“Lark… you know, I… if you want, I could heal you as well.”

I glance up from my meal, looking at my Claretta with confusion. What is she talking about all of a sudden?

“I can heal myself,” I point out, leaning back over to take another bite.

“Well, what if you’re stuck without food? Or you get hurt extra badly?”

I lift my shoulders up and down to indicate I’m indifferent to the idea while I swallow.

“Then you can heal me. That’s fine.”

“No, I can’t, Lark,” my Claretta says. “I’ll have to teach you to lower your magic resistance first.”

I take another large bite, more than a little confused about what all that meant. I am not eating my Claretta, though I should soon. Her limbs have almost grown back to elbows and knees. But first, I have to finish figuring out how my body functions. I’m not stupid; I’ve noticed I tend to pick up traits from creatures I eat a lot of. I can’t control which traits I pick up, though, or at least I don’t seem to be able to control it. I can, however, control my diet.

Moving to another part of the forest was risky, but I’ve managed to set up another home for myself and my Claretta. Many other things surround us, and they are much larger and more aggressive than the nestweavers which had made up so much of my diet before they were replaced by the Fulvia. Now, without the Fulvia to be my meal, I’m back to inferior creatures. Out of them all, I’ve decided to hunt what my Claretta calls ‘katzels.’ Slightly larger than I am, these four-legged furry creatures are sleek pack hunters with exceptional hearing and speed, the latter of which is of particular interest. Chowing on them for days has improved my mobility significantly, as well as given me claws on the ends of my fingers and toes, which are a welcome compromise between human hands and the bladed nestweaver forelimbs I previously possessed. Much less useful is how my ears have slowly moved to the top of my head, getting all triangular and fuzzy. Katzel fur is brownish, blending in with the dirt and trees of the area, but as usual even the parts of my body copied from other living things end up an inky, all-consuming black. It’s convenient at night, I suppose, but the vast majority of the time is day.

Either way, katzels are phenomenally fast, and they have the agility needed to make sharp turns at those speeds. At first I could not catch them in my webs, as they can somehow detect and avoid them at the last second. There is a limit to how sharply they can turn, however… and since discovering that, I have been collecting them by the dozens. The more I eat, the faster I manifest their attributes.

“What is magic resistance?” I ask once my current meal struggles its last.

“It’s, um, how well you resist magic,” my Claretta answers rather uselessly. “Yours is too high, and I can’t get through it.”

“You said those things already,” I complain. “What is ‘resisting magic?’”

“It makes spells cast on you not work, Lark.”

I scowl.

“Mine can’t be that good then. I got burned by that fire guy. You said that was magic, right?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t magic cast on you,” my Claretta clarifies. “When a thermomancer throws flames at you, they cast their magic on an area nearby to produce the flames. By the time it reaches you, it’s not magic anymore. Just heat. Your magic resistance would only apply if they tried to cook you from the inside.”

“So you can’t cast on me because… all your magic is on my insides? Fulvia tried to get you to stop, though. You healed her anyway.”

“I… well, something you did to her weakened her magic resistance. Wait, you understood us back then?”

“No,” I grumble. “I remember what you said, though, so I understand it now. Anyway, I do not need healing. I want your…”

I don’t know the word for it, so I pantomime aiming and firing the ranged weapon that my Claretta and the Netta used. The one that the Netta pierced death with! My Claretta doesn’t answer for a while, which is fine by me since I have time to finish off my katzel and move to the next one.

“...I can’t show you how to make or fire a bow without arms, Lark,” my Claretta eventually says.

I scowl at her, thinking on that. I haven’t really been eating her lately anyway. She has become more like a flower than a Katzel. Rings of flowers are planted all around her, in fact, carried here by me whenever I find one I like. A different sort of pleasure than food, one that doesn’t sharply vanish the moment after it arrives. Something my Claretta and I made together. I’d like to make a ‘bow’ with her as well.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll stop eating you. You can regrow your arms. Legs too, if you want.”

There’s a moment of silence before I notice my Claretta let out a shaky, slow breath. I glance her way between bites, noticing that eye-water coming out of her face again. Curiously, I finish off my meal before plodding over to her, curling up on her chest as I so often do.

“Claretta?” I ask. “What are you doing?”

“Th-thank you, Lark,” she blubbers. “Thank you.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. “I’ve never heard that word before.”

She chuckles a little, though it comes out as a series of chokes. More eye-water stuff. It makes me worried for some reason. Is it stopping her from breathing right? I hope she’ll be okay.

“W-when you thank someone, Lark, you show them… appreciation. You thank someone when they do something nice for you.”

“Oh, okay,” I murmur. “So why are you leaking water out of your face? You’ve done that a few times.”

“That either means I’m sad, or it… means I’m happy.”

Aren’t those opposites? That’s kind of confusing, isn’t it? Ugh, humans.

“You’re not going to die, though?”

Another strained chuckle.

“No, Lark. I… I think I’ll actually be okay.”

Well, that’s good. I settle into a comfortable torpor, enjoying the rise and fall of my bed as my Claretta’s breathing starts to stabilize once again. She’ll be okay. She’ll grow her limbs back and teach me more things. Maybe we’ll hunt together, maybe I’ll let her ‘cook’ the bodies like she keeps asking about. Yeah… that could be fun. She’s more than a meal. More than a flower, even. I can’t replace her. There is only one. It would be nice if she could come with me when I’m hunting away from home.

I’m sure she’d like that too.

Time passes as we rest until eventually one of my long-distance webs shakes and goes slack, signaling that something broke it. I grumble softly, quite comfortable on top of my Claretta’s sleeping form. If I leave now she’ll probably wake up before I get back, and I’ll miss the start of her songs! Still, I have to make sure nothing dangerous is headed our way. Regretfully, I rise, rubbing my eyes as I plod on over to follow the thread.

It isn’t long before I hear the voices, and terror fills me.

“Where’s it at now?”

“Still heading this… no, it just stopped. I think it heard you.”

Humans. Oh, no. Are they here to take my Claretta like they took the Fulvia? Will they be prey, or will they be death?

“It stopped?” another voice asks. “If it heard us it wouldn’t stop.”

“Unless it’s our target. Or something like it.”

Target. I don’t know that word, but it has a dangerous feel to it. Should I just run? Turn around, grab my Claretta, get out of here? ...No. I just built my new territory! I don’t want to leave again. I want to capture the humans! They’re so delicious, and so interesting! They’re like nestweavers or katzels in that they all look the same and work together, but they’re also like my kind in that each one of them is a vastly different threat. Maybe these would be dangerous, but I can tell by their voices they aren’t the death-slaying humans. My lips curl upwards. Ah, I hope I can eat them!

I resume my slow trek forward, layering more and more traps around the area as I approach, because why not? Even if they can break the webs, by forcing them to break a web I stack the fight that tiny bit more in my favor, buying myself that tiny bit of extra time. It all matters, when death is on the line. Hmm… should I try talking to them again? I guess it was fun the first time, and they already know I’m here. So why not?

“What’s a target?” I ask a few traps later. I’m close enough to track them by sound now, so it seems safe enough.

They stop moving. By their footsteps I count five of them… no, six? If there’s six, the sixth is more than a little difficult to hear.

“Are you Lark?” a voice hisses, calm and sure.

“Yeah!” I confirm, surprised. “How did you know that? I haven’t told you my name!”

“Watcher’s eyes, it sounds like one of your sisters, Vita.”

“Don’t fucking say that,” what I assume is the ‘Vita’ answers.

“Answer my question, please,” I insist. My Claretta says people like it when you say ‘please’ after demanding something. Well, those weren’t her exact words, but that’s what I got from it.

“The last people to come here told us your name,” the hissy voice says.

Oh, wow. Why didn’t I think of that? These humans must come from the same place! They can talk to each other!

“So… have you all seen Fulvia?” I ask, starting to slowly circle around them as I build more and more webs. “They stole her, you know. She’s mine.”

“Fulvia is not yours,” the hissing voice responds. “You ate her. You tortured her. You nearly killed her.”

“None of those things mean she’s not mine,” I growl.

“None of those things mean she is yours either,” the hiss counters. “How about you come out here where we can see you, and we’ll have a chat?”

“I got attacked the last time I did that,” I point out. “Do any of you have fire? I hate fire.”

The hissy one lets out a wheezing chuckle.

“I hate fire too, actually. No, none of us have fire.”

Oh, awesome, an actually sane human! Plus, if they can’t burn through my webs, they’re going to be way easier to capture and eat.

“What do you want to talk about?” I ask, continuing to build my traps.

“She’s circling around,” the Vita reports. “Probably making more webs. Also, I want to amend my threat assessment higher.”

“Understood, Vita. Lark, I want to talk about you. Your species. What you’re doing here. Would you like to talk about any of that?”

“Sure, I guess,” I answer, unconcerned. It sounds kind of fun, actually. “I like talking. I usually only get to talk with Claretta.”

“She’s alive?” a new voice asks, deeper than the others by quite a margin.

“Of course she is,” I snap. “I won’t let her die.”

Finishing my circle, I approach through the brush and poke my head out, spotting the humans in a decently-sized clearing, or at least what passes for a clearing with the tree canopy choking out light from above. Most of them spot me immediately but none of them attack, so I step the rest of the way out of the brush, standing up straight. The humans are all quite interesting. There’s a soft-looking one, there’s a huge one covered in chitin that I know isn’t part of its actual body, another tall one with a huge sharp thing who smells extra tasty, one hiding up in a tree with a bow that’s difficult to hear or smell, a shorter one with a funny thing around its neck and finally the shortest one of all. That one smells very strange, like the other humans in some ways but in others, it isn’t like them at all. Whenever I look at it, my eyes keep flicking to its sides, trying to catch movement that I sense but do not see. A mix of expressions are visible on their faces, but the only one I really recognize or comprehend is from the strange short one: fear and fury, fight or flight. It’s a state I know quite well, both in myself and my prey.

“Shit,” the armored one whispers. “I didn’t expect the limb-eater to be cute.”

“Cute?” I ask. “I don’t know that word either.”

“Interesting morphology,” the soft one mutters to itself. “I wonder how much of it was beforehand and how much is a result of diet. And the skeletal structure...”

“Keep your comments to yourselves,” snaps neck-frills, who is apparently also the hissy one. “Lark, do you know why you and your kind are here?”

“I don’t understand the question,” I answer. “I’ve been here since I hatched, which is forever.”

“Do you have any goals? Objectives?”

“To live with Claretta and eat good food,” I respond. “Like you guys!”

“Like us? You plan to eat us?” the hissy one presses.

I give it a flat look.

“Of course. Do you guys not eat each other? Haven’t you figured out how delicious you are yet?”

“You can’t eat someone just because they taste good,” the shortest one growls. Apparently that one is the Vita, by the voice. It’s also demonstrably wrong, so I ignore it.

“Lark,” the hissy one presses, once again ignoring my question. “Are there any others of your kind that are intelligent? Any others that speak?”

“I don’t know,” I respond with a shrug. “Maybe, but none that I’ve seen. They’re all stupid, they just run at whatever’s closest and don’t even taste very good.”

It lets out a raspy sigh in response, glancing back at the other humans for a moment before speaking again.

“Okay. Executive decision time. Lark, I want you to come with us. We’ll ask you more questions and poke at you a bit, but… you’ll be safe, and we’ll give you plenty of food.”

“No,” the Vita protests immediately. “Bad idea, Seong.”

“Really, Vita?” the ‘Seong’ asks. “This from the girl who tried to negotiate with brain parasites?”

“Vita did what now?”

“How much of the food will be humans?” I ask.

“None of it,” the Seong hisses. “You won’t be allowed to eat any more humans.”

“Well in that case, no,” I answer frankly. “You’re my favorite.”

“The alternative is death,” the Seong insists. “Come with us, or get killed by us here.”

I take a deep breath, tensing my muscles. They don’t smell that tough.

“Seong,” the squishy one murmurs. “I’m a no-go on offense.”

“Then support, Penelope. Come on, Lark. We can help each other.”

“Or,” I retort, lips curling back to reveal black, curved teeth, “I can help myself.”

I pick my first target and lunge. The humans spring into action, weapons swinging my way all at once. I haven’t been sitting around and waiting for food to fall into my traps, though. I’ve been proactively consuming each and every good meal I come across, amassing as much strength as I can as fast as I can. Six humans against me at once? What do I care? I’m stronger, I’m smarter, and lately I’ve become much, much faster.

My teeth sink into flesh, and the battle begins.