Like the moon we have our phases // Wit, Any

[Wit]

genius always finds itself a century too early

Disappointment colors his half-sister’s mood. He can see it in an image of her that she unwillingly gives off, and it makes him feel guilty. He should have done a better job of hiding his emotions, especially since he knew that @[Saturnelle] shared Amarine’s gift of empathy. And even though she senses his boredom and says that he is so good at this, he still can’t bring himself to tell her why he was so good at it. So instead, he nudges her softly on the shoulder, having to reach down to do so. Sometimes he forgets how small she is, especially as he is growing bigger and faster than her every day.

She asks what he would like to do, now, and he has to pause on it for a moment. They were too young to leave the shelter of the redwoods. Both of their moms would likely lose their minds if either of the foals went exploring elsewhere, especially with all the stress that had come from the Eclipse and the incidents directly following. Still, the allure of exploring new places is tempting. Even so, he can’t imagine putting that kind of stress on their mothers after all they’d been through, so he decides not to even bring it up. That still leaves them with nothing to do, though.

He doesn’t have to think on it long, though. The ground beneath a massive, dead redwood stump shifts and seems to come to life. The leaves flutter and fall away as a mound slowly grows from a hole in the ground, and a leg pokes out. Wit, startled, looks over at the mound with a look of shock on his face that quickly turns to horror as another leg pokes out. And another. And another. Until there are eight legs that shake the leaves from its massive body, a body easily as large as his own, and quite possibly twice as large as his half-sister. From beneath the leaves that now fall casually to the earth, a pair of beady, black eyes pop out of the shell, splintering the light.

His jaw drops at the sight of the massive creature that can only be described as something akin to a wolf melded together with a spider. He had seen the wolves around the redwoods a few times, and his mother had repeatedly told him to avoid them, and spiders always sent a cringe down his spine. So this thing was something out of his wildest nightmares.

Wit almost forgets about little Saturnelle standing there, probably just as shocked and horror-struck as himself, but always the caring big brother, he remembers her just before he bolts from his spot. He turns toward her, horror obvious on his little face. “It doesn’t matter now. RUN!”

He shoves his shoulder into hers, pushing her in the opposite direction from the wolf-spider-thing, and just in time, too, because where her little body had been just a second earlier, a leg now descends.

wit

Image by Katie Moum

Lol. I couldn’t think of what they could do, so I improvised a Canis Aranaea attack. Hahaha