“Home!” he cried. Krek studied the web patterns and felt a twinge of nostalgia. While the geometries were subtly different, they looked enough like webs he and others had spun that they reminded him of his home in the Egrii Mountains. He bounced up and down on his long legs, hardly able to contain his joy.

“To feel the strands flying beneath the feet,” he said with more zest than he’d felt in months. “To let the spinneret run free, the web flying out just so. Ah…”

He hurried down the side of the mountain to the valley entrance. He canted his head to one side, listening. Krek heard nothing. His talons dug into the soft dirt and found bedrock. He felt for vibrations that might betray another’s presence in the valley. Nothing. The spider wailed out his misery.

“All gone. They have left this fair valley. But why?”

Faint temblors, reached his claws now. Krek turned and looked in the direction of the disturbance. Caves led back into the mountainside. Why any spider would voluntarily seek out those holes when the webs were still intact, Krek didn’t know. Some distant cousins of his preferred hiding in the ground, spinning their hunting webs over the doorways and trapping their prey in this fashion. It had always seemed a bit perverted to Krek, but still it was better than the odd ways the humans fed and sheltered themselves.

Krek was torn between the need to explore those caves for others of his kind and the mad desire to run along the aerial strands just once.

Desire overwhelmed him. He started up the sheer rock face of one cliff, saw the walking strand above him, jumped adroitly. His talons closed about the webstuff and held him firmly as his weight caused the elastic cable to stretch. He bounced, enjoying the feel once again. Then he hastened to the very center of the web.

There he gusted out one of his deep sighs and simply enjoyed life-the elevation, the feeling of dominance over the terrain, the way he came totally alive.