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2024-07-01
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Found while Foraging

Summary:

A villager foraging in the jungle stumbles upon a spider. And something more!
(It's an Ushi-Oni. C'mon--she's right in the tags, people.)

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

You hate foraging. It’s slow, dirty work in the hottest parts of the jungle. It is, of course, also vitally important for the village, since jungle-adjacent agriculture is so difficult. That’s why you’re a couple of hours deep into the wilds, looking for roots, nuts, fruits, and spices. You’ve got a machete to forge your own trails as needed and a bow, so with a lot of luck, you might shoot an animal and go home early. Today, however, you’ve been forced to trudge around in the dirt picking roots. This area’s fairly picked over already and so there’s little wildlife worth hunting--the roots and tubers are all that’s left.

You toss a tuber into your bag and sigh. You’ve been at this all morning, and when you venture this deep, the jungle is too still for you to get any hint of a breeze. The beads of sweat forming on your brow are about to drip into your eyes. You wipe them away and sigh. At this rate, you’ll be here until damn near nightfall.

Suddenly, the leaves jiggle wildly and a three foot long spider darts across your path. The jungle is known for its oversize fauna, but you’ve never seen one quite that big. You ponder your next move. It’s only about noon, so you decide to go a bit further out from your home to fill the rest of your bags. There’s signs of bad weather on the horizon so you won’t be out this way again for a few days, and the bugs--no matter their size--are usually the least of your worries out here.

Pretty quickly you find another root, and begin methodically digging it out while taking in the jungle. The canopy is dense, giving the area an almost evening quality, even at midday. Plant life abounds at ground level, occasionally jittering as critters sneak about amongst the leaves. A beetle alights on your arm, blue and green and golden against your skin. With a slight shake of your elbow, it flies off.

As you keep digging, you notice another spider building a web. While gently shaking the root to get the dirt off, you realize this new spider is even bigger than the last one. Its body alone has enough meat to feed a family for days; it’s so big even the legs might be worth cooking. You’ve got your bow. You could be done gathering food right now with a solid hit….

It’s worth the risk; you’ve got the machete if it attacks, after all. You slowly set the root down and pull out your bow. Cocking it back and taking aim slowly, you let loose an arrow. With a satisfying crunch the missile hits the spider squarely in the abdomen, and it flails wildly in its death throes. Somewhat proudly, you look around to ensure no other predators are interested in your kill before storing your bow. With thoughts of roast spider dancing in your head, you abandon the root and move forward.

The spider was only a dozen paces away, and with your trusty machete you’re quickly able to get to it. It continues to twitch and gesticulate, so you work quickly to cut it down and put it out of its misery. You line up a death blow as it squirms on the ground.

Suddenly you’re in great pain with your face in the wet soil, your machete knocked out of your hands.

“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING!?” comes a yell from above and behind you. It sounds like a woman. Ice fills your veins as you realize that you’re being attacked by a monster girl. No wonder these spiders are so large--evil demonic magic is at work!

A giant paw flips you over, claws the size of daggers brushing against your chest. Looking up you see the visage of a savage jungle monster, her upper half human and her lower half some kind of spider. One eye is covered, implying she’s lost it in what must’ve been horrifying violence for something as terrible as her. Her paw goes for your throat and you quail in fear as she locks you in place against the ground. Oh, Chief God, was that spider her child? Did you kill her baby?

“Don’t kill me! I’m sorry I killed your kid! I didn’t know! I didn’t know I didn’t know I didn’t kno--” you keep going until she interrupts your terrified ramblings.

“That’s not my kid!” she says, confused and disgusted. Relief floods your system for a moment, until…

“Then who’s kid is--”

“Nobody’s!” She gesticulates wildly with her other paw. “Look, it’s livestock. You killed one of my silk producers.”

“Not your baby?”

“No, not my… baby.”

“Are you going to k-k-kill me?”

She gazes down at you carefully, and slowly loosens her paw out of the dirt. “No, I’m not going to kill you.” She looks at you strangely, and you can’t look away from her one-eyed stare. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“At what?”

“Poaching?”

“It’s not poaching! The jungle provides for everyone in the village!”

“There’s a village out here?” she cocks her head to the side, even more confused.

“Yes?”

“That doesn’t sound right…” she ponders for a minute. “I must be closer to the west end of the jungle than I thought.”

She offers you a paw. You boggle at it. “Come on, I’ll help you up.”

“I don’t understand.” Everything about this is wrong. She attacked you, and now she sounds apologetic about it.

She waits a moment, and then simply backs up and gives you room to think. “I’m Carlota, by the way,” she says, lamely. She pauses and looks at you expectantly.

“Oh, I’m…” too terrified to remember your name. After a moment, you finally get it out.

“Well, I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances. I didn’t realize that I’m this far west.” Her lower body is pulsing with terrifying, nervous energy, shaggy spider legs twitching, and a big fluffy monster tail shaking rapidly. After a moment, she presses herself down into the ground, making her slightly less intimidating. But now you can hear the dull thud of her tail batting against the ground at regular intervals. “I won’t hurt you… again. I honestly thought you were a poacher.” She looks past you and flinches. “Oh, your knife.”

You glance back for a moment and see a glimpse of your machete. Somehow she managed to mangle the blade in the process of knocking it out of your hands. That’s an absurd amount of strength. You feel yourself start to panic again and turn back to face your captor. “Don’t kill me!”

“I said I won’t!” her face flushes as she continues, “and that I’m sorry!” She again extends a paw. “See? I’ll help you up. I won’t hurt you. I promise.” She looks at you hopefully with a forced smile on her face.

Looking up at her, nervously grinning as she towers above over you, it seems impossible to trust her. On the other hand, she’s enormous and could kill you in an instant if what she did to your machete is any indication. Her uncovered eye is staring right at you, intently. You slowly, and with much trepidation, extend your hand, and grasp her paw. Using it to stand up more easily, she doesn’t even flinch as you place your weight on it.

“These are my spiders. I use them to produce silk and occasionally cull the older ones for food. I’ve been trying to raise some redback tarantulas for meat, but they just don’t do well in this jungle.” She gesticulates as she talks--she seems really enthusiastic about all this.

You’re not really paying attention to what she’s telling you--you’re too busy trying to take in who--or what--you’re actually dealing with. Her upper body is almost nude. In this heat that doesn’t surprise you very much. She’s got a heavy belt to hold various tools and gear that helpfully covers her basic modesty requirements, as well as a crude pack saddle on her back, and a binding around her chest. It looks painfully tight, and she’s sweating right through it, leaving almost nothing to the imagination. Finally, she has some kind of mysterious strip of cloth covering one eye, framed with a gorgeous, shaggy mass of black hair that goes past her shoulders. Also, horns like one might find on a cow.

She happens to also be extraordinarily beautiful. Her facial features are soft and delicate, her eye a bright yellow that while alien, compliments her exotic, pale green skin. Her sweaty clothing outlines her curves in a flattering, almost intentional way, even with her weird patterns of fur criss-crossing her torso.

She’s continuing to talk to you, something about spiders and her need to move west to carve out her own territory. None of this makes any sense. There’s a spider monster talking to you. Wait, no, that’s not right. She’s only got six legs. And she’s got a big fluffy tail. So, she’s a spider-woman-dog hybrid? Monsters are so strange.

“--So I’ve been gradually drifting west, away from my sisters and their voracious herds. I’ve been using maps made by humans, and they’re all measured in paces. I think that’s why I’m so much further west than I expected.”

“I see.” She sounds dramatically less hostile now, and doesn’t seem poised to kill or eat you. Maybe you can talk your way out of this. “So, can I go now?”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, I guess.” She looks sad for a moment. “Sorry, I’m boring you. I just don’t get a ton of people to talk to out here, and I get a little carried away talking about my ranch.”

“It’s… it’s ok. My village, uh, we don’t… you know… monsters.” You need to stay on her good side so she doesn’t eat you.

“I’m not a--” she says reflexively.

“Ah, mamono. I mean, we don’t have them. They’re not out here.”

“Well, I am. Is your village going to try to attack my cluster--my herd?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. All the stories we have are about how monsters eat people and kill without mercy.”

Her eyes widen. “There hasn’t been a monster like that in centuries.”

You shrug. “I only know what I was raised to believe.”

She looks down at you, then “kneels” by lowering her body towards the ground. “I promise not to kill you or anyone in your village. I want to be good neighbors now that I have them. We could even do a little bartering! Do you have leather? Or soap? Or beer?”

“Well, yes.” She nods enthusiastically at your response. You continue, “But I’m not sure,” you gesture broadly at her, “they’ll be friendly to you.”

She waves that off, “Trust me, they can’t hurt my feelings.” Looking around, she elaborates, “I want to make sure all my spiders are fed ahead of the rain tonight. If you help me out, I can get done a little quicker, and you’ll be able to avoid all my spiders. Oh, and then I can visit your village!”

Is this a kidnapping? Is she kidnapping you? It sounds like she’s kidnapping you. She’s looking at you, hope shining in her eye. She might actually be part canine, since you’re getting the puppy dog eye treatment.

“Well, OK, I guess?”

She grins almost manically and nods, rising up so quickly you startle.

“That’s great! Let’s go!”

----------------

That begins a very confusing afternoon. Carlota escorts you through various parts of the jungle, pointing out her snares, traps, and favorite hunting areas. She’s been finding prey to feed her “cluster” of spiders. You help her by grabbing things in small, narrow places she can’t get to. She helps you by having easy access to some of the higher up fruits and nuts in the areas you’re exploring.

As you travel, she starts asking simple questions about your village. Where it is, what you do. You try to answer honestly, but keep things simple. You’re still worried she’s going to show up and kill everyone.

After a while, you decide to start asking questions back. You find out that she’s an Ushi Oni, and her home is a cave that’s deeper in the jungle than you’re familiar with. Her family is out east, and don’t intend to move here with her. Apparently Ushi Oni like to spread out a lot and don’t live in big communities.

At one point, you come across a snare with a giant rodent. The rodent is a couple of feet long, and Carlota makes an excited sound upon discovering it. But, it’s still alive. You offer to shoot it, but Carlota waves you off. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” She flexes a paw and moves up quietly on the poor animal.

She’s shockingly quiet for her size if she wants to be. Unfortunately the rodent does notice her as she’s about to swipe her paw into it, and it manages to bite her as she kills it. Her blood, black and shiny, drips from the wound in her paw as she confirms the kill.

“Don’t touch this one--I bled on it.”

What a weird thing to say. “Why not?”

She hefts the rodent onto her back and looks at you. She slowly starts to blush. “Oh, uh, you just… if you… I guess you don’t know.” She looks away for a moment, out into the distance. “If you touch an Ushi’s blood it’s a proposal.”

“Oh,” you say as you try to think of something to follow up that insane statement. “What?”

She turns back to you. “Well, it’s a pretty old custom. Not a lot of Ushis really do it these days.”

“How does it work?”

She steps alongside you, “Oh, there’s a bit of a ceremony to it. Most families who practice that tradition give a ceremonial knife to each of their daughters. The woman gives the knife to the man she likes, and if he’s ready, he asks permission to touch her blood. The man gives the knife back to the woman for that, and then she decides how best to give him her blood. Apparently in the olden days it was common to cover your man in blood. Almost nobody does that nowadays, as most men are pretty squeamish.”

“Won’t that kill you? Or at least injure you badly?”

She winks at you. “No. See?” She points to her paw, and wipes it off on the rodent. The wound is already just a thin line of scar tissue, sealed up. “We’re durable. I wouldn’t bleed that much.”

You think that’s dubious. “Is that really how Ushi proposals work?”

“It’s one of the ways. The oldest, most traditional proposal is kidnapping a man you like. I’ve got some cousins who do it that way, but they make it sound exhausting. Figuring out which man you want entirely without talking to him first is a terrible idea.”

That sounds even worse than bleeding on someone. You wonder if they have any marriage traditions that aren’t horrifying. “In my village, the elders usually figure out who should pair up with whom to best help the village. My parents got together because my father is a leather worker, and my mother’s family has pigs.”

“Oh? What about you? Who did your elders pair you with?” She asks the question in a dull, almost disinterested way, but her tail is wagging wildly.

“None of the girls in the village are old enough right now to be paired up. There were a few years a while back where nobody gave birth to a girl.”

“Ah.” She doesn’t speak for a while, and begins moving through the jungle. You follow beside her.

----------------

It’s getting to be late in the afternoon. Carlota and you have been acquiring animals and resetting snares for a few hours now, with most of the animals you found already tossed into the webs of her spiders. She dotes on the spiders a bit more than you’re comfortable with--it makes you feel bad about killing one of them. “These heavier rains are always hard on them--they end up having to make a lot more webs and I keep stealing their silk to boot.”

Trying to distract yourself, you work up the nerve to ask about her eye patch. “How’d you lose your eye?”

“What? Oh, the seal! No, it’s nothing like that,” she says, waving you off. She adjusts it to cover her right eye, and reveal her left one. “See, both eyes!”

“So it’s just a fashion thing?” you wonder aloud.

“It’s more of another tradition,” she replies.

“For all mons--mamono? Or just Ushi Onis?”

She cocks her head to the side. “Just us. Ushi Oni wear a seal on one eye.”

“Can you take it off?”

She blushes furiously at that. “Oh, wow. Um… I can…. But that’s a very forward question to ask. You shouldn’t say that if you don’t mean it.”

Just based on her reaction, you feel ashamed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

“You just asked to, uh, make love to me. Which is a wedding proposal for any mamono.”

You blush harder and look away. “Oh.”

What do you say next? That you don’t want to make love to her? She’ll probably kill you. That you DO want to make love to her? She’ll probably kill you. You’re too scared to look at her because you’re sure that if you do she’ll see your fear and you’ll hurt her feelings. And then she’ll probably kill you. And be sad. “Um….” is all you manage to get out as you look down around your feet for a root vegetable to grab as your heart races.

“Here.” She pokes you with something blunt. You startle. She’s right next to you! How the hell is she so quiet when she wants to be?

You see what poked you. It’s a knife, scaled to her, so it’s slightly bigger than your machete. “To replace your machete. I’m sorry about that.”

“I can’t take this.” She waves you off as you say it.

“Don’t worry about it,” flexing her claws as she replies, “I almost never use it anyway. It’s real steel, though--not demon silver. So be careful with it.”

You make no move to take it from her. “C’mon--it’s fine. I’m sure someone at your village will be able to fix your machete eventually, and you can give this back when they do.”

Begrudgingly, you take the knife. “Thanks,” you say, briefly making eye contact. You both look away blushing.

“Anyways, we should get moving. Two more spiders to go and then I’ll escort you back to your village!”

----------------

It’s almost dusk, and your new… Acquaintance? Friend? has generously provided you with an extra junglefowl to bring back along with her dead spider. As you approach the edge of the jungle, you slow down.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Of course, of course,” she says nervously. You barely know her and even you know she’s lying.

“It’ll be fine. Maybe just stay a few paces ahead of me and off to the side?”

“Why?”

“You can’t see them, can you?”

“See what?”

“Oh, some of your fellow villagers are aiming bows at me.”

An arrow wizzes past both your heads.

“See?”

You turn to your village, waving your arms frantically, “STOP! SHE’S OK!”

Another three arrows land harmlessly around you both. Carlota mutters something and starts setting down her things. “Wait here please,” she says, and charges toward the village.

“You promised not to hurt them!”

Without looking back she replies, “I know! I won’t!”

The villagers begin shooting her in earnest, their aim improving as she approaches. She’s bleeding into the ground as she runs. You follow her at a trot, but you’re bogged down with your food and couldn’t keep up with her in a dead sprint anyway.

Eventually, she comes to a stop near enough the village to actually converse properly with the folks shooting at her. She seems to be waiting for you to catch up, and your fellow villagers seem to be nearly out of arrows.

“Hello!” she says brightly as you reach earshot. “I’m your new neighbor.” The villagers don’t seem to know how to respond to that, especially since she’s got at least a half-dozen arrows sticking into her. “I was hoping that I could trade with you? Maybe sell my wares?”

“Your wares? You mean my nephew you kidnapped!?” That’s your uncle’s voice. He’s one of the better shots in the village so it makes sense he’d be there.

“He’s not kidnapped!” she says as you say “I’m not kidnapped!”

“I’m not kidnapped! This, “ you wave theatrically at the Ushi, “is Carlota--I accidentally killed one of her livestock and she thought I was a poacher. She’s a little… eccentric, but I don’t believe that she’s a monster. I think we can trade with her and it’ll be all right.”

Carlota bows deeply, and echoes “See? I’m harmless! You attacked me over and over and I’m not even mad!” You wince. That only makes her seem crazy and invincible. Which are both at least a little bit true.

“So, what’d you two? Just have a fun first date in the jungle all day? How do we know you haven’t done something to him?” A what? A date?

She looks at you, blushing. You blush back. Everyone’s watching, and you two did end up talking a lot about marriage proposals today. But you can’t just say it’s not a date--that might hurt her feelings. She’s looking at you, red-faced and inscrutable. You should say something.

Someone in the village coughs uncomfortably. It just makes the tension worse. After another eternity of silence, your uncle breaks the silence. “Well, if my nephew vouches for you, you’re probably all right. He’s sensible. But no funny business, and you can’t be in the village after nightfall.”

She looks about ready to balk at that, but you interrupt. “Thank you! I’ll make sure that she leaves by then!”

“Why’d you do that?” she asks quietly. “I’m not going to do anything to them at night, either.”

“That’s a tradition of our village, actually. We’re not far from a port city, and a couple of times we lost villagers due to groups of sailors kidnapping them. Now nobody from outside the village can stay the night. So, unless you’re proposing to me, you won’t find a better deal.”

She looks at you thoughtfully for a moment. “I see.” Then she looks around. “I suppose that I’ll need to bid you farewell for now, then--it’s getting late and the rain will be here soon.”

“That’s true,” you agree. “Are you… are you really coming back?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes, you were very kind today. My family will eat well tonight.”

“Well, then I guess I have to come back, so you can pay me back.”

“Oh. OK,” you stammer.

“You’re blushing,” Carlota smirks.

“So are you!” you reply.

She leans closer to you. Is she going to kiss you? In front of everyone? You look behind you and your uncle is drawing his bow again. She stops creeping closer and simply extends a paw.

“Shake on it?” you gingerly shake her paw, noticing that she has the good sense not to overwhelm you with her strength. “Well, see you soon, then,” she murmurs.

“See you soon, Carlota.”

And with that, she walks off awkwardly, and you turn back toward the village. After a few paces, you can’t help but look back, just in time to catch her looking back at you. You both turn back around quickly and keep going.

If she doesn’t come back soon, you might need to volunteer to forage again.

Notes:

Written for Dogfaced's contest. Hopefully you didn't hate it.