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Maintaining the Beast’s Den is probably not all that necessary. Herrah’s seal will (almost) forever hold, and even infected the Devouts hold their vigil well. Still something feels… wrong, to Hornet, to leave it be. And who else is left to do otherwise, but her? Not many she would trust with the task, at least- the Midwife, but it is a difficult climb for a large, old bug, even one who knows the place as well as she does. So the task falls to Hornet, as so many tasks do.
Trailing the little ghost has kept her from the rest of her duties for long enough.
The exact logic driving the stasis is not an easy thing to discern, although she has had plenty of time (however much the phrase makes sense) to find patterns. She knows that the candles will not go out unless they are disturbed, but also that they are disturbed, occasionally. At times Hallownest’s stagnation makes her claws itch, but there is a degree of comfort to be found in routine, and in her mother’s presence. Once she would talk to her as she did this, but she has long ran out of things to say.
Nothing seems amiss this time, beside one out of place curtain. If some creature has invaded this place recently it left nothing else disturbed, and from how weak its scent is, it cannot have done so too recently. The Beast’s Den smells much more of cobweb and beeswax than it does of her mother, now. She vaguely knows the scent, still. One day Hornet will forget what her mask looks like, but for now Hornet’s image of Herrah remains as it is, as it has been for as long as she remembers.
(She remembers Herrah holding her at some point. The memory could have come from before the sealing. Or shortly afterwards, while she was still small enough to crawl under her limp, folded arms.)
Hornet adjusts the disturbed curtain back to the correct position. She wipes dust away from it and the rest of them with a claw. When she crouches down to do the same to the plinth, the seal over her mother flickers. Next she stands, circling the plinth to reach the other-
Ah.
Of course. Of course, eventually, the little ghost’s travels would bring it here. Three masks on the temple door. The Watcher, the Teacher.
…The Beast.
Below her the vessel lies prone, a nail’s hilt in its tiny claw. Hornet knows what it is here to do. She knew this as watched it climb from the abyss and urged it to press onwards. The last time she stood over it like this, after she’d saved it from their sire’s carcass, and left before it stirred. From the moment she’d turned from another husk to see it, and drew her blade.
(I know what you are. I know what you’d try to do. I can’t allow it.)
…Can she allow it?
She must, she is well aware of the fact. There is a window to do otherwise, but it is small and shrinking. In the waking world, the little vessel is defenceless right now- unaware she is even there at all. Some tiny, childish fragment of her demands something, and a claw wanders to her needle. In order to sate it, she grips a pleat of her cloak beside it, pricking the fabric from the force. To ruin things now, out of nothing but impulse and sentimentality, would be foolish.
Next she had planned to check her mother’s cloak and mask for dust. To do so now feels pointless, nauseatingly so. Still, she is unsure of what should happen instead.
She is to bear witness, as has always been a duty of hers. Nobody else is left to remember these things, after all. Hornet sinks onto the plinth’s edge. Her back presses against Herrah’s shell, and she feels it press against her with each slow breath.
It is difficult for her to express much. Were this not the case grief would have driven her mad long ago, probably. Perhaps there has just been so much of it that her shell has adjusted. A smaller, softer Hornet would not be so numb, at this moment.
For a moment she stares into the candles, then presses both claws to her face with a long, shuddered sigh. When Hornet can raise her head again she does not turn it. She reaches for Herrah’s claw blindly, and gives it a light squeeze. It’s warm, just about. There is no response. She had no expectation of one. What is about to happen will not change things concerning her mother all that much, really. She has been somewhere far from Hornet for so very long. Still the finality of it all twists something inside of her, and her grip tightens.
(It had taken great effort to drag her from Herrah’s arms as she lay down for the ritual. Whoever had succeeded kept hold of her. Young spiders cope poorly with bright lights, when not already overwhelmed. At the moment the seal was cast there was a searing flash, and on instinct she had turned away, buried face in their chest.)
She doesn’t have to look- she can give herself that, at least, however cowardly it feels.
Hornet focuses on the dim light, and on the weight in her claw. From somewhere, faint and far away, there is a great chime, and a flash in her periphery, as her claw drops onto cold stone.