...but she's less helpful than Teysa had hoped.

El'keth was easy enough to find. She had her own apartment, a cozy cave near the audience chamber. It occurred to Teysa that she wasn't sure what the living arrangements were for the majority of the driders. The Matron never seemed to sleep, but the others would appear and disappear at odd hours. She wondered if they spun webs among the stalactites and slept there. Would she be expected to do that as well? She wasn't even sure if she could spin silk.

El'keth, though, slept in a hammock much like Teysa's. Her room looked much like the novice cells from the Abbey of St. Petronia: that is, a mess. She had spun a line of silk across the back wall to hang her clothes, but limp bundles scattered on the floor testified to its erratic use. The rest of the room was full of... stuff. Teysa could see piles of coins, random bits of armor, empty jars, and stranger things. Was that a piece of eggshell? And there, that looked like the head of a halberd. Standing against one wall was a desk molded out of a single, massive block of stone. It bore the signs of having been sculpted by one of the stonecrafters; surely, it was far too large to have been carried in here. The surface was covered in bits of paper and broken quills. The papers were covered in blotchy writing, but from the doorway Teysa couldn't make out what any of it said.

El'keth herself was sitting in the middle of the floor, her body hopelessly tangled in some kind of baroque **** device. Teysa blinked in surprise as her brain made sense of what her eyes were seeing. No, that wasn't a rack or gibbet. It looked like... some kind of machine, something that might have had a loom in its ancestry in the same way that the most complex clockwork harkens back to a simple sundial. Parts of the machine were metal, other parts polished wood. Silk wove in and around the spools and shuttles. Was it being woven directly out of El'keth's body? Teysa couldn't tell. The drider girl's hands flashed back and forth too fast to see, but her legs were wrapped around the machine as well, working eight treadles at once. The silk practically blurred through the machine. The noise it made was nightmarish, a gnashing clack like deathwatch beetles devouring a fallen tree. She did not stop weaving as Teysa came in. She didn't even look up. She can't possibly hear me over that noise, Teysa thought. She stepped forward and waved, but El'keth didn't look up. Her attention was fixated on the shuttle in front of her. Her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth in a curiously human gesture of concentration. The Matron, looming behind Teysa, rapped her knuckles against the stone wall of the cave. The crack was much louder than it should have been; it boomed off the walls, and El'keth startled backwards in her seat. She looked up and the loom fell silent, the treadles wheezing to a halt.

"Mother!" she cried, and then a moment later, "Teysa! Teysa, you're alive!" She looked Teysa up and down and her expression turned joyful. "And you have Ascended!"

"I musssssst go," the Matron said just outside the door. "I am pursssssssuing my own inquiriessssssss about the attack. If it wassssss not sssssssanctioned by the Quorum, I musssssssst know how it happened... and if it wasssssss, I mussssssst know that assssss well." She bowed and retreated, leaving Teysa and El'keth alone.

"Teysa!" El'keth said, extracting herself from the loom with some difficulty. Today she wore a shimmering green dress with elbow-length sleeves. It clung to her body from the neck to the waist, then spread out into a short skirt that draped over the first foot or so of her abdomen. For the first time since tying the silk around herself, Teysa felt underdressed. The Matron and most of the other driders were unselfconsciously naked most of the time, but El'keth always wore clothes. Teysa determined then and there that she would wear clothes, too. Clothes were a human thing. She needed to hang onto that.

El'keth threw her arms around Teysa's neck and pulled her close. She was shorter than Teysa by a few inches, and her build was slight. It was strange to think of her that way. Even the smallest drider had towered over Teysa... when she was human.

She allowed the smaller drider to hug her for a moment or two, then pulled back. The feeling of silk against her bare skin was an uncomfortable reminder of her semi-nudity. She gently pulled El'keth off her and smiled weakly.

"It's good to see you too, El'keth. What are you working on?"

"Oh! That's right. You haven't seen this yet!" El'keth gestured towards the device that had so recently entrapped her. "This is my loom! My mother got it ages ago from the dwarves. They made it custom for us. Isn't it amazing?"

Teysa didn't know much about weaving, but her mother had had a small hand loom that she sometimes brought out when she brought thread back from the market. That bore about the same resemblance to this device as a chicken to a mighty roc. "It is... quite something," Teysa said. "El'keth, I was hoping to talk to you about--"

"Oh!" El'keth clapped her hands to her face and her eyes grew wide. "We must find something for you to wear! You can't walk about like that!" She seized Teysa by the hand and led her to the back of the cave. There, a single, thick strand of silk stretched like a clothesline from end to end. Hanging over it were dresses, shirts, and more esoteric items that Teysa couldn't easily identify-- one looked like a set of sheaths, perfect for someone with eight long, thin legs. It occurred to her that she had never considered what a difficult job tailoring must be, especially for a half-woman half-spider.

El'keth pulled a blue blouse off the line and held it up in front of Teysa's torso. She narrowed her eyes. "Try this one," she suggested. "You're a bit broader in the shoulders than I am, but it's loose enough that it should fit." Teysa eyed the garment suspiciously. She had always cared more about utility than fashion when dressing herself, and in any case had spent much of her adult life in armor. This, though... the sleeves were ruffled, there were buttons down the front, even a collar. She pulled it over her head and wriggled into it as best she could. It was a little tight around the shoulders, but not uncomfortably so.

"Perfect!" El'keth clapped her hands happily. "Oh, Teysa, we shall be like sisters now! This is wonderful news!"

A leaden ball settled in the pit of Teysa's stomach. She was not sure what she had expected, but this ebullience wasn't it. "El'keth..." she began. "El'keth, I-- this is difficult for me. I mean, my body... my life..."

El'keth's expression became quizzical. "What do you mean, Teysa?" she asked. "You're still Teysa, aren't you? You look the same to me..."

She had never looked so childlike as she did in that moment. "El'keth, we cannot go outside, can we?" Teysa asked.

"Of course we can. We just traveled together! The whole Underneath is open to us."

"No, that's not-- I meant outside, aboveground. Under the sun."

El'keth's brow furrowed. "Why would you want to do that? I have heard that the sun burns and blinds. Better to stay down here. You will find that you can see excellently in the dark."

"The sun was my life, El'keth. My faith, my heart. Now I can't ever see it again? And this isn't my body. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but..."

"But Teysa, what about us?" El'keth sounded on the verge of tears. "Your life is down here, too, isn't it? Aren't we friends? And you have a home here, and a duty... and Aliara! She will be so happy to see you're awake!"

Aliara. There was the one topic Teysa had been hoping to avoid. "Aliara..." she began. "Why would she still want to be with me? Look at me, El'keth! I'm a monster!"

She knew as soon as the words were out that it was the wrong thing to say. El'keth's lip quavered and tears beaded the corners of her eyes.

"Monster?" she asked. "Is that what you think of me?"

"Of course not!" Teysa said, unsure in that moment if she was lying or not. "You, no, but El'keth... you have to understand, your shape can frighten people. Especially since Aliara was captured and bred by your mother-- violently, and against her will. Yes, she's been willing to stay so far, but she hasn't forgotten. When I was human, she knew I would protect her. But what if she now sees me as one of you?"

"But we would never hurt her!" El'keth sobbed. "Never! Aliara is a hero! She showed us the way! Why does she hate us?"

"She doesn't hate you, El'keth," Teysa said, laying her hands on El'keth's and gently pulling them away from her eyes. "Nor do I. Fear isn't rational. I just... I don't want to hurt her. She's been hurt a lot in her life. She deserves someone who can make her feel safe."

"But that's you, Teysa," El'keth said. She sniffled and blew her nose on a scrap of silk. "She's safe with you. I'm sure she'll see that. You may look different, but your heart beats the same, doesn't it? You still love her?"

"I do." Teysa looked down at the floor and nodded. Her thoughts were still in turmoil, but she clung to that knowledge with all the certainty she could muster. "I do love her."

"Then that should be all that matters." El'keth spoke as though she considered the matter settled. "I've read stories, you know. True love always wins in the end. If you love her, she will see that, and it won't matter what you look like on the outside."

To Teysa, that seemed a little simplistic, a little pat. But she wasn't about to say so and set off more tears. Besides, maybe El'keth was right. She had a simplistic view of the world, but sometimes the simple answer was the best one.

"Thank you, El'keth," Teysa said, and was surprised to find that she meant it. "I will speak to her. Thank you for the shirt, too."

"I will make you a new one!" El'keth exclaimed, and hurried over to her loom. "Sized to fit you. It is wonderful to see you alive and well, Teysa."

Alive, certainly. Well, Teysa wasn't so sure. She felt resolved, at least. She would go and talk to Aliara. She had put it off for long enough.