Work Text:
Tuuri couldn’t sleep. Her room was pitch black other than the blinking lights on the heater and fire alarm, without even a shaft of moonlight from the window. Of course there wasn’t--this planet was moonless, after all. By all rights, she shouldn’t have even had to close her eyes before drifting off, but she’d been having odd, terrifying dreams ever since her family moved to this planet. Much better to be warm and awake under these covers then slipping into the icy waters of her recurring nightmare.
She twitched as she heard a tapping against the window. Probably just a bit of debris, or a plant or something. The tapping came again, more insistent. Did Lalli lock himself out again? she wondered. With a sigh, she pushed the thick blanket aside and got up, crossing her arms to preserve a little bit of warmth. Their hab had heaters, but it was forty below outside and heaters could only do so much. She walked over to the window, narrowly avoiding the foot of her bed and the desk at her bedside, and stared outside.
Tuuri couldn’t see a damn thing, of course, because it was no brighter outside her room than inside. She ran her hand against the wall until it found a light switch, and flipped it on. The light burned her eyes a bit, and she had to cover them for a moment, but luckily it was only the switch for a low-brightness emergency light, and her eyes adjusted quickly. The window was ice-cold as she pressed her hands against it to block out the reflections so she could look outside.
There was a little ball of fluff outside, held up on eight spindly legs and bobbing up and down cheerfully. It waved a leg at her. Tuuri waved back, confused. It waved again, more forcefully, then tapped on the ground outside, making an indent in the snow. “What are you?” she wondered, “Someone’s pet?” Whatever it was, it was very cute for a spider… ish... thing. Maybe she’d go out in the morning to see if it was still there; snow was starting to fall and she really didn’t want to go out in the cold to check on some random animal.
She was about to turn away from the window when the creature started shivering, nestling itself in the snow for warmth. She could faintly hear a pitiful whimper from outside the window. “Oh come on.” she said. It brushed some of the snow off of itself with a quivering leg and looked up at her. Its beady eyes glistened as if it were crying. “Ugh, fine.” Tuuri got up and walked over to the hooks on the wall by her door. She grabbed her parka off of it and started doing up the buckles. The fact that it was already a bit snug wasn’t the only cause of the frown spreading across her face. “Onni won’t be happy about this, though.”
Her bedroom door slid open with a hiss, and she snuck out into the kitchen. There were several ration pack wrappers scattered around, evidence of Lalli’s midnight snacking. She ignored the mess and tapped on the button to open the heavy exterior door. It slid open much more slowly, and a wave of snow and cold air buffeted against her.
The fluffball skittered over to her as she pulled the coat tight against herself. It chirruped at her and bumped the little black patch that passed for it’s head against her. An odd, but not unpleasant tingling sensation spread up her leg. Tuuri giggled, and leaned over to pick it up. It chirruped again, and scuttled a few feet away from her. “Aw, come on! Don’t make me chase you!” The bug hopped up and down a few times, excited, and then as soon as she stepped towards it it ran off.
“Dammit!” she shouted, running after it. She soon became winded and numb in the extremities from the cold, but the spider showed no sign of tiring. Instead, it matched her pace almost exactly, always staying just close enough for her to see it. ‘ Smart little thing, aren’t you ’ Tuuri mused, stopping to catch her breath and staring into its beady eyes. She’d nearly lost sight of the city by now, and its lights were reduced to a diffuse glow by the thickening snowstorm.
She waited until the spider glanced away from her and then gave it her all, using everything she had in one final sprint to catch this thing. It skittered away, losing a few feet of ground to her but still moving much faster over the snow. Suddenly, the creature came to a complete stop, and she nearly tripped over it. Stumbling to her feet, she grabbed it and wrapped it in her arms, grasping it tightly to prevent it from wiggling away. The spider suddenly calmed down, and from the whiteout ahead Tuuri heard a long, low moan.
The ground shook a little bit as a massive shape walked out of the storm. As its features came into view, it seemed to look like the thing trapped in her embrace, but much, much larger. Its eight legs extended up a good five meters, supporting a fluffy ovoid body the size of a compact car. The legs looked odd, too, more like flat tendrils than an insect’s limb. The beast extended one of them out towards her, and she recoiled slightly at its freezing touch. The tingling reappeared, much stronger, and a series of images began to flash through Tuuri’s mind.
...herself, sitting on a plush, frost-covered chair in the middle of a huge cavern, a spider nestled in her lap…
...a group of explorers being swarmed by spiders and vanishing, leaving no blood on the snow…
...an adoring crowd of humans and spiders gathered in front of her chair, waiting to hear what she said next…
She pushed the tendril away, reeling. “What was that?” she asked the big spider. It made the same moaning noise before pointing it’s tendril to its face and shaking its body back and forth, in a crude imitation of the human gesture for ‘no’. “Right, you can’t talk but you can listen.” It nodded, regarding her impassively with pearly eyes.
“I’ll guess, then. You… want me to give you a chair?” It moaned again, slightly louder this time, and the spider in her arms chittered impatiently. “Guess it’s not that. You want me to work for you, as a warrior? Because let me tell you, there are way better picks for that than me, even in my own house.” Another moan, but not quite as loud this time. “Seriously? What, do you want me to lead you or something silly like that?” There was a burst of chittering and the big spider nodded at her.
“Well… It’s a tempting offer but--Woah!” The big spider wrapped it’s leg around her and began to lift her onto its head. “Hey, put me down!” It dropped her after a moment--right onto its head. Tuuri took one look at the ground and grabbed tightly onto the feathery fluff under her, holding on for dear life as the beast walked off into the night.
When Onni woke up that morning, his feet were ice-cold and there was a snowdrift stretching in through the front door. Also, Tuuri was gone. He spent the next 3 weeks searching for her, hanging up posters with her picture on them and talking the ear off of anyone willing to listen, tearfully imploring them for help. There was a short, tasteful funeral the month after that, with an empty casket. Onni didn’t believe she was gone for a moment, but everyone else had given up the search. It would be another two years before they met again, in the throne room of the spiders’ greatest and only queen, the Immortal Two-Legged Fluffy.