• She stepped quietly though the foliage, her new woolen socks soiled with the stains of the forest floor, her shoes were still on the back porch by the steps. “Mister Shortcake!” She bellowed into the thickening darkness, unaware of the pursuing beady eyes that lurked in the bushes prior to her passing. She had lost something of value, or rather, that something had ran from her overbearing hugs and childish, curious acts of experimental violence. An exercise in too much adoration, and it drove her very beloved kitten into the unknown forest away from those crushing hugs and devouring kisses. Both pet and owner were new to life and their individual curiosities had stolen their unpracticed notions of caution. A weak sounding mewl, and the girl was still. Her call fallowed the period of silence, before she pose a question into unfamiliar wood. There, over there…she had heard it again. Excitement jolted through her frame like lightning bolts of fire, she ducked, weaved and avoided spider webs, branches, vines, or other fingers of mother nature that sought to rake their creepy fingers through her chestnut hair or summer blue dress. Again… “Mr. Shortcake!” her pinched vocal chords forming the shrillest of wails. It was him, and it was this direction he had mewed for her. Shielding her eyes with her arm, vicious thorns tore at unblemished skin, the scratches welling up a warming red as her blood rushed to the surface to fill the freshly made canyons in her canvas. A flinch and a yelp were all the attentions the minor wounds received, for she now stood on the edge of a clearing. The gaping maw of the moon yawned its silvery light through the wind-shaking leaves. Their rattle, a deceiving but welcomed lullaby to the youth, for what she saw now, in the center of this clearing, was quite strange. She could have sworn she heard Mr. Shortcakes weak, dainty mews from this direction. But all she had discovered was cloud like gossamer orb shimmering on the top of the trunk of what once had to have been the very heart of these forests. The ancient husk of the former tree had been cleaved from its roots when an approaching gale assaulted its lightning struck shell. The brittle blackened bark severing to form a jagged stool. She bet a troll came here to think, sitting on the trunk like atlas with the world on its misshapen shoulders. Her caution had found her as she made her way, foot after socked foot toward the radiating globe. And it was that curiosity that extended her tiny index finger, and gave her enough courage to poke. The ball nearly disappeared at the intrusion, like the color of a butterflies wings if you weren’t careful enough. She dared not intrude in the same fashion so she leaned closer, tilting her head just so, so her ear might detect the faintest of sounds. The cocoon purred like a kitten, the rumble soft and innocent. “Mr…shortcake…” were the only words she found in her astonishment. A snapped twig or falling branch broke the moment, fear stole into her bewildered heart. She was alone at night, in the woods behind her house…surely her mother was worried, and it wouldn’t do to go missing for too long. With maternal care she cradled the baseball sized sphere into her cupped hands and deposited it into the safety of the singular frontal pocket of her dress, the patter of her shoeless feet following shortly after as he stole back into the shadows of trees in the direction she had came. Breadcrumbs would have served her well, the choking throng of flora. The skinny trees made tangled warren, vine stole her footing while thorns tore at her arms and legs. When her legs ached from running, sticky from running droplets of blood, hopelessness descended. Heaving sobs and welling pools of tears mixed with the hoots of owls and the falling beads of dew that hung heavy at the ends of leaves overhead. Her hand curled into the pocket where she had hidden her cocoon, she sought its downy security, the gentleness of its softness. But her breath was stolen and her hand recoiled at what they had touched, slimy wriggling shapes that squirmed against her stomach. Her pocket filled with the weight of the writhing mass that grew there, desperate to remove it from her being she grabed handfuls of stringy slime and threw them to the forest floor. Segmented bodies glistened wet and disgusting in the inklings of pale light cast but moon and stars overhead. Worms poured from the pouch of her dress where the cocoon had been, spilling onto her dirty socks, squishing under her toes, wriggling up her body. She shook violently, frantically pulling at the duplicating annelids yet to no avail as they assailed and overtook the young girl. They pushed their way over her shoulders, down her arms, until her fingers themselves were lost amongst their oily bodies. She gagged as they passed her lips, choked as they filled her mouth, her nostrils…her tears writhed slippery and vile. The visage of a small girl under the age of twelve, now a standing, twisting mass of worms. The infinite shades of darkness she now saw crept into her very heart, and stole her from reality. Her world spun, she wanted to vomit but was afraid to for the only thing she’d regurgitate would be the fragmented lengths of the insects that had become her. The intensity of grotesque revultion stole her conscience.
    Something furred like the softness of a kitten touched her brow, a kittens purr tickled her ear drum its steady rhythm was as constant as her heart beat. Deep breaths, open one eye then the other. Her lids creeked open, nearly sealed shut by cumbly hard caked mucus, eye boogers. Was it still night time? An endless sea of stars swam through the vast blackness before her. An impregnable darkness so vast that its shadow had swallowed the universe she once knew.
    “You’re okay.” came a boyish voice at her side, fingers stroked through her hair. She was lying now, and above her was the face of a young boy. Shaggy dark hair was barely indistinguishable from the surrounding gloom, piercing greens eyes smiled down at her, as did this boys Cheshire grin. He raised a single digit to fidget with the queerly place whiskers that extended perpendicular to his nose. He was practically naked, the only thing he wore were a thigh hair pair of bright red swimming trunks with the tassles of the elastic waist left untied.“Maple, you found me.”
    “Mr. Shortcake?”
    “Naturally”
    “Where…are we? …those things…what were those things, did they get you too?”
    “I’m afraid so, I think we’re in a prison that looks like the night sky. There’s no ground, but you can still walk…or swim…or fly…or whatever you’re used too”
    To test this theory, She shifted and sat up, Indian style with nothing underneath her save for the hanging ends of her flowing sapphire dress. Nothing kept her in place, weightlessness and lack of a point of orientation stole and disoriented most of her limited senses, but she didn’t fall, or panic, or flail. Unsteadily, like a new born calf she stretched her legs below her, watching them uncurl and extend though there was no sensation of touching anything. Turning to look back at her transformed polymorphic pet, she noticed that he was upside down…or maybe he was right side up, that blatant smile covered nearly half of his lower face. She felt safer, as long as her once kitten, still companion was with her.
    “That Old crone Shallot trapped us and she’s probably keeping us in safe storage now until we’re ripe enough to eat.”
    “…Ripe enough to eat?”
    “Mmhm, it’ll take years though, we’re still too sweet for that witch’s taste. We’d rot her teeth to the core if she tried now.” The catty boy turned a summersault in the surface less void. His arms and legs bunching up around his skinny torso causing him to spin faster until he stretched out, slowing the velocity of which he rotated. like a dog, he began to kick and fan at the voidless space that encompassed them propelling himself in the direction he was facing. “Let’s go for a swim, it’s better than just floating here. Maybe something else is stuck in here.”
    She had taken swimming lessons a few summers ago, and did her best to keep pace, blue dress expanding and contracting like a cotton jellyfish as she paddled after the boy. “If we’re in a prison, why are there stars? Shouldn’t it just be all black? Where are the bars?”
    He flipped onto his back; the way he moved reminded her of an upside down frog. “Good question…”
    The expanse of the starscape stretched endlessly in all directions, but between each nodal point of pinhole light was connected by the minutest of threads. If you stared hard enough each line encompassed every shade of color in a rainbow, vibrant though barely noticeable. A galaxy of multispectral connect the dots, occasionally making a recognizable shape in the constellations they swam past. They glided past a submersible of considerable size, sailed by a salamander, curtailed the fanning edges of a seashell, and slipped past an innumerable amount of other stuff that varied in size and shape.

    “I don’t think these stars are bright enough to be stars” Maple said, a frown creasing the lines of her face unpleasantly. It looked uncomfortable from Mr. Shortcake’s point of view
    A voice, not belonging to either of them gave reply. “You’re correct little one” feminine, cool and calming, it spoke slowly and from no particular direction.
    Ascending from a tiny magenta string below them came the multitude of yellow multifaceted eyes belonging to an eight-legged monster. A black carapace reflecting the faint infinite colors that surrounded them, It moved like a shadow amongst the many constellations, its legs reminded Maple of canoeing, or maybe a school of fish swimming and flopping in unison. it continued on, whizzing between the two would be astronauts sparkling crystals were left in her wake. Only the aft portion of the spider was actually a spider, the frontal segment of the spider’s body was mostly a woman’s upper torso; her face was hidden behind a thick sheet of matted sunset colored hair. Mr. Shortcake quirked and inquisitively curious eyebrow at maple “Mission control to Miss Maple, was that spider-lady crying? I could have sworn she was…” Maple had collected a handful of the tiny crystals and was inspecting them with the utmost scrutiny, her brow furrowed and radiant eyes narrowed. “I think so…but these aren’t tears, they’re rocks. Maybe she’s the one who made all of these stars!” the young girl exclaimed, her excitement causing her weightless body to flip heels over head, her arms flapping frantically to catch up to the superior eight legs.
    “H-hey wait up!” exclaimed a slowly shrinking Mr. Shortcake as Maple left him in her space dust.
    “Excuse me Miss, are these stars yours? I think you dropped them!” the little girl called out, those eight legs freezing and reversing their systematic motions, slowing the accelerating pace of the space spider until the girl could catch up.
    Sniffling, the frail somber voice of the woman spoke while her hands wiped and fretted at the four pairs of eyes, each time they pulled away more of those tiny crystals floated out around her. “If you please…I must be going, I’ve so much work to do…I really can’t stay and chat.”

    Maple’s bottom lip poked out a little while she difted closer to the woman, her pet boy back peddling to a slow stop behind her. “Are…you crying? Are you okay? I hope you’re not hurt. You won’t eat us right?” A smattering of questions from the curious child, wonderment glazing over her bright blue eyes.
    “No no I’m fine…its just, that wretched witch…She disguised herself as a horrible old toad and gobbled up my poor husband in one bite. She was about to eat me as well when she saw that when I cry, my tears are crystals. So she imprisoned me here, in this nothing and told me the only way I was ever to go free again was if I made her a necklace more beautiful than the night sky when no moon shines. I’ve lived here for centuries, crying every day. I tie them together with pieces of my hair...I’m so close to being finished, but I can’t remember the last constellation so I’ll never be free.” The spider shook her head and sighed crystalline tears catching the vaugue impossibly slim traces of light and refracting them in vast arrays of rainbows.
    “Maybe we can help…” replied the boy with whiskers at Maple’s side. His eyes roving over the endless twinkling that glimmered in the cosmic blankness surrounding them. For a while they were all silent, the gears of their brains nearly audible.
    “I’ve got it, Cetus, you’re missing that monster, the one who was about to eat the lady on the rock. The big fish Perseus killed!”
    How did you know that, I thought you were a kitten?” questioned a puzzled looking Maple.
    The whiskered boy’s only response was a stifled giggle.
    “Oh that’s it…thank you terribly, I’ll never be able to repay you for this…is..is there anything I can do?” The spider woman asked, for the first moment in a long time she had stopped crying.
    “We really need to get out of here…That witch wants to eat us too.”
    “Yes, yes surely. I know just the spot, it’s a tiny hole, too small for me to fit through you see, but perfect for you two.” Her two hind legs, the ones most spiders used to weave their fine silk, and her two human hands began to pull at the fibers of her hair, the purples, pinks, yellows, oranges and reds braided together to form a heavy loking rope, much stronger than those that connected the individual stars littered about their shared prison. IT fed off into a singular direction, a portion of the night sky that was totally black, nothing glittered there…it must be their escape.
    “Now you must go, hurry, before the Witch realizes what’s happened, she hears everything that happens here you know, but she’s of old age and there are too many cobwebs in her rattled brain. Grab hold of my silk and climb through the hole, it will take you home.” And with that, a strong kick to her legs and the woman began slowly shrinking in size as she increased the distance between the herself and the two children.
    “Thank you Miss….Miss..-“
    Miss Soei, her somber voice hollered back, her massive arachnid legs carried her out of ear shot and deeper into the blackness. While the children, hand of hand climbed as fast as they could toward the portal of hope opening before them. Maple imagined her room, quiet with the stillness of early morning, the house still too cold for her to get out from under the blankets of her bed, and Mr. Shortcake curled into a kitten sized ball beside her.
    Eye’s shot open to the still darkness of her room, mornings light was pouring in through the curtains. She had awoken upright, her feet still socked and resting on the middle rung of her bunk bed’s ladder. She lost her footing, slipped and tumbled onto the carpet a few feet below. The clatter rose a quiet mewling from the top bunk. “Mr. shortcake…” she said with great relief as he got back to her feet and climbed into bed…it had been a dream, she wasn’t trapped by an evil witch, she hadn’t met the nicest spider ever. She stuck her hands under her pillow to help prop her head, but when she did she found something entirely out of place, a smooth small stone. Her stomach jolted with exhilaration as he pulled the crystal from under her pillow to inspect it under the covers. Quickly she put it back for safe keeping and drifted off to sleep, right before the darkness took her again thou she could have sworn she heard the cackle of an old crone.