Light-weaver by Zdenka

Chapter 1

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The other weaves threads of light as Ungoliant weaves darkness. Ungoliant can sense the light-weaver where she hides, moving about within her too-bright web. She longs to catch her, to suck her brightness dry as she once did the trees of Valinor. But the barrier is too strong; it is delicate as spider silk but unyielding.

She has long since drunk whatever light of sun and moon can reach below the shadow of her mountains, and now her domain is filled with darkness (as the world once was, as all the lands should be – then, ah, then she could feast at her leisure). She thinks sometimes of crawling up out of her valley and through the mountains, of squeezing through some crack in the dark fortress and taking what she was promised long ago, the jewels of light. But it does not seem worth the effort, when she has arranged her webs to her own comfort and there is easier prey close by.

There are still those who are foolish and unwary enough to pass through her hunting lands. Nan Dungortheb she knows they call it, the Valley of Dreadful Death. It amuses her. She waits for them, watching with her many eyes and feeling with her legs, alert for movement running through her invisible threads.

She can tell which ones have been near the light-weaver; they taste of her. She drinks them down, a foretaste of the inevitable banquet. She catches Orcs as well, sometimes; they are darker, but there is still that spark of light trapped and helpless within them. She plays with them, digs until she finds the spark and swallows it. When there is nothing else, she eats birds and beasts, or her own lesser mates and children. It is not entirely satisfactory, but it stills the gnawing hunger for a time.

When her hunger grows, she tests the bright web for weaknesses, endlessly patient. The Elvish realms will not last forever. Her webs run northward to the sharp black cliffs and the dust, and southward into the green lands. She can feel the strands of a dark doom, waving unanchored but inevitable. Someday, someday the light-weaver’s web will fray and her power will fail. Ungoliant will be waiting.