CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

The dwarf lay on tile at night. Bare, his limbs sucked up the cold of the floor in resistance to the heat of swet. His eyes naturally on the tall steeple ceiling, he questioned whether the roof’s absence above thick silk should stay so, a large spider in that moment squeezing its body through from the hot air outside.

Well, he was not sure of what a ceiling flap would look like, the dwarf admitted, and he was certainly not willing to spend the effort it would demand. Having only recently escaped bondage, his scars ached. Having aided his captors in sealing off a second entrance to their far ruin, each limb begged for attention over the other. The dwarf’s thighs bristled even in thought of riding another animal anytime soon, eight legs or four.

Moonlight glittered through the webs above. White became blue overtime, one rock in the sky trading places with another. The dwarf’s eyes closed slowly and opened the same. He tilted his head towards the resting shapes of hogs, and Waspig, to be always counted on, brought about a smile, though faint. The notion of a hunt washed over the dwarf’s mind then, a blurry vision of he and his pet staking out the nearby cliffs for creatures. Just as it seemed he’d fall asleep, the dwarf yawned and became at once aware again. He felt embarrassed for having his affectionate thoughts turn so violent at once. But his stomach growled and the dwarf could not ignore much longer the fire of its complaints.

The dwarf tired dreadfully of mushroom loaf...

A spider no larger than Waspig crawled across tile to the resting body of the dwarf. It, covered in blond hair with fine dark streaks and blots throughout, squeezed itself through the church door’s miniature exit and out into night. The river to the east stirred the most noise in the air, but it was the birds of this hour which excited the arachnid. It scurried down the trail ahead and eventually took a right well before the mossy cottage. Through the raised and lowered cliffs it began traversing, trees growing every which way but not properly to the effect of a forest. The spider stopped before one, putting claws on bark, and raised itself into the cover of leaves. From here it undertook a silent vow for some seeming hours.

Then came a cacophony of flapping, feathers soon resting, and the shrouded spider observed a collective of crows across. The murder talked excitedly among themselves unaware of the pedipalps preparing themselves not far. Soon silk was upon one and another, and many but not all fled, and the spider helped itself to its prey. Full, the hunter mummified its leftovers and stuck them together, slinging the mass then around itself like a strapped sack. It hopped away from the scene to further down the cliffs, nestling itself in another batch of oak and waiting. Not long did the spider arrive before albino crows settled in ahead. But none talked. Pedipalps nervous, the spider sweat. Struck intimidated, it did not act. White crows fluttered away piecemeal until just one remained. The crowd had scared but, isolated, the arachnid chittered with confidence.

Web shot from one tree to the other. The white crow indeed suffered the surprise attack and became incapacitated. But as the web pulled, it began to melt, and soon the crow, drenched in its boiling puddle, flew directly into the spider’s legs, dragging its claws deep. Blood trickling, the spider could not help but feel warm, overly warm for the season of swet. The bird brushed by a clump of thick leaves setting them ablaze, and the spider leapt from the tree in panic. As the white crow dove, so too did its kind return, and the haze in the black sky descended onto blonde hair, shredding, with skin flayed and legs amputated. By its death the low beast was pulled apart, thorax from abdomen, head from thorax. Never did a single beak utter noise throughout the solem process, and they departed as silent as they had come. The streaked spider’s array of eyes wore over themselves a thin, weepy glaze. Its limbs paled and blond went gray. Each part then gave itself up to dust as the sky began to blue, the sun not far behind.

The dwarf awoke in sweat and tears. Naked, he shoved through the door of the chapel and thrust his face into the nearby rushing water. His reflection stretched in fat voluminous bursts until settling, and it frowned. The dwarf’s stomach brought him across the river and towards a particularly plump, thin beaked bird atop a branch. It looked ridiculous, the dwarf thought, and dimwitted. Delirious, his legs staggered and his arms shot out to grab at the fast exiting prey. The dwarf felt ridiculous. Sleep had worsened his state, he ascertained, and he would have to resort to the many stored loaves, crops far from ready. The dwarf did extend gratefulness to the doctor for keeping him fed, or rather Funguayou who overtook baking, but he hated the subject at hand intensely. His hand ripped through the rapid surface of the river in a pathetic grab at fish. He’d caught enough fish in a previous lifetime, knew the dwarf--he conceded his foolishness.

As his back laid against a curved oak just beside the river, the dwarf’s eyes returned to the chapel. Was this home? Wasn’t home home? These questions tormented the already agitated, but he remained calm, his thoughts affixed to the squeezing of his fists. He wished to return only to leave; but who would care for his flock after? Would they become the subjects of Mallow? Stomach upset with lunch, the dwarf’s eyes shut hard. What was he doing? He repeated this request to his reflection to no avail. Both hands went down to dirt with quick movement, and the reprehensible meal provided by Mallow exited through beard mixing adjacent water murky until gone altogether, pushed down cliffs and into a distant ravine. He fell to his side and looked up again at the steeple, the angle laying its multicolored windows onto the ground. He gazed at the webbed hole which, in a moment later, produced two spiders. His eyebrows raised.

The dwarf rinsed his beard and returned to the chapel, bursting back out with an ax.

“CARPENTRY SKILL INCREASED TO 19”

“CARPENTRY SKILL INCREASED TO 20”

Putting the chapel’s stock of logs to more use, the dwarf chopped many into segments, fletching them further with his bandit knife to fine sized stakes and pegs. These he wrapped in, with the aid of his eight legged companions, webbing. The dwarf stomped around beneath the sun hunting for proper sized saplings, planting his stakes and bending his discoveries. Nooses hanged sporadically throughout ground level, and the dwarf turned his sights to the trees. He tied the knots of several traps up within these branches, some involving the sensitive weight of stakes, others quite like triggers. As a bonus to his ‘CARPENTRY’, his ‘SURVIVAL’ skill increased twice and, while he’d not caught anything yet, the announcements stirred confidence in his bare chest.

The dwarf thought himself satisfied in his toil. By the start of evening he checked on his crops of potato and broccoli and returned to his congregation in marginally cooler conditions. That night the dwarf gained three levels in the husbandry of his flock, so hungry he sweat, so determined to distract his reeling brain. In just one visit outside the dwarf scoured for apples, the fruits he’d once identified, and could come across nothing. The small region was picked clean. None of his traps yielded fruit either. The dwarf fell asleep in dispair.

With the arrival of morning, the body of the dwarf resisted issued commands and kept itself put and naked on tile. He looked on at a crawling spider determining whether it would squeeze out. It did. He should have resolved to kill himself, the dwarf swallowed bitterly, than face such intense hunger. It was pride which kept him from panhandling the doctor for a varied meal--one which could stay down; now, the dwarf did not think himself physically fit for the small journey. But it was the sudden remembrance of his laid traps which brought the dwarf up and staggering out. Slowly he checked each and every string and hairpin trigger. He’d caught little else but insects.

The dwarf did not fall. He wished to, truthfully, but a very convincing idea stayed his form: he knew he would be unable to rise again.

Watching an arachnid begin to mount the tall walls of the steeple, the dwarf mustered his energy into a shout. The startled spider turned and skittered up to its master. Like Mimicule it was of small stature and red--but completely. He hopped aboard and guided it ahead until the two were down a cliff someway. Scaring some birds off, the dwarf then whistled for the production of a net of web, attaching it all from one tree to another in a wide span and pushing the spider further out to the moss roofed cottage. Here he drew his ride to the door and knocked, slumping and sliding off the spider...

“You need vegetables, buddy?” asked a familiar funguay. “And protein. And other nutrients. You’ve deficient all over, sorry to say. You haven’t just been eating that nasty bread, have you, dwarf? Hope you’ve at least been dunking it. Well, just stay put, lunch is nearly here. Will you watch The Canticle for me? The rest are playing outside but this poor thing’s been ill. Thank you, really. Just a moment.”

Following Funguayou’s flee, the dwarf tilted his beard at the unnerving matrimony of funguay and pigsect, the latter itself already its own affront. Its toadstool topped snout lowered, and the Canticle made a strange sound. Between the stalk its various eyes scanned invisibly, pools of impenetrable black blocking the dwarf from such knowledge. But The Canticle kept itself quiet following its last outburst and remained motionless as well. In the end, nothing transpired between the time in which Funguayou left and returned to announce the meal. To the dwarf, seated in usual uncomfortable rocker, a tray of steamed pointed greens, fluffy and mashed potatoes, stripped head of corn, and grease pooling meat. The plate’s appearance dazzled the dwarf’s eyes, salivating, but a discrepancy in portion size between his and what Funguayou and its father were to eat seemed strange. The mushroom caught the dwarf’s thought bearing look and smiled.

“You don’t look as if you’ve eaten in days. Take it slow.”...

After three days--in the middle of the span, Funguayou saw to the dwarf’s own flock--the dwarf made the return trip home. Indeed, the harshly red spider waited patiently by the cottage for its master, it heading in only the natural conclusion to call home. But could he become too comfortable with the idea? The dwarf weighed the reconstruction of the church’s front door--this was an order from an offended doctor, but he’d wanted to have it done regardless. A massive hole still lay in between tile--another home improvement? The dwarf, full, shuddered. His sack burst with jarred and pickled vegetables, a slab of cornbread, and some hand-tied bags of leaves, the funguay advising their use in tea. He felt good, and he felt horrible. The dwarf hated his continued reliance on the doctor. But what choice had he had?

As the two passed some trees, the dwarf noticed the netted trap in the distance. Through it were two holes, edges singed.