25 Happy Mother's Day!
[A/N: - So, I was watching that documentary about Black Lace-weaver spider, and shit hit really hard in the video, got some inspiration to write the thing below, read if you're interested.
P.s Because of COVID, they fucked us sideways in college and forced the 3 months worth of study materials into 25 days, so I'm busy as fuck studying cause I got finals next months, will write when I'm free. Enjoy!]
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She watched happily as her children finished the current stage of their lives as they shed their skins for the very first time. Looking at the empty molds left by her children, she felt a sense a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment as she knew that these molds signaled the last of her duties as a devoted mother.
With their old skins discarded, the spiderlings were ready to grow some more. But with more than she can naturally supply them.
Waiting for the tick of her genetic clock, set precisely after one day of her children discarding their old skins, the time has now come as the mother contentedly welcomed her fate.
With an exhale, she brought her leg down hard, hitting her tarsus against a viscid thread. A sob escaped her throat as she continued to drum on the thread while circling around the spiderlings and spinning new threads as she goes.
'My babies, I hope you know how much I love you, that I would do anything in the world for you.'
As her left leg lifted to drum in time with her right, movement along the radial threads told her the tiny cannibals were coming for her. Tears streaking down her face, she beat harder and harder, feeling a slight cracking in her exoskeleton as she beat in time to the song that would be her last.
As the first of her children reached her, a gasp escaped her lips as fangs pierced her abdomen just above the spinnerets. The pain she had expected. That the cause was her sweet first-born daughter had come as a surprise. She, who she felt closest to, She, who needed her when fear of the praying mantis kept her up at night, She, who loved her mother more than the others had. Her final thought before another of her precious babies severed her head from her cephalothorax was a reminder that she, too, had been the first when her mother called.
With last bit of her consciousness intact, she pressed her body down to her babies to make it easier for them to reach. Her last action flipped their predatory switch as they swarmed and engulfed her, and this was how she was going to feed them, the moment she happily helped her children become the predators by becoming their first prey.
As she succumbs to her children's' venom, she let out a happy cry as her life energy passes into her offspring.
Losing her life, her children were draining the fluids from her body. It was happening in real time as her large body started deflating, while her long limbs dried as the fallen Autumn leaves.
After a while, the crowd dispersed, leaving an empty husk of what was the ultimate form of a maternal sacrifice as the mother passed her children her final gift.
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[A/N: - It feels wrong somehow that the most emotional part I've ever written is actually about a random dying spider...]
