Chapter Text
The vines covered the cliffside; they would have strangled it, if rock were so vulnerable. Perhaps they had long ago won out over whatever else might have tried to grow here. Now, they ruled this landscape: tangling and twining and sprouting purple leaves larger than the travelers' heads.
Hornet requested that they stop before the wild growth, and Lace obliged. They traveled as they pleased, and had no other plans.
In her journal, Hornet drew a detailed diagram of both leaf and vine. Then she cut off the growth she had been observing and further sliced it open, adding details of the plant's innards to her notes: its scent, its structure, the thick, gruesome scent of its sap —
"Like something rotting alive," Lace observed aloud. Hornet nodded, and carefully noted this down, as if it had real merit.
When she was done, she rolled up her journal and tucked it back into her cloak. She carried what she saw with her this way. The journal had begun to expand from a bestiary into a record of all that she had seen and thought worth preserving in ink.
Lace was content enough to hold these things in her mind. They might slip away eventually, but her knowings were long and themselves tangled, encoded throughout her rather than being limited to a bundle of fat. Still, she had never caught anything like those vines in her coils before: their wild majesty, their claim on the world, and simply their color. Pharloom had had nothing of the plant's like, not even in the once-vaunted Memorium. It had never grown there. She would never have known of its existence, had she not seized her chance to leave —
She should never have known of its existence.
In her chest, threads tightened around a pit that had once held a heart. Never her heart, in truth. Always her mother's.
She was not meant to be here. But she was. And she had seen something she was never meant to see.
And it was beautiful. There. She admitted this, if only to herself.
"Was it familiar to you?" Lace asked, after they had walked for some time. Wise little spider. Clever, knowledgeable beast, and yet — by her own admission, she idled in one place as long as you.
Hornet confessed casually, "No. and we may never see such again. That is why I took such care to record it."
"Why? I hardly see what precious advantage you gain by remembering it."
"I wish to remember that we have seen it, as much as the thing itself. Perhaps... I wish to remember that we saw it most of all." Hornet offered, in a low voice, "I did find it quite beautiful."
Lace did not respond and, as always, Hornet accepted Lace's silence with her own.
* * *
The next village wasn't far. It was a pitiful thing, as were most of the settlements they had seen. Only once had they come across something that might have been called a town. But this outpost was peaceful in its precarious perch. If it had ever been troubled by gods, Lace and Hornet met no one who could remember.
They separated in the village square's small market, as Hornet sought specific materials for some device she wished to tinker with later.
Lace had no such designs. She hadn't much of anything, she thought. She could admit, sometimes, that this was a relief, as much as it gnawed at her. What do you want?
Desires were for bugs and beasts.
Why are you here?
Poisonous, cruel, crude. Traitorous. Traitor-daughter, always wanting beyond her lot.
Why do you linger?
She clenched her claws, burying an urge to dig them into her side under the simple fact that someone might see. Although, most would only think she was wrinkling what she wore.
A flash of color caught her attention, and she let her gaze fall to it. She paused in her wanderings before a merchant's stall. They sold fabrics and needles and tools for the craft of sewing. Inferior trinkets, unlike anything that had ever worked her. But there were several spools of thread in precisely the same shade as the vines on the cliffs, that untamed growth that she never should have seen.
She traded for a spool. Hornet's diagrams were in black and white. Now, Lace had something of her own to hold the memory. She felt foolish, but it wasn't as though she was spending anything they needed for food or a place to sleep. Neither she nor her companion required regular meals, and they both felt more confined than protected by most roadside shelters.
But as the merchant handed over Lace's purchase, they asked, "Have you something special planned for it?"
"I beg your pardon?" Lace asked, in a bright tone that begged for nothing.
"Ah, oh — What, what the thread is for?"
When Lace only stared, they waved a nervous claw. "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just being nosy — though if you don't have anything in mind, I think it would look lovely hemming a tunic or some such."
"I'll consider it." Lace had no need of tunics, or any garb at all, even less than the average bug. And if she had ever so much as thought about letting such roughspun material anywhere near her own divine make, her mother would have had her picked apart to rid Lace of such whims, like the idea itself were inept stitching.
Her mother, divine and dead.
Lace glanced over the stall, and indicated a set of needles — the slight kind, meant for a more customary use than her companion's. "I suppose I ought to have some of those, as well."
The merchant handed them over, with no more comment than to wish that Lace would go in safety. When Hornet finished her own business — not a complete success, based on the tightness of the spider's fangs — Lace was pleased to leave the place behind.
* * *
They did not stop to rest, because they didn't need it, but they did stop on occasion. It lent a sense of rhythm to the journey. At their next camp, Lace demanded, "That journal of yours. let me see it."
Hornet gave Lace a measured look. She did not refuse, but asked, "Is there something in particular you would like to see, or did you mean to peruse the contents?"
"If you must know, I want another look at those plants from earlier. By the cliff."
"Very well." Hornet unfurled the journal to the appropriate section, and passed it over. Lace took it, and withdrew her purchase, holding it over the image. Her face furrowed in concentration as she studied the diagrams.
Hornet leaned in to see what had her so engrossed. "A close match."
"I certainly thought so." Lace twisted the scroll closed, and passed it back. Hornet accepted it with a nod, and then took a seat on a nearby rock. She set out her own acquisitions, such as they were, and the tool these were meant to enhance, and set to work. She would do what she could, as always.
Lace settled nearer to the fire. It was a chill evening, and other beings might have feared what the light or smoke could attract, but not the two of them. Lace placed the thread down at her side, and drew forth the needles, as well. She threaded one, then drew the strand over her lap, and—
"Have you an interest in embroidery?"
She answered without looking up, to mask her distaste at the idea. "Hardly. But I'll erode my pin if I keep polishing it. Not all of us are as overburdened with equipment as you, to keep our claws busy."
"Alas." Hornet agreed dryly, and resumed minding her own business.
Lace returned her attention to the needle and thread. It occurred to her that there was something she'd rather neglected: a surface. Some material to work on.
Fabric. Something she had in plenty. An intention she had danced around, much as she had avoided her own thoughts to keep them from her mother's sight. But now, she dodged only her own gaze.
She drove the needle through at a point below her waist, into the large swath of fabric there. She pulled it through, drove it back, and sat observing the single stitch she had made. A minuscule drop of violet marred the pristine white of her. It stung, and stood out like a scar on a form that would never know such injury. Her claw twitched over it. It would have been easy to pick it out, to restore herself to proper form—
But already so much was as it shouldn't be. These things she shouldn't have seen, paths she shouldn't have walked. Beauty she shouldn't have known. Beauty beyond order, that no one could command.
She made the next stitch. She was already something beyond what she was meant to be, and she could embrace this — her own ruin. The thought made her giddy, mixed with the slight pain blooming along with the color. Scarring, bruising. All that organic ugliness that her artifice was meant to subvert.
I will have it, after all!
Pull of the thread, fleeting silver bite of the needle, the false flesh of her prickling with strange, delicate pain, shimmering along the trail of color left in its wake. She could almost imagine what it would be like to have true substance, the kind that could swell. What it might be like to need time to heal, instead of this weave that closed itself at once, as long as there was silk enough.
She was aware by then that Hornet had finished her own work, and resumed watching Lace for her primary entertainment. She did not question Lace, however, and so Lace cared to offer no insight. She kept going until the the outline of a leaf marked her hip. Clumsy, ragged, and the beginning of the outline didn't quite join with the end. But it had matched the approximate silhouette of what they had seen.
She took her time, tucking her supplies away, and then met Hornet's gaze, challenging her to comment.
Hornet, never one to back down, said, "An interesting use of the art. It suits you."
Lace scoffed. "Don't flatter me. It was a dreadful impulse, and poorly done."
"I did not say it was well done." Hornet leaned in to examine Lace's work, though she straightened quickly, realizing she had perhaps drawn closer than was appropriate. "The lines are uneven and the stitches themselves vary in size. I said it suits you, and I believe this to be true, regardless. If you want it done better, you must — I'm sure I do not need to instruct you in how to gain skill in any art."
Lace laughed behind a claw. "Oh, you do know how to charm a lady, don't you?"
"Honesty is a worthier virtue than charm. Do you disagree?"
"Very worthy, yes. Very noble. Likely to get you killed, of course, but oh, most nobly."
"Such is the end that awaits me, I'm sure. When the time comes. But it shall not be this cycle." Hornet's fangs flicked out in a smile, remarkably coy for her. Lace regarded her sourly, and Hornet held forth a peace offering from the folds of her cloak. Lace, far from expecting such a gesture, had to take a moment to understand what it was. Hornet's journal.
Lace glanced up at her. "And what, precisely, do you expect me to do with this?"
"I thought you might wish to review the illustrations again. It may give you a better sense of the form you seek to imprint upon yourself."
"Hm." Lace plucked the journal from Hornet's claw. "I suppose there's some worth to that suggestion."
"I am glad you find it acceptable."
Rather than responding, Lace unfurled the scroll, and found the diagram she sought. Tracing the shape with a claw, she began to think, almost to dream: how she might craft this image against the curve of herself, how she might join one leaf with another by mimicking the vine. A complex project.
But I suppose I'll have the time.
She picked up her own needle again.