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Lace wakes up and it’s black. Cold.
So, so cold. It bites through her silk and gnaws at her core like Mount Fay’s snow on her back. But she doesn’t get up. Because she is a winner.
She won, got the last laugh, she is a winner and it repeats in her mind like a sacred prayer. Like those types of prayers a terrified heretic repeats to herself when she feels her beliefs begin to slip.
But of course she believes it. Why wouldn’t she? This is what she wants.
A part of her thinks she should be scared. Of course, any normal bug would be; she’s stuck at the bottom of the world with no way out besides death’s sweet grip. But she’s not a normal bug. The fear doesn’t come.
Instead, initially, a sense of peace. She feels a passive smile spread across her face, and lets oblivion’s cold threats to swallow her whole glide off her, like water off of a Pond Skipper’s shell.
Until she realises. Peace cuts itself off.
What surrounds her is silk. A spherical cocoon constructed from it.
She abruptly sits up and attempts to ignore the pounding headache that begins to form – and of course, there she is.
Her mother. Hanging in the air, suspended by her own silk, splayed helplessly and uncovering her frail frame. At first, she’s shocked at the sight; no wonder the spider could tear through her like paper. Look at her! She almost looks kind of cute like this, at an inch of her life, hanging on to her last breath.
Disgusting.
She stands up, quells the trembling in her legs and speaks.
“…I wonder, Mother, do you feel a sense of guilt?”
She looks at her mother, almost expecting a response – a scream, a groan, a whine, maybe even a whole sentence – but none comes.
She laughs and staggers towards her.
“You are responsible for this. Your arm, our condition, my anguish: it’s all on your frail shoulders. I wonder if you can handle such responsibility…?”
Nothing.
Another laugh escapes her.
“I mean, if only you hadn’t spun such a broken, pathetic child. If only you hadn’t spun anyone at all. Then, perhaps none of us would be in this position. Your rusty claws would’ve still clung to Pharloom and her bugs, and you wouldn’t be stuck in the bottom of the world, freezing, with nothing to comfort you except the realisation that your oh-so-perfect daughter turned out to be nothing but a useless, pathetic wretch…”
She sits down beside her and leans against her leg, smiling.
“…Just like her mother,” she hums. “Like mother like daughter, hm? A hateful wretch conceives another one...I hope you’re proud.”
Her hand caresses her mother’s leg. She looks up at her again, once again almost expectant of a response.
But none comes. Grand Mother Silk says nothing. Does nothing. It’s almost as if she was never awoken from her slumber in the first place.
Her smile drops. The hand that caresses her mother’s leg begins to turn an inky black. She looks down, and her own legs befall the same fate.
“Say something,” she implores, glancing back at her mother’s face. “prove to me that you’re listening. That you feel horrible. Prove your grievances to me.”
Nothing.
The cold blackness that once stung like Fay snow on her back begins to numb instead. She finds that the parts of her body covered in it, she can no longer feel properly, and instead of moving freely, they’re constricted. It’s like drowning. She can’t control herself.
“Mother,” she says, again, this time with more force. “Please.”
Nothing.
Despite feeling as if trudging through mud, she forces herself to stand up. She attempts to run backwards to the far end of the cocoon, staring her mother down, as if to call her a predator, but she stumbles and trips over nothing instead. She sits on the ground and hugs herself, trembling.
“Please, please, say something, anything will do–”
She stops recognising the voice coming out of her mouth. A vignette clouds her eyesight.
Panic.
A broken sob escapes her, which quickly turns into loud wails, akin to a young child’s.
Truly pathetic, she thinks. But her control is gone. Relinquished for whatever animalistic tendencies the void invents for its husks.
“This is what you do every time– any g-grievance I have is ignored, just like this– it’s as if you never woke up…! You won’t even look at me…!”
Nothing.
“LOOK AT ME!”
Nothing.
She simply continues to wail.
She mutters.
“…pleasepleaseeejustlookatmehelpmepleasehelp…”
Slowly, the void creeps its way up to her face. The numbness-of-sorts catches in her throat and she feels her breath hitch, her wail turning into a wretched gasp-gag hybrid. She curls up on the floor and nothing around her feels like reality anymore.
She coughs, as if to vomit up something but nothing happens.
Attempting to thrash yields no results. She simply lay there, twitching, whimpering, gagging.
Until it stops. Nothing about her is ‘Lace’ anymore, if she ever had an identity to begin with.
It’s then the void claims her entirely.
It’s only then Grand Mother Silk begins to scream.