The first thing she felt was…nothing. And she knew that that was odd. There was HER, but there was also sheer darkness. She could sense that she…existed, if there was no other way to put it. But…

“Mia…Mia?” Nothing else. No touch. No taste. No smell, no…

She was…someone before…right? She should feel SOMETHING. Vague memories came to her in fits and spurts- flashes of laughing, walking with others…loud sounds and the colors blue and red. Yes, she could remember those, but anything else? It seemed to escape her, somehow.

“Mia…?” Yes…yes, that was her name. Mia! Mia…hm. Mia what? ‘I should have a last name, right?’ she thought. ‘Why can’t I remember?’

Wait. Someone had said that. “Hello?” Her voice was…well, it was something. Scratchy. Deep. It sounded strange to her. As though she wasn’t used to talking with this timbre. And she couldn’t feel herself make the sounds at all. Where was she? What was going on?

“Ahh…you made it. Good. That’s so good. I’m so happy…that got a bit worrisome.” Huh. Whoever that was, they sounded really happy that she was there. ‘I can’t say I’m not happy about it, either,’ Mia thought to herself. ‘Now, if only I could remember anything else…’

“You may remember in time,” the voice seemed to respond, and if Mia could jump in shock, she would have. “Y-you can hear what I’m thinking!?” she wanted to yell. But as she was- or wasn’t, she still wasn’t sure- she felt herself still speak in that monotone scratchy, deep voice. “Who are you?” At least she could state a question properly.

“You’ll learn before long, I’m sure. But I don’t have much strength left here. Please, find my last temple. I can talk to you further there, give you answers. I…” And before she could say anything else, the person’s voice seemed to fade out…just as Mia began to feel again.

And what she felt was rumbling.

Mia woke up with a yelp, long hair streaming down her face and heaving breaths being taken. It was dark, but if she had woken in the middle of the night, then…wait. Her eyes were crusty, and tired, but she could see well enough. And she could see that she was NOT in anything resembling a bedroom. That’s…where she SHOULD be sleeping, she was fairly certain. And yet she couldn’t remember much clearly about what ‘her bedroom’ should look like.

Wherever she was now, though, that wasn’t it. It was near pitch black, save for some beams of moonlight piercing through the darkness, and illuminated her surrounded enough that she could see that she was in a cave. ‘...what the hell?’ she thought. ‘I’m…almost entirely positive this ISN’T where I went to sleep.’ It was rocky, craggy, and uncomfortable. Lifting her head up slightly, she could see more rocks, moonbeams, some sort of busted carving, spider legs-

“FUCK!” she swore as she threw her body far away from the creature- or at least tried to. Her lower body felt…oddly heavy. Very heavy. Completely weird, actually. Felt like she had more than two legs, ev-

“No.” That one word was said so small, so quietly, and yet it held the emotion of everything a 26 year old woman could bring forth. “Noooo, nonononono…” She tried to kick a leg.

Her right legs twitched. The one closest to her the most.

She tried to kick her left leg. Same result. “No. No, no no no no…”

Part of her was feeling delirious. The other part was in pure shock.

The last part was pure, total fear. It was that part that won out.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” the scream echoed throughout the cavern with no one to hear it, as the woman known as Mia tried to get herself AWAY from the massive, hairy legs, the impossible abdomen, the lower half of her that was a SPIDER.

Over the next few minutes, madness and desperation took hold. Pinching herself did nothing. Dragging herself away didn’t work. In sheer panic and impossible hope, she’d even taken a nearby, sharp stone to her midsection, which she had quickly noticed, though human, connected seamlessly to her spider half- which seemed to have all aspects of spiderdom one would expect, barring eyes. Against all sanity, she’d tried to cut herself out of…herself. But after only a few moments of what could only really be described as desperate flailing through tears, the lack of even a scratch on her had forced her to abandon that flight of mad fancy.

Fortunately, in that moment, her thought processes grew just a shade clearer.

“Okay…okay okay okay,” Mia didn’t often talk to herself…or at least, she was fairly certain of that. Nonetheless, she did so now. “Spider. Spider Mia. You are a spider. Half-spider. A spider is you.” There was a joke there, but nothing she could think of was funny, all of a sudden. “I need to…what the fuck, what kind of surgeon could fix this?” And how could she remember what a surgeon was but not her own last name? “What the fuck? What the fuck happened to me?!” It was impossible, she was sure. Mad science, the realm of dreams and fantasy. She’d always laughed at the idea…she thought she did, anyway. Memories of reading books came to her. And yet she couldn’t picture herself in those same memories. Her body was a blur. Formless and variable. Why couldn’t she imagine what she used to look like? She knew for certain it wasn’t…this.

She looked back down at herself. Her…eugh…spider parts were a dusky grey, bordering black, and one by one all of her legs twitched. Eight legs. Significantly more than she had before, she was absolutely POSITIVE. Massive…thorax? Abdomen? Both? She wasn’t sure, but the way she was lying there really just made her think ‘butt’ and be done with it. Hells, it even wiggled when she tested moving it. Eerie.

Even so, all this was distracting her, even if intentionally, towards a question she knew she needed to answer sooner than later. What was she to do about this?!

That’s when the memory of the voice came back to her. “Please, find my temple. I can talk to you further there, give you answers.” Right! Whoever that voice was, she clearly had something to do with this. “Okay, find the mystery lady’s temple?” That sounded wild in and of itself. Was that…good or bad? She couldn’t seem to remember anything around that. She got the strange, distinct impression she was good, however. Trustworthy. That by itself was concerning, but… “Best I’ve got for now. Okay, Mia. That’s a plan. You have a plan. Calm down, stop talking to yourself like a crazy person.”

She had a goal. And now she just needed to figure out how to start moving towards it. To do that, she, well… had to start moving, she supposed.

She twitched again, and it was then she realized that such a task would provide more daunting than initially presumed.

“Now…how do I get up? And how do I WALK?”