Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 55964 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55964 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
It’s not bad sex, but it’s not good for me. Then again, no one ever truly tries to make it good for me, so it’s not as if I’m surprised. After I clean up, Blue Eyes lets me out into the rest of the tower, and I spend my day cooking up meals for myself or digging around in the room of discards. I sew ornate dresses for myself. I make hand towels out of the cheapest-looking fabrics. I embroider a pretty apron. I gaze out the windows at my surroundings. I dust the kitchens and the room full of trunks, which I’ve come to think of as mine. I organize.
I keep myself busy, or I try to, at least. And I stay out of the way.
At some point during the day, the gray-eyed god will seek me out. I service him, too, and my sessions with him are as uninspiring as his brother. He waits for me to lick my hand, then pushes into me from behind and pumps a few times, and then disappears. He must be getting something out of it, I decide, as he seeks me out at least twice a day.
It’s all very…tepid.
The Spidae haven’t expressed disappointment in me, but I get the impression that something is off. It almost makes me feel like a child who has disappointed her parents, but I’m not entirely sure why. It doesn’t feel as if they seek interaction with me? Beyond the first day when the blue-eyed Spidae showed me around, they haven’t sought me out to speak with. They haven’t had conversations with me. They just show up to get their dicks wet.
If that’s all they want from an anchor, I suppose I can provide that.
But is this to be the rest of my life? Just a warm, occasional hole for a pair of gods that seem bored with everything? The dark-eyed one never comes to visit me. If anything, he’s avoiding me. That bothers me, too. I’m supposed to be serving all three of them.
After a full week of this, I decide to do something about it.
It’s a rainy day, with the sun hiding behind the clouds, and the view outside is nothing but gray. Gray skies. Gray water. Gray mountains. It’s as distressingly gray as the interior of the tower and it sours my mood. I eat a piece of fruit while sitting on the counter in the kitchen, and eye the large wooden door. I suspect it leads outside, though I’ve never tried it. Where would I go? Even just walking around outside isn’t necessarily safe. Vitar, one of Aron’s men, died to a thing that lives in the lake.
But today, I consider it. I consider going outside just to see if the Spidae will chase me down and bring me back. At least then I’d get some attention.
I’m…bored.
It’s pathetic. I’m as safe as could be. I have all the food I could want, all the pretty material to make myself dresses and all the time in the world. And I’m going mad after a week of this.
I finish my fruit and hop off the counter, washing my hands clean of sticky juice. If I’m unhappy with my situation, I need to change it. I keep thinking about the dark-eyed Spidae, and how he hasn’t sought me out, not even once. Is he unhappy with my presence? Is he waiting for me to approach him? I decide I should find out.
So I finger-comb my hair into a semblance of normalcy, smooth my new dress that I’ve made for myself (a ruffled creation of a deep, luscious red, my favorite color) and head up the ramp, seeking him out. All is quiet, and there’s no sign of the other Spidae, yet I get the sensation that they are here, somewhere. Or do they all fold into one another when I’m not around? They’re one god, but three facets of him, and I still haven’t entirely figured out how that works.
Then again, maybe it’s not for me to know.
I pass by a few of the inner chambers, the ones that I’ve never been in. The blue-eyed Spidae told me to stay out of them when they were sealed off, and right now, their doors are covered with a heavy glut of webs. Inside, I hear a faint, humming music, but I know better than to touch something that I’ve been forbidden, so I keep on going. It’s at the very, very top of the tower, when the ramp is so steep that I worry I’m going to slip and tumble all the way down to the base of the tower, that I find an open door.
Inside, one of the Spidae sits on the floor, cross-legged, surrounded by a mass of glowing red strands. They seem to emerge from the walls themselves, crisscrossing the entire room and taking up every bit of free space. I can’t get to the god without touching the threads themselves, but that somehow seems wrong. As I gaze upon them, they seem to pulse and throb, as if attached to a beating heart. I look over at the god again, and his eyes are closed, his hands resting on his knees, his head tilted back. He seems to be in communion with the webs in some way, and I hate to interrupt.