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Boundaries of Mirkwood
"Stiff and Stark"
Chapter 6



Yumiko opened her eyes, but saw nothing.

I’m blind. Maybe my mother will finally let me have a puppy!

Her body shuddered.

So cold. The ground is hard.

She took her first breath.

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!

Lungs burning, she shut her eyes tight again.

With her first movement, she found her body aching. Never before in her short life had she felt this awful, nor had achieving some relief from the ache been such a contradiction. Lying still, she felt wretchedly stiff and her limbs convulsed to restart themselves, but movement induced spikes of pain nearly as bad as the stiff ache. Yumiko settled for rolling onto her side and drawing her legs closer to her chilled body.

The ground beneath her felt earthy, with stones poking into her at odd angles. This was not the place she stood when her eye had been impaled by a pen. No one would have left her body outdoors. They certainly wouldn’t have moved her from a sunny, grassy field to dark, dirt, and rock.

Yumiko shook from the chill. I am dead and buried.

It was a strange thought for her. In her 14 years on Earth, she’d only contemplated death for fleeting moments. Ever was life a series of moments. Moments occupied her. Liquid joy flowed through her veins; the fact that there was no delight like that of a well plotted prank could keep her engaged for hours.

Yumiko was still a in a little pain, but there was no use in staying in the dirt. Carefully, she maneuvered onto her bare knees. They dug into the gravelly floor. Blindly, she groped about in the silt and stone for any sign of another person of place without success. She was conscious of her eyes being open, but there was only darkness everywhere. Cautiously, she moved in one general direction without feeling any major obstructions. If she was dead, she concluded that her grandmother ought to be around somewhere. There would be many relatives to greet her. Nothing about the place was making any sense.

She blinked twice. What was that? It looked like some faint outline. As she stared longer, her eyes began to adjust to the faint glow and confirmed that she wasn’t totally blind. What she could discern looked like an elongated oval. It was almost the shape of a person. The bundle, not quite twice her size, seemed to emit its own faint light.

Curious, Yumiko crawled closer to inspect this thing. It was a gray tinged white. She thought perhaps it’d be a good idea to find out what was wrapped beneath. She pressed her face inches away from the thing, observing the virtually invisible threads making up the cocoon. Hesitantly, she touched it.

A bolt of fear seemed to jolt up her arm and instantly. Yumiko knew two things instantly, though they came from a vacuum; this shell was made up of some hardened, evil substance and there was a living being inside.

Naturally an empathetic person, Yumiko began ripping away the covering without any thought as to why this person was wrapped up in the first place. The hardened outer layer peeled away easily enough, but beneath was sticky layer made up of some kind of silk, like a spider’s. The image of a spider large enough to do this fluttered over her conscious, but it was fleeting.

The indistinct, shadowy gray glow became more vibrant as the layers were removed. Shortly, Yumiko uncovered the outline of a hand. A torrent of emotions she’d kept at bay ebbed over her heart, gently tugging at her.

«It’s alright.» She took the hand in her own, speaking in Japanese, «I am here, and I will help you as best I can.”

There was so much she wanted to give to make this being come back to life; she’d make them better somehow, by sheer willpower if necessary.

A light with a pinkish hue spread from her hand. Though it was unusual, Yumiko (who’d accepted everything around her as strange now) merely cocked her head to the side. She watched as she willed part of her soul’s strength into the other. Beneath her hand, she felt a finger twitch.

Furiously, Yumiko set about ripping away the strange wrapping in an excited fervor, the subtle movement enough to assure her that the being did live. Of what she could tell, the body was an adult male with long hair. It took a while, but the smaller Yumiko was able to pull away most of the wrappings. As best she could, she extracted the stiff body from the rest of the silk and laid him on the ground. She found him to be carrying a quiver with arrows; his bow was caught up in the tangle of threads. To make him more comfortable, she removed the quiver and strung it across her own back.

As far as she could tell, he didn’t seem to be breathing, but after feeling about his neck, she eventually ascertained that he did have a faint pulse. He also was the only thing giving off any light, though it only illuminated that which was no more than an inch from his skin. As such, she could barely see him.

Yumiko sighed; she didn’t know what to do now. Where could she take him? She didn’t even know where they were. This unconscious body probably held answers and the only way he was going to help her was if she could help him.

Delicately, Yumiko placed a hand over his forehead and concentrated as if she were shooting an arrow. She had a target and it was by her own will that her bolt’s aim would hit the mark.

Faintly at first, a pinkish tinge lit his skin as before, spreading out from her fingers. It shed light on his fair features and the two foot spider reaching its hairy legs for his prone body.

Yumiko let out a terrified scream as her already pink hand violently lit, revealing three other monstrous spiders waiting in the wings. Furiously, she struck at the creature with her bare hands, shoving the repulsive prickly mass off the poor man. As her hand struck, the spider let out a high pitch screech of agony. Its carcass began to smoke, curl in on itself, and was silenced.

For a second, all sound in the dark ceased.

“Sting!” one of the spiders hissed, followed by a cacophony of fangs clicking.

Yumiko raised her glowing hands to examine them, and then cast her eyes to her surroundings. She was in some kind of underground cave; a very large cavern. The ceiling was so high it extended beyond the view of her glowing hands. What concerned her most were the other cocoons, barely visible, stashed haphazardly in crevices and along the crags in the cavern floor.

Cocking her head, she uttered, «huh.» Eyes back on her hands and with stunning reflexes, poked a spider that’d meant to sneak up on her side with an index finger.

It rolled onto its back, dead.

Yumiko giggled. She stood slowly, the eight legged creatures in front of her holding their ground, hissing and mentioning a “Sting!” once or twice. She faked a lunge, and the creatures scuttled back down the cavern.

Watching their retreat, but wary not to abandon the helpless man, she saw them merge into. . .a mass of about thirty more spiders, all of varying sizes. From what she could tell, they were all very upset with her. Her face lit brightly. It was time for new tactics.

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