Of Men and Spiders

Scott took note of their supplies. If they left now, they'd be stretching their food supplies to their limits, then it would only take one more emergency, and they'd be on the verge of starvation. To leave all this meat behind was not just a waste; it was risky. Of course, staying where those spider things could get them was also dangerous. So, instead of acting on either choice, he was just standing there, spear in hand, looking at the animals that had yet to be processed, somehow accomplishing nothing, resulting in the worst of both options. Brilliant.

After a little while of this, there was a familiarly insistent tugging on one of his pant leg that drew him out of his metal freeze. Looking over, Alice's face was scrunched up in discomfort. "Aren't you going to cook the food?"

Scott sighed. "Even if we cooked it all, some of it would probably go bad before we can eat it."

Alice tilted her head as she thought aloud. "Too bad we don't have a cooler like at home..."

Scott nodded in agreement but thought about it. True, he couldn't cool the meat to prevent it from going bad, but there were other methods of preservation he could use. Methods that might just keep the spider creatures away at the same time. "You know what? We're going to take a trip to the creek today!"

Alice's face lit up in a way it didn't do nearly enough these days.

-

She watched as the large female gathered up all the carcasses they had, and both tool users left. She wondered why they didn't just scorch all the animal's flesh and consume it right away so they could use the nutrients when needed, but they seemed to have a different idea in mind.

As they traveled, She tried to keep her eyes a little further back, as the female had seemed troubled by the signs her hands had left around their nest. However, it didn't take long to figure out they were headed to the small body of flowing water, so she sent some other eyes ahead to be ready rather than follow them all the way there.

Once they arrived, the smaller male took off its feet coverings and started wading around in the water. The actions didn't serve any benefit as far as She could see, but the female began clearing out a pit much like the fire containment area she'd created back by their nest. Did she intend to cook the flesh here, too? Why not do that back at their nest? However, what surprised She was when the female started gathering all the materials needed to make another fire; it placed most of the wood in the flowing water.

Now, what purpose would that serve? All that placing the wood in the water would do would make it harder to combust. However, the female just continued making the fire with the rest of the dry wood, and soon enough, it achieved combustion and had a tame fire going. But rather than place the flesh on a stick and sear it like before, it left the fire burning and started gathering saplings to make some sort of framework.

The female crafted the saplings into a sort of tripod, which it placed over the dying fire, using some smaller branches about halfway up the saplings to create a framework on which it set even smaller sticks until it had a grill of sticks. The female then started cutting the various animals into thin strips of flesh, which dangled from the grill so they were hanging over the fire a couple arm lengths off the ground. This confused She. If the tool user intended to sear the flesh, it was much too far away from the remnants of the fire, but if it were to stoke up the fire enough to sear the flesh, it would only burn down the structure it had made to place the flesh on...

However, the female didn't seem finished. Instead, it started cutting down still-living branches covered in leaves and dipping them in the water before covering the framework in a thick layer of green leaves. Once that was completed, the female took the wood it had placed in the water and put it onto the fire. As predicted, the wood refused to combust and released a cloud of steam and smoke as it smoldered. But rather than be bothered by that, the female simply placed another batch of leaves over the opening to seal it off, leaving most of the smoke billowing out the top of its odd structure.

Then, the female simply left the structure smoking before starting two more such structures. However, it would occasionally return to the first, adding more damp wood to the struggling fire or adding water to the leaves surrounding it to keep them from drying out too much. This made no sense to She, but then again, neither had seared the flesh of the original carcass, so She decided to wait and see the result. Besides, as the two tool users worked, they continued creating air vibrations toward one another. This was an excellent opportunity for She to test the effectiveness of her new vibration-sensitive appendage to see if there were indeed patterns to these vibrations like She'd previously suspected.

-

Scott was quite pleased with his smoking setup. However, it would be several hours before the meat was ready. Long enough that he should probably set up a proper fire to cook the last two animals for dinner, then maybe set up a camp here for the night.

For her part, Alice seemed to be having fun playing in the creek. She'd found a deeper part of the water with a few tadpole-like creatures she was playing with. He called out to her. "Hey, munchkin, I'm gonna make some lunch in a bit. How hungry are you feeling?"

Alice let the tadpoles go and smiled back at him. "I'm bunches of hungry!"

Scott shook his head. He was pretty confident she was messing with her wording just to get a reaction, but he decided to bite anyway. "You mean you're very hungry?"

Alice smiled. "Yeah, that!"

Scott rolled his eyes. It was best not to encourage her any further. "Alright, plan on eating in about thirty to forty minutes!"

The imp Scott called a sister grinned in response before diving back under the water.

-

She was right! With her specialized vibration-sensitive appendage in place, it was clear there was far more complexity to the tool user vibrations than was first apparent, with hundreds if not thousands of patterns throughout. It was almost like the orifices they produce the vibrations from had evolved to allow far greater range and complexity than most animals. This was clearly a language, even if it was far more straightforward than She was used to. That simplicity was good for She. It meant that deciphering what they were conveying wouldn't take too long.

At the moment, the female seemed to be preparing another fire. She assumed it would make a fourth smoking structure, but instead, this time, it seemed content to make a proper fire like it had back at its nest and proceeded to singe another couple of carcasses. It was so focused on its task that it didn't seem to notice when the male slipped and got its foot stuck in the muck at the bottom of the flowing water.

She was confident the female would notice quickly since its attention never seemed to wander far from its counterpart, but the smaller male's movements were becoming increasingly distressed. She considered letting things unfold to see how the female would respond to such an accident. It might even finally decide to produce a new member of its pack. On the other hand, the tool users seemed to vibrate primarily toward one another, and allowing that to be interrupted at this stage of her studies seemed a waste after producing a custom appendage for this specific purpose. Besides, as useless as the smaller male seemed, it was oddly...amusing at times, and She would miss seeing its antics from day to day.

Making up her mind, She reached out with one of her hands, leaping into the water to scoop up the male and get it to shore.

-

Scott had been listening to Alice's splashing as he worked, but that had been interrupted by a much louder splash that sounded like something big falling into the water. He grabbed his spear and turned around in time to see his sister appearing to rise up out of the water, sputtering and coughing, only for a moment later it to be apparent she was being lifted by something.

Scott lunged forward, intending to get to his sister's side as quickly as possible. But in his rush, he tripped and fell, watching in horror as his spear skidded out of his reach.

With a grunt of frustration, he launched himself forward again, grabbing ahold of the spear, only to see one of those spider monsters drop his sister onto the ground beside the creek, its fangs inches away from her vulnerable legs.

Scott's instincts screamed at him to act, but how could he move fast enough to keep it from biting her? There was no way for it to happen, so instead, he crouched frozen, staring into the monster's eyes, trying to somehow convey that if it bit down, he would hunt the monster to the ends of the planet.

Perhaps something of his intent came through, or maybe it was something else, but eventually, the monster turned and scuttled away, leaving Scott free to rush forward and grab his sputtering sister, who was vomiting up far too much liquid. "You're okay, you're okay! What happened? Did it bite you? Did it try to drown you? It doesn't matter, you're okay!" He held her tight with one hand, but his other gripped his spear as he scanned the underbrush for any sign of the monster returning, ready to act.

Finally, Alice stopped coughing so much and started gasping, until a few moments later, she spoke. "N...no. It...it didn't hurt me... I think...I think it saved me..."

Scott shook his head. That was ridiculous. Why would a spider monster try and help? Spiders didn't think or feel. They simply did what was necessary for survival, which usually meant eating anything smaller and weaker than themselves.

Still, Scott couldn't help but think back on that first spider monster and how it had him dead to rights, only to turn and walk away after looking at him for a while. As though it had been thinking... Not to mention, there was no mention anywhere that he'd seen of giant spider monsters on the planet. Things did get missed occasionally in planetary assessments, but as popular as this place was, it seemed like someone would have noticed before now...

The only thing Scott knew for sure as he hugged his sister was that something weird was definitely going on...