Itsy the Spider

Chapter 1

"The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun that dried up all the rain, and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again..."

Itsy cut off the song and examined the challenge before him. He was a brown Barn Spider, and was venturing out of the clutches of his mother and away from that humans house. It was daytime, so he'd slipped out while his mother was sleeping.

He'd ran away from home. He didn't suspect his mother would care much, because she had many other children. Prodigies. All of them were experts of web weaving. Their mother showered them with compliments. His silk was much too thick to form webs properly and so he'd been an outcast. He was a dud in a batch of otherwise perfect children.

That was behind him now, however, as he trekked on, further and further away from his previous home. He'd been going for quite some time before he began to notice that his abdomen was beginning to drag in the dirt. He would require a break soon. He examined his surroundings and spotted a pleasant rotted log that looked quite cozy and redirected his path towards it.

He rested at the foot of the log before beginning the climb to the top. He figured it'd be relatively easy, but there was no need to take undue risk. He reached the top and began looking for a crevice to make his temporary den.

After locating a suitable place to squeeze into, he dropped down the crack and found that it was quite large, contrary to how it looked from the outside. He proceeded to cover the floor with a layer of silk to make it more comfortable. It had been a long day, and he was exhausted. He laid on his stomach and covered his head with his forelegs and fell asleep within seconds.

When he awoke that night it took him a moment to figure out that he was no longer home- no, this was home now. He cleared his head and quickly scrambled up the wall and climbed out of the crack. From the position of the moon he guessed that the sun must've set recently, and that it was a long time until sunrise. Plenty of time to make a web, if he had the skills to do so.

Nevertheless, he was hungry and the last time he'd eaten had been lunch the day before. He had waited until dinner to make the preparations required to ensure he was in the clear to sneak out that night, so there was no dinner for him that day.

His mother hadn't taught them much of the outside world, except for where to make webs to catch meals, and how to make the webs. Memories of those lessons were repeatedly drilled into spiders' minds until it was natural for them to form beautiful webs from their silk. Itsy was a special case.

He snapped out of thought suddenly when he felt the vibrations of another creature through his feet. Spiders' feet are hyper-sensitive to vibrations, but through the log not even he could discern what the creature might be. Itsy began prowling towards the source, and when he figured he was close enough, stopped and hid in a small crack in the bark. As an after thought he set some silk just in front of the crack that he had climbed into.

The creature kept coming. He was forming an idea of what the size and weight might be when it suddenly stopped. Itsy froze. He made sure that he made no movement. No sound. Why had it stopped? Had it seen something and was leaving? Or worse yet, had it seen his silk? He was still lost in thought when the creature began moving again. A lot of legs. Slightly smaller than him. Low to the ground.

It was nearly on top of him when the creature stepped into his silk, causing it to nearly trip up. He leaped out of the crack onto the creature, and began wrestling with it, trying to get an opportunity to bite. Since it wasn't in the air, hanging by a thread, it was putting up a fight. It had many legs, but he had very strong legs, if nothing else.

He forced what he now identified as a centipede with a black carapace and orange legs down, and bit through its thin shell, into its flesh, injecting venom into it. The centipede reared and kicked but even after only a short while, he could feel the venom taking its toll on the centipedes body. Still barely alive, Itsy severed the centipedes final tie to this world, and began encasing it in his silk to bring to his den.