A quiet night like any other was in its prime. Gentle warm light poured out one of the windows of the wooden lodge. At this hour very few souls were awake. Ever since her previous life she was already a light sleeper, often staying up until deep into the night. Now, her new form completely did away with sleep, not that she minded losing the very need for sleep, rather she quite appreciated the extra free time. Although she wished to be productive and continue the construction work through the night. Unfortunately, though sleep was inessential to Alicia and her subordinates' it was not the case for everyone else. Thus it had become routine for her to spend the night studying texts - though  she could communicate with natives of the new world effortlessly, reading was not the same -  prototyping tools and drawing up blueprints or noting down her thoughts.

Door to her room slowly swung open, from the dark hallway emerged a familiar person, the other half to her being. It took a long, long time before Alice came over to using stairs and the door, rather than the window, or the roof. It was a huge step up from the downright petrifying, unsolicited, ventral view of a huge spider tapping on her window, illuminated by only the weak candle light encounters during the night. As Alice was highly independent and mostly concerned with the  growth and safety of the twins, it was rare for her to approach Alicia personally, unless it was a particularly troublesome issue that she couldn’t solve on her own.

• "Alice? Is something wrong?"

In her characteristic curtness;

• "Need help. For youngling. Follow.”

In this case it seemed that it was something to do with one of her girls.

---

The building was awash with quietude as they exited its halls.

• ‘What happened?’
• ‘yellow, somber. want to help. do not know how.’

• ‘Goldia…? She doesn’t speak much…’

• ‘outside, detached and quiet. inside, loud and noisy. thinks too much. head sore, just from reading into her. clever, and stupid, somehow.’
• ‘That's a bit of an oxymoron… but I think I get what you’re saying.’

Alicia didn’t recognize the place they were heading to. Despite having keen awareness of the layout of the forest and its notable landmarks, there was still much left to discover.

• ‘We’re we heading?’
• ‘close now.’

Soon afterwards, they saw a dull silvery light in the distance and caught the abnormal chill in the wind. A lone girl was sitting, kneeling in the midst of a meadow in a small clearing of the forest, surrounded by twinkling orbs of light that looked as if the patch of the night sky had fallen down around her. With the faintest breeze they flittered, displaying a breathtaking display yet also giving away their underlying nature. A chaotic tangle web whose intersection points each held up crystallized ice globes shining enticingly as the moon illuminated it. The floor around her instead had a thin sheet of frost draping over the meadow flowers and grass. After some time a rhythmic clicking sound could be heard, becoming louder and louder.

• ‘Monster…?’

Alicia was preparing to jump in, if anything were to come out. Her counterpart held her back.

• ‘observe.’

From the deeper parts of the forest, a large flying insect came out, heading straight towards one of the globes in an attempt to land on them, snapping a number of web strands in the process, presumably intended to capture it. However it appeared as though they didn’t get stuck to it at all and after being startled by the snapping of the fibres they became spooked and flew away, back into the forest depths. Leaving a trailing of sparkling flakes.

• ‘Was that a moth…? That thing is huge.’

After it flew away, Goldia despondently got up and repaired the damaged parts of the web, changing its structure as she went, as well as cleaning the dust off of it and picking off any stray bugs that wandered into it. After she was done, she returned back to her spot before sitting down and looking up to the heavens once more. It appears that she passed the time by stargazing until another moth approached her web.

• ‘She does this often…?’
• ‘many days.’
• ‘So you want to cheer her up, is that it…?’

Silence was the most common answer Alice gave. It implied that she was correct and there was nothing more to add to it.

‘My oh my… quite tall order. I’d rather take on an entire country’s army than to be a good parent. And it’s not looking like I’ll find an army anytime soon…’

Tapping and tugging on the edges of the web to a certain tune Alicia made herself known to the young girl. Small gasp of surprise escaped her.

• “Can I come sit with you?”

After a short while of contemplation she slowly nodded her head in such a way that indicated that she wasn’t quite convinced of her decision. Because of its chaotic character, the web was difficult to navigate through, at the same time Alicia couldn’t help but admire the adroit attention to detail it possessed. Each line of silk had their purpose, be it to support, to capture or to entice.

‘Hell, this feels like a pillow fort, except your child got hold of an entire storage unit's worth of planks and an access to infinite nails and hammer, and decided to go nuts in your back garden. Never would I have thought that I was too big for something, especially after losing my height in a gender change…’

Carefully crawling through the web while testing the supporting capacity of some parts of the silk, Alicia made it to the center of the web where Goldia was at. After she reached her, she sat down crossing her legs and picked Goldia up into her laps. Sitting on top of the hub she could read into every little movement of the web.

‘Some parts have little delay to them… Few redundancies here and there… The acoustics aren’t half-bad… Eh, it's not like she’s catching something to save herself from starvation.’

Every now and then she would look back up to her before returning to monitor her web again. And every time she did, Alicia would look at her to reassure her. She could feel that now that she was with her Goldia had become a little tense, anxious of something. Eventually it seemed that she was becoming a little antsy on her laps, but she didn’t move to free herself. Although she had few guesses as to why, the most likely one was that she was getting impatient about not getting another moth to approach her.

• “Waiting long for something isn’t fun is it, wanna learn something to pass the time…?”

Once again she looked up to her, craning her head, inquiry crystallizing in her eyes.

• “Here, lay down.”

Alicia put Goldia down next to her and lied down on the frosted meadows.

• “If you feel like you can’t wait for something, look up and count the stars. I would always lose count of it once I reach the hundreds. But then, you just start over again. The thing is, the stars move and parade away with each passing second, so you never really know if you’ve already counted that specific star.”

Twinkling  orbs suspended in webbing was the foreground for the starry night sky, enriching their numbers. Goldia had started to count the stars in earnest.

• “You can also draw lines between the stars to make the shape of something new. Like the big dipper, which looked like either a fishing hook or a ladle depending on where you saw it from the earth.”

---

• “Why do you want to catch moths by yourself…?”

A whisper-esque reply came after a while.

• “…pretty…”
• “Well… They are pretty aren’t they…?”

‘Some of them look like they can abduct a toddler and feed on it but what do I know about aesthetics.’

• “Do you want to keep them…?”

A short nod came after.

• “If we catch one, are you going to take care of it? Seems that they like to nibble on silk.”
• “…Mmmhh…”

A sort of an affirmative mumble came from her.

• “Alright let’s see… Could one of you go fetch me those flakes that fell off earlier?”

As she didn’t want to disturb her she ordered one of the few remaining hex crawles still nestling in her hair. The spider quickly crawled out and brought samples of it to her open palms and dropped. Looking closely at the exfoliate and rubbing it against the tips of her fingers and seeing how easily it crumbled, she deduced that the moths have to be covered in some sort of flaky scales that easily peels off in layers, rendering them quite slippery for a conventional web to capture.

‘Interesting… seems that this ‘prey’ item has made quite the evolution for escape, were these changes made just so that they could escape spiders… or something else…? Well it doesn’t matter who it is for, it works, evidently. We can take more… active approach for this.’

Before long another moth approached the web. Attracted to the ice crystals it slowly flew towards them. Sitting up straight;

• “Okay Goldia, you need to completely wrap it in silk when it comes close, otherwise it’s just going to hit the web and then fly away again. Can you do that…?”

Readying herself, the little girl unveiled her real form. Slowly putting herself in position, multiple pairs of legs placed on the main draglines, she was prepared to close her web around it. As soon as it made contact with the web, she sprung to action, twisting the nearby silk in an effort to wrap it up. The moth, although initially unencumbered, soon became stupefied from being jostled around inside the web haphazardly flying into more and more webbing until.

‘Oh, that’s a hole…’

｢ Weaver ｣

Without Goldia noticing Alicia had made a small reinforcement to the web’s structure, closing up the opening with her magic. It didn’t take long for the moth to get helplessly tangled up in the web. Its movements slowed down from fatigue, yet it still flapped its wings in desperate bid to survive.

Goldia’s eyes lit up with excitement, quickly stumbling over to look at it closely. After cutting off some of the web she held the huge moth in her hands by its abdomen. The moth had mostly milky white coloration on its wings with symmetrical circles that almost looked like a larger animal’s eyes.

• “Well done… You should give it a name.”

Looking up she pondered for a while before answering in a soft voice:

• “…star…light…”
• “That’s a pretty name… Can I hold it for just a moment?”

Hesitantly she handed the moth to Alicia.

• “Thank you, it won’t take long.”

As she held the insect with a soft smile the unseen chains of servitude slowly crawled around its being. Animals without much sense of ego or independence, that act by mostly instincts were swiftly overwhelmed by the overriding will of the magic.

｢ Domination ｣

• “Starlight… take care of my little girl here… alright?”

With that she freed it from the remaining silk. Instead of flying away, it held onto her hands and started to groom itself, picking away at any leftover silk and cleaning its antennae.

• “Here.”

She handed it to Goldia who was ecstatic to have her new pet back.

‘Some kids want a puppy, she wants a giant goddamn moth… Well, if it makes her happy, what do I care about? For an insect… it is quite fluffy, suppose those tufts of fluff are what made them hard to catch.’

• “Thanks… mom…”

Alicia froze up as Goldia buried her head towards her chest. ‘Riiiight… Mom… of course… I don’t think I can run away from that title… not like I successfully avoided any other title but still.’

• “I was worried… I wasn’t good enough…”
• “Why, what made you think that? Is it because you couldn’t catch it by yourself?”
• “No… Because I’m not as good as Annie… with fire. I thought you wouldn’t like me as much… I’m only good with… cold.”
• “Fire?” smirk naturally formed on Alicia. 'I understand why Alice called her that... Clever but stupid... somehow...'

“I don’t think you get it.”

• “Hm?”
• “You made these ice crystals yourself… right?”

Again she slowly nodded.

• “Then you’re already great at controlling fire.”

Her face turned to that of confusion.

• “Ice and fire are just two sides of the same thing. There’s only thermal energy. There is no such thing as the presence of coldness or some ‘coldness’ energy. Fire is an excess of thermal energy, whereas ice and cold is the absence of thermal energy. Anna is just really good at giving things thermal energy. Goldia, you are really good at taking away thermal energy.”
• “Isn’t… that bad…?”
• “No, it isn’t, how else would you make these beautiful crystals? Besides… you don’t need to be like Anna, you can just be yourself. It doesn’t make any difference to us.”
• “Really…?”
• “Yes, really. Do you want to go back, or do you want to stay here for a while?”

“Don’t stay up too long now.”

As she seemed to be conflicted on whether or not to go or stay and play with her new pet, Alicia just assumed that she wanted to stay, and got up. Going over to Alice who was watching them from the treeline;

• “She should be fine now… I’ll go ahead and return. Are you going to wait for her to get tired?”
• “affirmative…”

Once she had gotten sleepy, she fell asleep on the meadow, her pet moth staying on her body, slowly flapping its wings. It was then Alice emerged from her vantage point and picked her up and put back in the tree house.

Some time afterwards Alice came into the workshop room, due to the ajar door she entered without Alicia noticing. She was engrossed in studying the void crystals and noting down her findings. Alice had inadvertently snuck up behind her and bit her ears.

• “Ow! Ow! Ow! Wh- Alice? W-What happened! What did I do wrong?!”

From her extreme reaction Alice quickly let go and tilted her head in confusion.

• “furballs… show affection…?”
• “Show affection…? I guess that’s play biting and giving hickeys or whatnot… not actually biting.”
• “Apologies…?”
• “It’s okay, you didn’t know, that’s just how dog- I mean wolves show their affection…”

• “human affection. How?”
• “Uh… I don’t know… with a hug, head pat… and maybe a kiss? It depends …What…?”

Alice was staring intently at her.

• “show me.”
• “Uuuh… okay.”

Alicia wrapped her hands around her in embrace, gently patting her head from the back.

• “strange… ”
• “Is it weird…?”
• “feels safe… don’t dislike…”
• “Well that’s great…”

Alicia let go of her and tried to return to her work but…

• “last one… show me…”

She was thoroughly hoping that she could brush it off, cursing her mouth for slipping out that word.

• “It’s… uh… You know what, it’s difficult to explain.”

Closing her eyes and abandoning her reason Alicia quickly leaned over and pecked Alice on her forehead.

• “There! That’s it!”

Alice seemed to be stunned still but shortly afterwards she touched the place on her forehead and wiped the little saliva that was left over it and  intensely looked at her fingers.

• “interesting… humans mark their partners… with saliva and scent.”

Alicia almost spit at her documents.

• “Well… almost… in spirit, I guess…”

---

Auratic

Suggestive content Ahead. Reader's discretion advised.

---

In the dark alleyways of the middling town little girl strolled in a carefree manner, skipping occasionally. A bizarre sight, especially around this time and place, but also her behaviour. Where normal children feared the dark, she seemed not at all bothered by it. It appeared that she was looking for someone or something, almost as if she was lost and… alone. This perceived vulnerability has not gone unnoticed. Group of thugs, three in total, quietly followed her, until she had gone into a corner. Children like her going out and about like this were often abducted and sold into illegal slavery. Due to their immaturity they didn’t fetch much of a price but easy money was easy money. But very rarely, some parents often wandered around looking for their child. With a little tip about where they might be they could easily ingratiate themselves to the desperate parents and extract favors from them. Or even some more money…

Although they often did this to street rats and other extra mouths kicked out of poverty stricken families or whores who abandoned them. Thin and frail bodied children weren’t worth much and weren't worth the effort most of the time. But this girl… prim and clean clothes, good looks, healthy body all of it were in favor of increasing her price. Such were the thoughts of lowlifes that prowled these parts of the town. When she knew she had walked into a dead end she turned around, only to come face to face with her stalkers.

• “Heya little girlie… are ya lost?”

Stench of cheap alcohol wafted out of their mouths with cracked lips, slipping through their receded gums and yellowed teeth.

• “Hello mister…? I’m not lost… I’m just looking for someone.”

Crude laughter came from them, exultant in their success.

• “Is that so? Why don’t we look for them together. Come with us.”
• “I’m sorry mister, mommy told me not to go with strangers.”

Stepping closer one of them replied.

• “Oh, but we’re not strangers, are we…?”
• “No, no, no.”

Answered another.

Still approaching her;

• “We’ll be friends in no time… eheh what pretty green eyes you have.”

Now standing right infront of her and crouching down, salivating, his hands snaked down towards the little girl's loins. Yes she was pretty, but before they sold her off… they could have a little ‘fun’.

They were expecting her to scream for help. What they didn’t expect was the snapping crunch that came right before he reached the girl. A loud yelling of pain, surprising the other two that were standing behind him as he stumbled back, spilling hefty blood on the ground. Still not taking it seriously, they asked in a mocking tone.

• “What the kid bit your prick again?”

Sharing chuckles amongst the two of them. But the chucklesome atmosphere quickly turned sour.

• “Unfortunately gentlemen, I cannot allow you to touch my being lovingly crafted by my mistress…”

The kid’s tone had completely changed, as if she was someone else entirely.

• “You little squirt-!!?”

What they had thought was a human child, turned to something… else in front of their eyes. Emerald chelicerae, short but robust pairs of legs totalling to eight. Fangs… chewing on… their colleague’s finger, making gut wrenching sounds of bone cracking.

• “Soft and fleshy… with a hard interior skeleton… bland and tasteless… a single keratinous plate only at the tips, curious choice of protection…  how droll.”

The creature spat out a half eaten digit towards them.

• “M-Monster!”
• “That I am… but are you that different than I…?”
• “r-Run!”
• “Oh I can’t let you run around screaming like that”

In a blink of an eye with a sound of some sort of booming crack, it seemed that the monster… teleported to their friend’s neck driving its fangs deep into it.

• “Helf-gohaughrr…”
• “Help?

Turning towards the colleagues of the man choking on fangs and his own blood.

Well… Aren’t you going to help him, or are you going to stand there and watch?”

A mocking question was imposed. Their liquid courage quickly faded away in face of the mortality of their ally, knowing that they might be the next. The moment they turned tail to run. Two more snapping sounds echoed. Both of the men were on the ground, unable to make anything more than choking throes of death. Each with a Huntress on their back, clamping down on their neck with their fangs. Not letting any sound escape.

• “My, you shouldn’t turn your back towards predators, especially if you can’t outrun them. Forget days, you pathetic lot wouldn’t survive an hour where we’re from.”

As the venom coursed through their bodies and the light faded from their eyes. Charlie let go of them.

‘It seems that our concealment is sufficiently effective, as expected. Though this was a small test group. They did attempt to court me… Strange though I am of sexual maturity, my humanoid form should not be the same. What strange organisms they are… or perhaps they had seen through some of the disguise…?’

• “Results inconclusive. Clean up the mess and go find more test subjects.”

More huntresses descended to tidy up the scene, while others scattered to find more suitable test subjects to ascertain the effectiveness of their Mimicry. Soon rumors of a serial killer who took fingers out of their mutilated victim became widespread… Natural selection had come to their little town.