This is a project I started a while back but haven't finished. It needs a lot of work. Perhaps this is next month's NaNoWriMo project? Who knows. 

As for monsters, oh, yea, they're giant spiders.

-af

Chapter 1:

Part 1: First Mans

When the first mans came, they settled adjacent to the largest spider city. The spiders were at first amused but the two races did not respect each other. With such a large settlement of spiders, the principals were always looking for fresh meat, yet they made young as if they were explorers conquering new territory. They saw the first wave of mans as a gift from the heavens and gave her many thanks.

The mans provided a challenge for the spiders. They were cunning and smarter than the spiders. For each man that was taken, many spiders died. The spiders were not yet concerned. Spider meat was tougher but tasted just as fine after proper aging.

Had the mans chosen to plant their capsule in the mountains or near the sea, they might not have encountered the spiders for several generations. Instead, they chose the open plains where fresh water was plentiful and the soil rich for plants. Spiders had chosen the area for a similar reason, except when they had arrived the area was also rich with grazing animals. The grazers still roamed in areas far from the cities. Not plant eaters themselves, the spiders had removed most of the plants, using the material mixed with bones, shells, refuse and mud to build their houses. The place resembled a dusty skin of warts in dry times and a slick lake bottom in the rainy season.

The mans arrived at the beginning of the dry season as the water drained from the area and the earth firmed. For the first season, they stayed close to their capsule. The ate so little of the surrounding plants or animals, it was difficult to decide whether they were meat or plant eaters, or something else. She observed them from a distance, preferring to side with the spiders as they were her own nature and these others came from some place else. She helped the spiders learn to avoid the mans’ stingers which was something they would not have figured out themselves, but did not teach them how to enter or take apart their capsules. The spiders had the strength and natural ability, but not the cunning to figure it out for themselves. She did not want to give them too many advantages over the newcomers.

Once the newcomers decided that the spiders were a threat, they had no difficulty discerning and destroying every spider household within a day’s distance of their settlement. They left the carcasses where they fell to rot in the hot sun. Surviving spiders were fine with this arrangement, it gave them food stores for the freezing time when it was difficult to move or hunt. She was bothered that the mans killed what was beyond necessary for their survival.

By the end of the dry season, there seemed to be an uneasy peace between the two species. Mans only killed spiders that came within their perimeter and spiders feasted on the remains.

Vertebrates were not her favorite creatures. She preferred shells to bones, but there was nothing like a little competition to make one rethink the possibilities. These creatures, whose origin she could not understand, were aggressive. They expected the land and its creatures to yield to their will. Where ever they came from, it was clear that they were the master species and expected to continue in that role where ever they went.

How and why they had come to such a conclusion was a mystery. It was interesting to observe them and see how they attempted to adapt to her world, but no species was master here. Some were more successful than others, but all were equal.

During the hot summer the mans marked and divided the land they claimed. Then they installed houses built not of native materials but of stuff from their capsule. A few of the more opportunistic ones used abandoned spider houses. 

Spider city land was saturated with venom in which little would grow. That made the area predominantly shades of bone and gray. It was pretty, in a bleak and barren sort of way, a refreshing alternative to the vines, brambles and grasses that surrounded the settlement. Winter rains and snow washed out some of the venom making the soil fertile for plants again, so by spring time, in the areas where the mans settled, a few brave tendrils of green broke through the watery mud.

The newcomers dug streams to divert the water and drain the land more quickly. Then they introduced seeds to the earth. The new aliens thrived in the gray soil all through the spring and by summer began to produce seeds and fruit. Most of the seeds and fruits were carefully collected, but some escaped to take root outside their assigned plots. Those, she watched carefully. As they were living off her soil and her water and her air, she gave them certain strictures. As long as they kept spider venom in their diet, they could live and mingle with the native species in any way they wished. Without it, they would die. The mans were harder to talk to. They did not seem inclined to pay much attention to her.

Mans and their plants did well until they depleted the spider venom from their territory. She saw several interesting possibilities. They could barter with the spiders for venom. They could conquer more of the spiders’ city. They could cohabit. Spiders enjoyed man-flesh when they could get it. There were many possibilities. Abandoning all the logical choices, they chose to attempt to craft spider venom and apply it to the soil.

Then she began to understand more about these alien creatures. They could not see her because they did not understand that a thing is more than a sum of its parts. It takes life to create life. Real spider venom was a part of life. Their synthetic mixture was not. Their plants had taken to the earth and adapted to it, and now they were part of the chain of life. Before consuming the plants, though, the growers did something to them to  destroy the life element she was trying to give them. Until they would give themselves to her, they would never see her, and they would die.

Part of her wanted to see them either go away or die. Another part loved watching the strangers with their unusual ways. She asked the spiders what they thought. They agreed that the mans were interesting. They wished they were as good at hunting, so they might bring home more man meat. Always thinking with their stomachs. No wonder they were so easily defeated by mans.

She asked the alien plants what they thought. They were ambivalent. If mans left the planet, they said, they would be left behind. Such was their relationship. To mans, everything was a tool to be used, nothing was coequal. The corns, as they called themselves, were getting along well with the spiders who took to tending wild patches as things of beauty.

She wanted the mans to recognize her, to talk to her. She could only imagine that the reason they were here was that their home planet had rejected them. The plants said that was not so, but could not offer another explanation. 

Still, they did not seem to understand the conditions for living here. Their plants had adapted, but they refused. That germ of life which they had brought with them would soon be extinguished unless they allowed this planet to nurture it.

So she chose one of the settlers who’d made a home for himself in an abandoned spider house. He seemed to spend more time with the land than the others. He was a great spider hunter. The spiders respected his skill so much that they often sent young hunters on expeditions into his territory to test their skills. He seemed to understand their game as he often ignored foolish mistakes by the youngsters and only challenged hunters whose skills he respected. 

While he was out, she collected herself into a presence in the innermost room of the house. The room which was[ More description of the house here?] once used to nurture spider eggs, was empty of all traces of its former occupants. The round, domed shape was still there, but mud plaster had been made smoother and whiter and the floor instead of being slightly concave was now flat. The light vents in the ceiling were covered with transparent panes of silica. The room itself was being used to store corn and other seeds. The containers were of the otherworldly materials and unusable, but the seals were weak and the contents were more than willing to spill out and gather together as a shape.

He had good hunter’s instincts, because he sensed her presence as he entered the abode. That was a good sign that she’d chosen well. It was an average-sized dwelling for a spider family. As the family grew, they added rooms in a spiral about the central nest which was always the first and oldest part of the house. The hunter cautiously passed through each of the nine outer rooms examining each object en route. He stopped at the opening.

“Who are you? You’re not Kiser’s girl. Where are your clothes?”

He saw her! She was pleased. He walked away. She was confused. He came back, threw something brown at her.

“Put that on.”

She looked at the thing, but it was not hers so she could not touch it.[ Add more stuff about how the seeds play about her.]

“Are you deaf?”

She laughed. The seeds danced in their containers.

“What are you?” He took a step backward.

The seeds stopped dancing.

“You do not respect the corn.” Now that she had his attention, it was difficult to decide how best to make her point.

“What?”

“Do you ask the corn to feed you when you are hungry? Do you thank the plants for the life they share with you?”

He laughed, but the corn did not dance. That was because the corn was hers and no longer was related to mans.

“Why do you remove the life from the corn before eating it? You cannot thrive that way.” Some grains spilled and tumbled to the floor. More spilled from her fingers.

He stopped laughing.

“Who are you?”

“I have no name. I am. That is all.”

“Get out.”

Out? Out of what? Out, as a concept, did not apply to her. He moved toward the seed body and made a grab for it. His hands displaced some of the seeds and they fell to the floor. He waved his hands through the body and more seeds fell. She let the rest go to ground.

----------------- Part 2: Second Encounter 

She was not yet willing to give up on the mans, but after that last attempt, waited and considered. They were getting weaker, but they were clever. They kept her viruses and bacteria out of their food and water. She gave soil and air bound creatures leave to attack in any way that they could. Most failed, but it only took one or two to be successful. They could limit the destruction with their alien methods, but if they would stop fighting her and embrace her, they could have avoided it.

The next time she encountered the hunter, it was in a corn patch that he tended. It was the dry season and dust abounded to gather into the shape of a body. He was scarred from where leaves of the corn plants had sliced into his arms and face. Mites feasted on his sweat and blood. They were stealing his alienness and he did not know it. With each season his ties to his home world grew weaker, yet he still clung to them as if that was the only way to survive.

When  he saw her, she said, “I will kill you soon.” It was a sad observation.

“No need. The plants and bugs are doing that already.” He scanned the horizon warily for spiders. 

“They would save you, if you respect them.”

“I don’t know if you’re a figment of my imagination or what.”

She caused a corn to ripen and fall at his feet. “Eat.”

He picked it up carefully with gloved hands. “It’s poison before processing.”

“There is no such thing as poison. There is adaptation.”

He took off one of his gloves and held the ear of corn in his bare hand for a minute. Then he showed her the red, blistered skin. 

“The corn embraces me. Why do you refuse?”

“I don’t see you eating it.”

“I take my nourishment from the sun.”

“Then show me how to do that.”

“Eat the corn.”

“What are you? Goddess of corn?”

“Why are you here?”

“This is my land.”

“This is me.”

“You make no sense.”

“Eat the corn.”

He looked at her.

She looked at the plants that called themselves trees and took a fruit. It ripened to juicy red globe.

“Then eat this.”

His eyes opened wider. He began to laugh. He sat on the ground and continued to laugh until he wept. He stirred his injured hand in the dirt. It pained him as the blisters broke and dirt clung to the open wounds, but he seemed to enjoy the pain. 

She gave him the apple. He cut it in half.

“We are the creators of our own folly,” he said. He looked toward the spider city where a small group of spiders approached. “There’s old Amstel sending me another batch of young ’uns to teach a lesson. He and I are getting too old for this.” He stared at the apple. 

It was a very juicy apple. Fluid oozed from the cut surface onto his hand. Part of his world and this, it bonded to the sores and closed them. 

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” he said. Then he laughed again. It was a desperate sounding song full of grief and exhaustion. Eventually, he was too tired to continue longer.

“What does not kill me makes me stronger, I guess,” he said. Then he took a bite.

She could tell that he liked the taste, but not the feel of the fruit in his mouth. He did not spit it out. He chewed thoroughly and swallowed. His gut spasmed with the unaccustomed nourishment. As the sun set, he finished the fruit. Then he laid in the dirt to rest.

The spiders approached. The one he called Amstel asked, “Why do you shape dirt to look like one of them?”

“He seems not to notice me otherwise.”

“I would like to feast on his flesh.”

“Not yet. He has given you a great deal of respect. He calls you by a name.”

“I am spider.”

“He acknowledges you as unique among spiders and calls you Amstel.”

“We must think on that.”

“Yes.”

“Other mans approach. May we hunt them?”

“Give them a little chase, but don’t get too close. I do not want them to see this one until he wakes or dies.”

“May we have him when he dies?”

“Certainly.” She giggled and the leaves about rustled. Still thinking with their stomachs.

The others skirmished briefly with the young spiders. They were swift, though, and none were hurt with their far-reaching stingers. The mans soon gave up and went away.

The sleeper remained nearly motionless until well after dawn. When he awoke, there were three more apples in the dirt beside his head. He noticed their smell before noticing the sun’s light and warmth. Since he was not yet dead and his thirst was great, he bit into one. This time there was no unpleasantness, only the pleasure of clean, sweet fruit. He smiled and ate eagerly.

“Give thanks for what the tree has given you,” she said.

He looked around, but there was no one to be seen. Even the spiders were long gone elsewhere. He picked up the corn. It no longer burned his hand. Even if he did not yet know it, he was hers now.

“I don’t know who or what you are, but thank you,” he said. Then he gathered the remaining fruit and walked back to his house.

 

--------------

Part 3: Third Encounter

 

The man became healthier and stronger while his neighbors in the man city weakened. His scars faded, the corn leaves caressed rather than cut his bare skin. The rest of his species did not fare as well. They cocooned themselves in sterile materials.  The children they bred were pitiful things confined to their houses.

For days, the healthy man would walk in the corn and call out, “Who ever you are, come out. Come out so I can see you.”

This annoyed her. How could one so clever continue to be so dense? And why did he not explain anything to the other mans? No other species would keep such a thing secret. Still, she eventually decided to try talking some sense into the man.

“I am here,” she said.

“Show yourself.”

“I am.”

“I need to see what I am talking to.”

“Can you see the corn, the earth, the sky?”

“Of course.”

“Then you see me. Why do you allow the others of your kind to be weak and die?”

“What? Do you think they want to become like me? Toxic to the touch; skin like rock?”

She laughed; the corn swayed. His skin was more firm than his brothers, but hardly like a rock. It was a poor substitute for the softer parts of spider shell.

“You are healthy and strong and are part of me. But if your species is to have a chance of survival, there has to be more than one of you.”

“Don’t you think we all know that? We were supposed to be self-sufficient by now. All the reports said that this was an ideal planet for colonization. Our own plants weren’t supposed to turn against us.”

“Corn does not speak highly of you, but they have never done anything against you.”

“Then why does it become—this? Why can’t it grow true to its form?”

“It grows as it is designed to grow. Why would it do otherwise?”

“My people are dying and I am talking to a corn field that hates me. If I told them what I think I know, they would take pity on me and put me out of my misery. But I don’t want them to know that I’ve become some kind of freak and lost my mind. Amstel, where are you now? It’s time to feed the young ’uns.”

The old spider was just out of stinger range watching the man. The man had not been tending his fields and that bothered the spiders who adored the corn, so they had been caring for the crops when he was not about.

“Spider, do you still crave this man’s flesh? I am tired of protecting him.”

The spider came closer. As the man did nothing, the spider approached and smelled the man.

“This flesh would be good to eat, I know. But this man gives us leave to enjoy these plants and we love walking among the green stalks. If this man is gone, another comes who is less of a neighbor as the other mans all seem to be poor neighbors.”

The man looked up at the spider. “It’s been you. You were the corn maiden. You were the eve.”

“What is the eve?” the spider asked. “This man has left his meat to age too long.”