sneered darkly, pouncing toward me. I screamed, but luckily he was trapped inside a barrier too. This forsaken barrier that had caged me had provided a safe sanctuary. I sighed in relief.
The spider scowled, and scrambled around his cage. Now that I was able to see it, I could see that he shared the same pink mesh at the top as on my cage, and the container was small and cylindrical. He continued to run around, climbing upon the orange flower in his cage and clawing at the mesh. He stuck his legs through but was unable to fit the rest of his body.
I relaxed my body and sighed. I was safe. “Hah! Haha, you can’t get me!” I sang and teased, and that only made the other guy fume in anger. He grunted and turned the other way and began to tackle the other side of his cup. I blinked my eyes and peered just past him. There was another cup beyond the spider’s. From what I could see, there were a couple of small pillbugs living together with a beetle, and piled on top of them were some rotting pieces of an orange fruit. The spider, in his anger toward me, turned away and tried to target the poor little insects. I wanted to defend them, but those little things were two cups away!
I began to look around more, taking in my surroundings in yet another foreign place. It was only then that I had really realized I had been set down. I looked at my feet, hoping to see the sand I was familiar with. I was very wrong. It was clear beneath me, and now it was like I was floating atop the lake, just above it. The fish swam idly, but sometimes the orange ones would try jumping up at me or the other arthropods. I felt sick again, and I averted my eyes from the terrible sight. I looked at the direction from whence the pink giant had come from to set me beside my neighbors above the rectangular lake. From my vantage point I could see another black box like the one I’d seen earlier mounted on the purple wall -- or petal, whichever it was. Unlike the other one, there were no pink giants trapped inside. There were large holes to either sides of it, and the giants would pass through them. These holes did not lead outside like the one I saw earlier.
In the middle of the room sat an odd figure. It was flat on top, and it had four legs to hold itself up. Come to think of it, everything here had certainly been lacking some legs. The figure in the center only had four, and the pink giants only walked on two! What did they do with their other two legs? These were most likely questions that I will never find answers to. Anyway, surrounding the four-legged object were six identical ones, with four legs as well but high backs. They all sat completely still, and I had a hard time distinguishing them from animal or plant! But they were likely plants... they had the same yellow and wooden color as the floor, too. They were indeed very large as well.
To my right there was only more wooden walls, so I was certain I was next to a light colored tree. To my left were the other two cups containing the spider and the pillbugs. I couldn’t see much past them. I looked behind me and--
I gasped. Behind me, this whole time, was a large hole. Outside was just... just a hop or two away! Just one leap of fate over this dreaded lake! It was right there. The sunshine filtered in, and the green-leaved trees bore fruit heavy upon their branches. It was like I was looking at heaven; it was right there, and yet I simply couldn’t reach it because there was some sort of invisible barrier that held me back. Instinctively, I tried to jump, but my face only collided harshly with the clear walls. I heard a rude snort coming from my next-door-neighbor.
I turned my pout toward him and rubbed my face with my front-most legs. “What?” I groaned irritably.
“Nothing,” The spider scoffed cockily, turning away from me. I bet he would have been sleazily whistling a tune to himself if he could sing as beautifully as me. But alas, a spider is not part of the cricket family like me!
I sent him a glare. “What?” I barked at him. I didn’t like his attitude. Spiders always think they’re on top of the food chain, those arrogant arachnids.
“We’ve all tried it.” He shrugged with two of his legs. “We tried to get out, and...” The spider ran swiftly around his cage before dashing up to the top in an instant and jamming four of his legs through the top netting. “It ended up no use.”
I frowned. “You’re giving up too easy,” I said, and I clawed my four front legs up at the sides of the barrier, using my two jumping legs to support myself as I stood up. “There must be some way out.”
“No way. They’re never going to release us,” the spider frowned. “Believe me. I’ve been here for five days already. They have never once taken off this stupid pink thing,” he growled and again tried to stick his legs through. I couldn’t help but laugh at how pessimistic his words sounded yet he was so persistently trying to squeeze his body through the small holes.
“Who are they?” I asked curiously. “Are you talking about the pink giants?”
“Pink giants?” The spider laughed. “You mean the humans? Of course I know who they are. I lived in the flower patches just outside. Just a regular mesh spider, eating bugs as usual, and suddenly the human who’s always out there around the flowers captures me,” he grunted.
“Hu...humans? Is that what they’re called?” I asked. Pink giants was just so much more fun to say.
“Yeah. And I’m darn hungry. I can’t eat those loud and annoying pillbugs, and you look a lot tastier but I can’t get to you either. All I have are the lame little flies,” he scowled and grabbed a fly off of the flower, stuffing it in his mouth and swallowing it. I cringed.
“Well, I’d never imagined I’d talk to a spider. Isn’t it nice to talk to tasty meal for once instead of eating them?” I mocked with a grin. He grunted again and turned away. Spiders aren't that scary when their fangs couldn’t reach you. Instead, this one was like a sore loser. He refused to talk to me for another long while, and I contentedly gazed out of the hole to the outer world.
…
I’m not sure how long I had sat there, but I had fallen asleep and awoke to another bright day. It was nice to fall asleep for once and not worrying about being eaten by another animal. I stretched my limbs as far as they could go and stood up, and began clawing at the walls again. Today was the day I would get out for sure! I would find home again, wherever home may be.
I had awoken to a considerable amount of noise, and just began making out what I had heard. “You can’t get us!”
“Loser!”
“You’re not scary!”
“You’re just a wimp!”
I looked to my neighbors. I looked beyond the spider to see the rather tumultuous pillbugs shouting insults and laughing. The spider sat in his flower, facing away from the pillbugs. He instead faced me, though he paid no mind to my presence. In fact, upon closer examination, he even seemed to mope a little bit. This baffled me. Spiders moped? They had feelings?
At first, I wanted to join in and throw insults at the now not-so-threatening predator that we shared. Selfishly, I thought that the pillbugs could be my friends, since they were fellow insects. I wanted to shout something like ‘What’s wrong? Did they hurt your feelings? Do you even have feelings?’ But really, I began to think, they did. The spider’s eyes were closed, and he looked so angry yet sad and just... and just that he wanted it all to stop.
Of course, I would do something about it. “Hey.” The spider cracked an eye open, only to see that I was addressing the pillbugs. He tensed and seemed to physically brace himself for more insults. He simply looked too tired to deal with it, and I could not help but feel bad for him.
“Hey, grasshopper guy!” The pillbugs shouted over the two cups.
“I heard grasshoppers are notorious for causing trouble.”
“Help us out! Let’s show the dumb spider what he deserves!”
“Are you as cool as everyone says grasshoppers are?”
“Come on!”
I frowned at them. They were the smallest among us but that didn’t stop them from being huge jerks. “Hey, that isn’t cool, guys.” The spider perked up. He opened his eyes wide and stared at me. The pillbugs seemed to stare at me too. “This is coming from mister cool grasshopper here. Mister cool here says that what you’re doing isn’t cool, and you should stop. Making someone feel bad is never the right thing to do, you know.”
The pillbugs stared at me before laughing and they began throwing insults at the both of us. I frowned. That was the complete opposite of what I intended to happen. I turned to the spider. “Hey...”
He sighed again and rested the bottom of his cephalothorax on the flower. “It’s useless,” he said exasperatedly. “They’ve been doing this every day. It’s so annoying.”
I frowned at him. “You’re giving up too easy,” I said, echoing my words from earlier. He perked up once more. “You’re still a predator,” I reminded him, and a large grin seemed to spread across his face, his fangs clearly visible and his eyes almost filled with bloodlust.
He ran around his cage a couple of times, as if to warm up and stopped in front of the pillbugs. They seemed to freeze in place. He let out some profane words, as well as some threats that seemed to the seething with poison. I stopped really listening, but the pillbugs began to cower and burrowed back into their fruit to hide from the arachnid.
The spider turned back to me, a proud and smug smile pasted on his face as he walked toward me with a head held high. “You’re not that bad, kid.”
I smiled. Maybe I misunderstood the guy. I merely judged him for being a spider, and maybe he judged me for being a grasshopper. That’s kind of how the world of insects went anyway -- we never ever got to know other creatures unless they were our own kind. It just wasn’t how things worked. But in this weird environment the spider and the pillbugs and I were forced into, we finally had the chance to just sit down and talk. “You’re not that bad, either.” I grinned, and he seemed to return the grin, even if it had a malicious tint to it. That might have just been because he was feeling high and mighty, scaring off his bullies like that. “My name is Timoteo. Timoteo Fasciata. You can just call me Timmy.”
The spider blinked. He seemed to think for a moment, as if trying to figure out how to respond. “My name is...” He must not have been a very social creature, since the way he scrunched up the features of his face made it obvious he could barely remember his name. “Call me Tynidae.”
“You don’t have a full name?” I asked.
He frowned at me. “My name is Dick Tynidae. I hate that name though, so just call me Tynidae, okay?” he growled.
I laughed. “Okay. It’s nice to meet you Tynidae.” I paused. “I hope that we can be friends in the short time we’ll be here!” I added as an afterthought.
Tynidae snorted. “You too, Timoteo. But don’t count on it being short.”
“Oh, I’ll count on it.”
…
The lunar rock in the sky shined brightly, and I stared in awe. It was nice to finally admire the sky without worry of predators sneaking up on me. Speaking of predators...
“Those are some cool legs you have there,” Tynidae said awkwardly, in an odd attempt to start a conversation.
I perked up, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks! You got a pretty rad abdomen. It’s a nice green color.” He turned his head as if he didn’t even know what color his abdomen was, twisting a little before confirming and giving me a nod.
“Yeah, thanks,” the word seemed to roll awkwardly off his tongue. “Your legs are a cool blue. What was it, caerulean, is that the color? You are a caerulean-winged grasshopper, aren’t you?”
I stretched out my back right leg, as if to exhibit the fine limb I possessed. “Yes! You sure know your species,” I sang.
“I have to learn which ones are the tastiest, after all.” Tynidae rolled his eyes. “You’re lookin’ pretty delectable. Have I said that already?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yes,” I grunted. It was probably way too early to determine if making a friend in this wretched place so far from home was a blessing or a curse. Regardless, his comment effectively ended our conversation there, and we returned to a comfortable silence. Tynidae munched on the small fly nymphs and I continued to stare at the hole in the wall and daydream. Sooner or later, I’d find home.
…
“A-aaaaaaaaaaaah!”
My scream effectively woke Tynidae up from his slumber. “What is it so early in the morning, you dumb ovipositor?” He growled. I frowned. That was practically the meanest insult out there, especially for an insect! How would you feel if someone called you the name of genetalia? Geez, Tynidae was so rude. How could that arachnid say something so vulgar so easily? I shook it off. This was an arachnid I was talking about. He probably had different standards. I had to be a little more culturally sensitive. But, it couldn’t hurt if he was a bit more culturally sensitive too. Anyway, back to the dire matter on hand...
“My leg!” I continued to panic. I poked at my back leg with my front legs. No, no, no! Why did this happen?
“What’s up with your leg?” Tynidae grunted from the next cup over. He crawled out of his little hideout within the orange flowers and looked at my situation. He began laughing, and I glared daggers at him. “Hah! Haha, you lost a leg? Shame!” He teased, a wide grin baring sharp fangs flashed at me. “Ironic that we were just talking about it yesterday, huh?”
I wanted to blame him, but I knew that it would be ridiculous to blame him. He was a cup over, and if he was able to reach me then he probably would have just eaten me. I turned my attention back to my detached back leg with a frown. It was interesting, for one, to finally see it in full. The blue color was nice, as Tynidae had mentioned earlier, and I poked the meatier upper part of it. “Come to think of it, my back leg did hurt yesterday,” I muttered.
“Can you still jump like that?” Tynidae asked, looking at me from antennae to foot as if I was some freak-show -- the five-eyed, five-legged wonder.
“Yeah. Though, not nearly as far.” I jumped, my feet hooking onto the pink mesh that worked as my ceiling. I hung upside down and faced Tynidae. “It’s not like losing a leg hurt or anything. It’s completely natural. Grasshoppers tend to shed legs if they damage them. It’s just like moulting, it doesn’t hurt at all. We normally don’t live long enough for them to grow back, though,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Did you damage your leg?” The spider said aloofly, looking between me and the leg on the floor.
“Yeah. It must have happened when I was captured. The pink giant... erm, I mean, the humans, is that what they’re called? The humans grabbed me pretty roughly. It even chipped a part of my wing, not that it really matters,” I fluttered my wing to exemplify the damage.
Tynidae tried to look like he wasn’t listening, but I knew he was. “So if you manage to get out of here, you probably can’t hop very far, huh? You’d become an easy target,” he sneered. My eyes widened in shock because I could tell that though he tried to sound mean, there was obviously worry and concern littered in his voice. He wasn’t too good at hiding it.
“Yeah. If we do get outta here, getting home might be next to impossible for me,” I sighed, hopping off of the pink mesh and landing on the floor with a thud. It was a hard fact to face. I knew home was some place far, far away, and it would be very hard for me to find it again. Getting eaten was more likely to happen before I could ever returned home, especially now with a disability. I eyed my discarded leg warily. I wished it never came off. I almost even tried willing it to come back and reattach itself, but I couldn’t do that.
“We?” Tynidae frowned. “What the heck do you mean by we, grasshopper?”
I looked at him. “I mean that we’re gonna get outta here together, that’s what,” I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
He looked at me dumbfounded. “You are actually thinking of escaping this godforsaken place with me? A spider, of all things? Why not take the pillbugs? They wouldn’t eat you.”
“You wouldn’t eat me either,” I said, and he seemed to look guilty for even suggesting something of the sort. He knew I was right. “The pillbugs can find their own way out, I don’t care. I don’t even know who they are, and I’m all about helping strangers but I’m not about to help a bunch of bullies.” I raised my head in an authoritative way.
“Are you serious?” Tynidae laughed at me. He couldn’t seem to believe a word I was saying. His face seemed to be a mix of disbelief, incredulity, amusement, and hope.
“Yeah! Let’s get out of here together, kay? You and me.” I grinned as I put my legs up on the barrier, leaning toward Tynidae as far as I could. “You can be the brute and I’ll be the brain.”
“I’m smarter than you,” The spider jeered. “I know what a human is, and what species are and how to avoid things,” Other than getting caught, but I suppose I wouldn’t say that out loud.
I paused. “Well, okay, you’ll be the brute and brain. I’ll be the encouragement!” I smiled. My companion looked a little more than confused. “You give up too easy,” I said simply.
“Oh, I get it,” Tynidae said slowly. “You’re saying I could easily get out of here, I just lack the motivation?”
“Exactly!” I exclaimed. “We’ll help each other out. That’s what friends are for, right, Tynidae?”
Tynidae paused before a smirk crossed his face. “Right, Timmy. It’s what friends are for,” he said. Maybe he never knew what friends were for before, but he certainly looked joyful. He looked determined more than ever before now, and he dashed to the ceiling and tried to break the mesh.
I smiled. Soon, we would find home together.
…
“It’s useless,” the disgruntled moan of the spider erupted suddenly from within the flower.
“It’s only been a couple of days,” I said, yet I was unmoving myself. I sat at the bottom of my cup, stiff. Food was right there, and yet I didn’t want to eat it.
“I can see it,” The spider sneered at me darkly, “You’re losing hope, too...”
“I am...” I had no motivation to finish my sentence. Was I losing hope, or was I not? It was hard to tell at this point. What was I really to do? I glanced over to Tynidae. I was hoping he’d give me another snide remark, something to argue with him about.
I was shocked to see that he had curled up a little, and almost looked like a corpse. I immediately rushed over as far as the cage would allow me. “Tynidae! Tynidae!! Are you okay? Don’t die! Please just tell me you’re moulting!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
He winced, and I sighed in relief. “Relax!” He barked and waved an arm at me. “I’m fine. I’m just hungry. And dying, maybe.” I gave him a deadpanned expression. ‘I’m fine’ and ‘dying’ didn’t really go together at all. My spider friend was far from fine.
“Eat those bugs, then!” I commanded him, and he shook his head.
“There’s two left. I was hoping to save them for my last supper,” he laughed. I didn’t get why he found it funny until he coughed. “It’s a human joke. Of course you wouldn’t know.”
I frowned. How was it even remotely funny? I shook my head. Now was not the time to worry, anyway. “Eat them!”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
This guy was impossible. “Just eat them.”
“They won’t fill me up,” he said as he did what I told him, stuffing the last two in his mouth. “See? I’m still hungry. Whoopee. My dinner’s gone now. Thanks, Timmy. You’re helpful,” he said sarcastically as he looked back at me. “...Timmy? Timmy, what the heck do you think you’re doing?” He scowled.
I began to hoist my detached leg on my back. “Giving you dinner,” I grunted out, hooking two of my legs to it and hopping up to the netting, “what else?”
“You idiot!” Tynidae growled, crawling up to his netting too. “How are you expecting to get that to me?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I began jamming the leg through the mesh. “It fits though, so I can get it through to you. Be ready to catch it, okay?”
The spider frowned at me in disgust. He stuck his spinneret upward through the holes in the mesh, and in a few attempts, his silk caught on to the mesh on my cage. My face lit up. “You’re a genius, Tynidae!” I praised. He grunted and rolled his eyes at me, like it was the most obvious thing to do in the world. I carefully maneuvered the limb out of the mesh and wrapped it with the mesh spider’s webbing, careful not to get any of the sticky substance on myself. “Ok, good to go!”
He began to eat back his silk carefully, pulling the limb along with it. Fortunately, our plan worked, and the leg made it to my neighbor’s cage. He grinned and pulled the thigh through the mesh and began to feast. I smiled and began to eat my own leaves. It was fun to be feasting at the same time.
“You’re just as delicious as I thought you’d be,” the spider commented. “Woulda been better if it was live prey, though.”
“Please, Tyn,” I grunted, “that’s creepy. Don’t get addicted. You’re not getting any more of me.” The spider cackled as he munched away. I couldn’t tell if he was planning otherwise or thought my remarks were funny.
He tried to pull the leg down more, but it got caught in the mesh. He frowned. “What the heck?” he snarled. He was hungry, and it was easy to tell. “Why do your legs have to be so spiky?”
“Wait!” I called. I stared in astonishment, and he stared back in confusion.
“What?”
“The hooks on that leg... we could use them,” I grinned. The spider studied me curiously, egging me to go on with the stare of his eight eyes. “They’re pretty strong, ok? Maybe, if you could pull it along, and cut a hole along the top of the net...”
“If you could do that with your legs, why didn’t you think of it earlier?” The spider sneered as he did as I told him. The mesh began to snap and weaken.
“Yeah, like that! Keep going!” I grinned giddily. “Also, Tynidae, there is a certain way that we insects bend, and it is certainly not that way,” I pointed out as I tried bending my own legs to scratch at the mesh.
He snickered, giving the leg another tug. The bigger the hole became, the more excited he became, and the faster he worked. Soon, it was big enough for the spider to crawl through and triumphantly stand above the mesh, with renewed energy and pride.
I applauded him, jumping down from my mesh to see him. “Nice! Go Tynidae! Woohooo!” I cheered. He seemed to take it proudly. Although, I wasn’t sure of his next move; would he just leave now that he was free?
He hopped on over to my cage, weapon -- or rather, my leg -- in hand and he began to saw at the mesh of my own cage. I wasn’t sure what his motivation was. Was he just in it to eat me in the end? The mesh was opening wider and wider. Would I have regretted befriending a spider? At least I got to know the name of the creature that would eat me.
I doubted the integrity of my friend, it seemed. He opened up the top and peaked in, discarding the exoskeleton of my leg inside my cup. “Are you coming?” He asked, motioning for me with a spiny leg. I blinked, rather dumbfounded.
“Are you actually setting me free?” I asked. He frowned at me.
“Of course I am. It was your idea, wasn’t it? I gotta give you credit and a reward.” He said, rolling his eyes. What a total softie!
I hopped up and out in a jump. “We’re... we’re outside!” I grinned, and I turned toward the large hole and was ready to leap off to freedom. Tynidae grabbed my leg. Had I been deceived? I nervously swallowed the ball in my throat.
“Idiot,” he grunted. I scowled. “If you jump that way, you really will become fish bait.”
I laughed. “Did you know that was what I thought when I first came here?”
“From the look on your face, it wasn’t hard to guess,” Tynidae mused. “Drama queen,” he added as an afterthought with a playful grin.
“Hey, you know as well as I do that I am a boy,” I pouted. So spiders aren't as dumb and forgetful as I thought they were.
“Whatever, ovipositor.”
“Stop that.”
“Nope.” Tynidae began to tug on my legs. “This way.”
“What?”
“We’re getting outside. Follow me.”
I followed the arachnid, seeing as he seemed to know his stuff. After what felt like days of just crawling and hopping along the brown wooden yet smooth ground, we came to an opening in which we slipped out of the place.
Fresh air clamored with scents hit us with a gust that I had to hold myself closer the ground to avoid being blown off.
“Go, go, go, go, go!” Tynidae called. I looked up, rather bewildered. What? “Move! You’ll get crushed!” He shouted fiercely at me. I widened my eyes and jumped to the side as he said. Just then, a giant brown rock came crashing down on the wooden floor, only to soon be picked up again and another one fell. I looked back once to see it was the humans, walking along on their two legs. What was happening? Were they trying to kill us? What did we do to wrong them?
I dashed out of the hole just in time before the large wooden plank shut with a loud SLAM! I winced, and faced Tynidae. He seemed to be breathing hard, and now that I was resting, I noticed I was breathing pretty heavily myself. “Wow...” I muttered.
“We made it.”
“What?”
“Hah! We made it! We made it! Hahaha!” The spider was up and about in no time, jumping around in joy and laughing. He jumped around on the leaves around us, and his joyful laughter filled the air.
We... we made it. I smiled. “I told you! I told you, we would make it! We made it!” I began rejoicing with him, and we played around together in the free open space.
After a short while, the sun was beginning to set low and dip in the horizon. I sighed. We sat outside in the assortment of flowers. Tynidae sat next to the orange flowers, like the ones in his cage. It seemed that he grew an odd attachment to the color. I sat next to him.
“I guess I should be going now, huh...” I muttered. Tynidae looked up at me with a frown.
“Why?” He spat, though his tone betrayed his emotions. Tynidae seemed like such a clingy guy, now that I got to know him.
“I had a family at home. Mom, and dad... a kid, too,” I sighed. “Though... it is cold out. The swarm probably moved somewhere already.” I hopped off of the flowers and looked up at my companion. I’d miss him. Spiders weren’t that bad, after all. But that didn’t nearly mean I could trust every spider out there. “Is this goodbye?”
Tynidae frowned. “Heck no,” he seethed. “Don’t you dare bid me farewell, you little twat. Why do you always have to be so dramatic about everything?”
I laughed. “Looks who’s talking!” I teased.
“You’re the one who’s all, ohhh I have a family! Oh, the swarm, I’ve probably been left behind! You’re calling me the dramatic one?” What a hypocrite. “Let’s say yes, you haven’t been left behind. What are you actually gonna do though? Do you actually think you’ll find home, when you came from so far away?”
I frowned. “Well, they do always say it’s the journey that matters, not the destination...?”
“The journey doesn’t matter if you’re gonna get eaten,” Tynidae sneered at me.
“What do you want me to do, huh, Tynidae?”
“Find home here.”
“What?” Once again, that genius had me dumbfounded.
“Find your home here, Timmy,” Tynidae proposed. “You’ll be safer here, and I’ll protect you.” It sounded like he wanted to pay me back, like he owed me a huge debt. Was it because I helped him get out? Or was it because I became his friend? Was it because I defended him from the pillbugs? “Stay here.” It wasn’t even a question.
I looked down to the ground and pondered my choices. I could go home and find my parents, but how mad would they be at me? I’d been gone for a long while. I was an adult already, too. The children were merely eggs, and the one who hatched could fare well on her on. What reason did I have to go back? I wasn’t homesick. No, I was. I wanted to find home, but the place I wanted to go back to wasn’t home.
That’s right. This place was my home now. “Okay,” I smiled. Tynidae’s face seemed to light up. He invited me to have a seat next to him, and I hopped up upon the orange flowers once more.
Yes, I had finally found home.