The river skips over pebble and stone, singing of its journey through the rainforest. A kookaburra, high in his eucalypt tree, laughs his days away, as a rare trout glides over the stony riverbed. Two ducks watch as a boatman skates across a still pool, being thrown about by the wake of a browning fern caressing the river that supplements its life. And as the autumn wind whistles through the towering bushland, a golden, twisted leaf rocks to and fro.
Encased in the leaf, protected by silk, light filters through the brown, gold and yellow, casting an amber glow over the dying spider. She sits with her dimming eyes on an egg sac, shifting in the shadows. Her eyes close, her legs fall limp, her life finally leaves her wasted body.
And yet this is not the end, however surely finality presents itself. The egg sac sits, nestled in a withered corner, blanketed by shadow. It splits open as the autumn wind heaves a great sigh, and out of the cocoon of silk thousands of tiny, white spiders spill. Each perfect miniature of the empty shell before them, piled two thousand strong, bathe in the mottled amber light as the rain begins hawking at each animals door and the wind whistles a merry tune through the mountain ash.
