The infant spiders grew fast. Already sizable, they sprouted higher and higher as the days—or what felt like days—dragged on. Before they had been about the size of cantaloupes, small and plump and fat. Now they were bigger than watermelons and still getting bigger.

They were growing more and more daring, more adventurous, as well. Typically they stayed with Aqua within the moist bowl depressed into the earth, which was now overgrown with thin, sticky web; but they started ranging farther and farther from home during the day, exploring for themselves and seeking out new places.

Aqua would have been lying if she had said that she didn’t worry for their well-being when they wandered away, but they were creatures, and she had to hope that their instincts would lead them true. At dusk they returned, skittering through the forest, and she would repose in the welcoming cradle of the webs and let them cuddle up to her.

Their fur—or what passed for it on spiders—was not coarse, but soft and silky. When they curled up to her, shifting and clacking, Aqua found herself happily blushing from the attention, happy to be serving as a mother to her children.

Her children? It was weird to think of them that way; after all, she hadn’t exactly gotten impregnated this time around, hadn’t developed them within her womb. Her belly had swelled with them, but that was because she was serving as an incubator, not because she had conceived them herself. These were pure-blooded Heartless, with none of her genes. Could she really call such things her children? Could she, a glorified incubator, really claim to be their mother?