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It comes slowly, and then all at once.
Her brothers like their games, tugging at the toys in their sandbox, watching and laughing at how the pieces fall. She doesn’t play the same way as them, and yet their games wouldn’t exist without her. It is her strands that let them touch their favorite dolls, move them as they will. She is the one born of the twining magic of that side interacting with the remnants of this one. What started as a prison for one dark soul had stretched and slowly ensnared the nearby town.
It’s pretty, she thinks. Her brothers might not appreciate her art, but the gossamer threads that cover the town glimmer in a way that makes her proud.
So while her brothers move the pieces, she plays with the threads, watching them weave and tangle in new patterns, stretching into shapes far beyond the comprehension of the little humans on the other side.
She is happy. She is.
And then in one moment that will change everything, as she is tugging on one of her threads, something tugs back.
And that? That’s interesting.
Nothing has ever tugged at her strings before, and she is curious to see what could. She crawls down the thin filament (perfectly balanced, in a way her brothers, with their hamfisted ways, have never been able to replicate) to see what lies at the other end.
It’s a human.
A little human, too, not one of the full grown ones. The human is a tiny little thing who looks up at her with big eyes, clearly as curious as she is, and able to see her despite the divide between them.
She wonders if this is how her brothers feel when they pick out their favorite toys.
She doesn’t know quite how humans communicate, and she isn’t sure they would keep their minds if she tried to talk to them the way she did to her brothers. Instead, she carefully tugs at the thread again, curious to see what the human will do.
The human tugs back, and this time it’s as if another thread has come into existence, stretching from her to the human.
Something travels along that thread, and it’s something she understands. A sensation of wonderment, greeting, and the image of a creature from the human’s world that apparently she resembles enough for the human to draw a comparison to. She sends back her own wonder and greeting, along with curiosity as to the little creature she is being compared to. The human responds with thoughts of the little creatures spinning their own webs, which she can’t say are nearly as intricate and sparkling as hers, but are an understandable comparison non the less. She offers the sensation of flattery.
The little human sends her a query of sorts for an identifier. Something to set her apart and a definition of what she is. Quizzically, she sends back the patterns she both weaves and is. The human seems distressed by this for a moment before she realizes what the problem is--the human cannot understand precisely what she is. Human brains are quite up to comprehending that. With a shrug, she instead sends the images of the webs the little creatures like her weave, which will have to be an acceptable substitute.
Apparently they are, because the human seems calm at that. She sends her own query of an identifier, curious as to how humans do that sort of thing. She is gifted with a sort of memory, of another human making a series of vibrations in the air that seem to be able to be sensed by other humans. How interesting.
She copies the vibrations best she can; not a perfect match, but close enough, judging by the teeth the human is now showing along with the happiness leaking off of it. She makes the vibrations again, just to see the human’s reaction.
“Hannah.”
The human makes a different set of vibrations, this one accompanied again by those images of the webs of those little creatures. A thrill goes through her. Those vibrations are her identifier in the human language! She asks the human to make it again, best she can, and the human obliges. She copies this set of vibrations quickly and excitedly.
“Webby.”
The human is broadcasting more joy, and the newly dubbed Webby perches more comfortably as she prepares to learn more words.
-HF-
The human, Hannah, she comes to realize, is indeed a young human, and a female of the species. Hannah is an excellent tutor, all things considered, and has picked up sending feelings, memories, and concepts along the thread between them rapidly.
The vibrations humans use to communicate, Webby realizes, are tricky to replicate in her natural form. More and more frequently when they meet, she slips into the guise of another human female. At first Hannah seems to find this reassuring, but it doesn’t take long before Hannah is greeting her equally in either form, uncaring of which she is currently wearing.
Webby finds herself enjoying spending time with Hannah. Even when Hannah is doing other things, Webby follows her. Occasionally she’ll warn the girl of who her brothers are playing with, letting the human avoid danger and death. Webby finds she doesn’t want the girl hurt. She doesn’t want the girl dead.
It hits her one night while Hannah is sleeping. Hannah has other humans who care for her. Hannah cares for these humans like Webby cares for Hannah. These other humans care for more humans. What happens when these humans fall prey to her brothers’ games? How would Webby feel if Hannah fell to their games?
It is with a dawning horror that for the first time, Webby realizes her brothers’ games are wrong.
It’s a different sort of web, but no less entrapping.
When Hannah wakes up, Webby asks what they are. What is the series of vibrations that defines their relationship?
This is the day Webby learns the word “friend”.
-HF-
Webby doesn’t play with her brothers any more. Instead, she spends her time looking over the web that surrounds the town, weaving over everything and everyone within. It is through her web that her brothers can play with the humans at all. If she were to tear it away, they couldn’t play their games anymore, but it would be obvious what she’d done.
She doesn’t like her chances, in that case. She may be clever, but her brothers are strong, and there are five of them to her one.
She can’t go about this in a ham handed manner. She must be smart. Creative.
This is the thing: a web can be complicated, twisting, and hopelessly entangled, but it is also possible for a web to simply look that way. It is also possible for a web to be much less interlaced than it looks, to the point that a single tug on the right strand at the right point is enough to collapse it all together.
Webby is very, very good with webs.
It will take time to free this town in a way her brothers don’t see, longer still to ensure that they cannot take revenge on her afterwards. This will be the greatest web she’s ever woven, one of deception as much as her threads.
She stretches as she sends out masses of new fibers, pulling through the reality of the town, the people, and time itself. Her brothers look up in surprise to see the strands surging outwards and inwards, branching apart crossing over, and at times even doubling back on themselves in the most complex weaving she has ever attempted.
It does not stop.
Webby gives the nearest approximation of a shake she can and fixes her brothers with something that Hannah has likened to a smile.
“Brothers,” she says in a voiceless manner that requires none of the vibrations Hannah has taught her to recognize. “Let’s play a game.”