I peered out of the leafy branches, curious to see the person belonging to the hand inches from my face. The hand itself seemed to belong to someone young. Its pale flesh pulled taut on slim, grasping, fingers; reaching for the tree limb. It had been so long since I�d seen another person up close. Unable to contain my excitement I moved forward.
A shriek split the air like a bolt of the thunder father�s lightning. I scuttled back into the shadows, painfully aware of what had frightened the girl so. She would have had a pretty face, had it not been gorgon-like with shock. Her eyes had gone unnaturally wide, earthy brown irises surrounded by a sea of milky white. Her skin blanched like a leper�s and mouth gaped like a hanged man�s, like the entrance to Hades. She was hideous in her sudden horror. At me. Always me. I heard her crashing away, splintering every twig in her path, trampling plants and stumbling on rocks; so fightened was she. I wept, but no one has heard my cries for a long time. My spindle limbs are no longer adept at pushing away hurt. Only at weaving. Always weaving. My silver moonlight colored art. My only joy, my only pride, an empty echo of what I once was. For no one cares about a spider�s tears.
Lifetimes ago I was more beautiful than that child so afraid of my countenance. I was proud of my dark hair and doe eyes, but of nothing more than my hands. I had long hands once, with agile fingers. Such fingers. I could spin better than the gods. Do not deny me that tribute, for it is the truth. The eternally beautiful nymphs would gather to watch me and lavish praise on my work. In the end even Envy herself had to confess to my perfection. The aegis bearing goddess�s wrath was visited on me, for my pride, for my vanity, for using my talent to mock the gods, rather than to praise them. Why should I not? They were proud, arrogant, amoral, no better than us. Often worse. Beautiful monsters. They mocked us, why should we not imitate them? Was that not flattery for those beings, those deities that fed on praise and worship until they were fat and still were never sated?
Yes, she was more powerful than I. The grey eyed goddess destroyed my work. It was so beautiful and it was gone. My tapestry, my masterpiece on the love affairs of the gods. A woven rainbow reduced to scraps of wool on the brown, barren, ground. And she struck me, again and again and again. I tried to take my life, but she prevented. That final rope became a part of me. My lovely body vanished into wizened blackness, my shapely fingers dwindled to the fine wires anyone could see today. If they would stay to look. Stay to talk. Oh, the stories I have to tell, about the loves of the gods and the metamorphoses of life, of death, of chaos, of eternity, but no one cares for a spider�s tales.
I have outlived her, my enemy. She was great, and greatness falls. Little as I am, I have survived. The world no longer believes in her, or fears her. But in a small way, it knows me. And fears me. Though it has no reason. My eyes are ugly now, but they are for my spinning only. I mean no harm. I can do no harm. I was Arachne once, when the world was young. The world has grown old, has forgotten us, but I still weave. And wait for the end.