A web could not be left half finished. Nahamme had the skill to return to the work and finish the tangle without losing the meaning. It was the leaving she could not stomach. Body and mind too much focused. Bent to the task of the web until the outside world lost meaning and interest for her. Anything less than the threat of real and imminent danger dismissed. Even a summons from her queen.
”Coming.” She mumbled to the servant, bending farther over the frame. Long nails plucking threads and twisting them around each other. Twisting and plucking. Time fell away. There was only the web until it was finished. Stretched across the frame, nearly two feet across at its widest point. Frame a perfectly crafted hexagon. Stretching, Nahamme stood, bones popping from the long time spent bent over her work.
Late now, for her meeting with the queen. Vanishing the frame, she strode down the corridors of the residence without rushing. She would not run through them like an errant child. Webs took time, as Sorcha should understand, being a black widow herself. Forgiven or not, there was nothing she could do to change it now. She was late. The past not something Nahamme could alter. Erect and unashamed, she entered Sorcha’s presence, making her obeisance as protocol dictated.
”My apologies for my tardiness, lady.” Lashes veiling the flash of anger in her eyes, Nahamme called in her webs and set them on Sorcha’s desk. ”Would you care to read them yourself?” She would not be able to, even with all her Red might. The webs too complicated, and the weaving too much Nahamme’s own. ”Either way, I gift them to you.” Spiteful woman! Nahamme served her well and yet here she was, snarling at Nahamme as if she were a petty apprentice.
”Yes my lady, I am afraid so.” Nahamme could not quite name it. ”Grey, at least.” Black at worst, but she would name that wicked Jewel. Let is stay in the mists of yesteryear. These mortals too young to remember its terror and reach, living under the after effects without true understanding. ”It breaks like a great storm,” she explained, tracing a line in the larger thread. ”But I cannot say if it sweeps everything away with it. Rain does make crops grow. Perhaps we can benefit from this new darkness.”
It was an enemy. But not to Sorcha. Only to Nahamme herself. But she had learned long ago how to live with her enemies. Solace was one such. So obvious with his prey-horns. Nahamme kept herself more secret than that. There were things no one needed to know.