Spider cautioned a glance at him, his heart pounding rapidly as tears flowed freely from his eyes. “M-my sister…She was v-very s-sickly.” He started, his voice trembling as he recalled the entirety of his early years, and everything he had suppressed with them. “When w-we w-were old enough t-to leave our p-parents w-we left t-together. I b-became a healer to h-help her.” He sniffed and batted at one speckled eye with his wrist before he continued to speak.
“One day…we found a male close to death…His name was Church. He was a soldier and had never known anything but war for his entire life.” The words came easier now and slowly Spider began to feel himself detach from the tale, as if he were only listening to a story, he had been told a hundred times.
“We healed him together, and he and my sister fell in love. They both knew a pregnancy would be risky, but Cricket was adamant, she wanted to have a family with him so badly…But when she was pregnant she just became sicker and sicker and I couldn’t lose her because she was all I had, and I couldn’t depend on Church because I knew he couldn’t stand me-“ He babbled frantically, his paws kneading nervously at the ground, his body swaying restlessly as he grew closer to the tale’s end. He choked on a sob suddenly, his face twisted in a grimace of pain as the memories flooded him. Church's empty eyes when he saw what had happened, the silence they walked in for days until he woke up one morning completely alone, and the guilt of knowing that everything that had happened to end the peaceful life he had known had been entirely his doing.
