The soldiers had come and recruited all the strong young men last year, and us old people weren't able to tend to the darkling fields as well as we would have liked. The Crown wasn't doing well against the monsters, and they were getting more and more desperate for fighters to keep them at bay. We all knew and didn't have a choice- no one told us anything; they only arrived and conscripted our adults unless they were children or elderly.

Three months ago, the Duke had sent his tax collector, demanding not only the wagon of food they usually did, but a second one. We didn't know why, but since so many of our people had been taken by the army, it must be because they needed more food for their numbers. There wasn't a reason to fight them or complain; we would only be killed. Explaining things to them wasn't our right, and they wouldn't care.

My husband had died trying to explain how food works to them many years ago. I still remember him, but after what the soldiers did to him, I didn't want to. He didn't have any brothers and his father had died when he was young in an accident. My brothers had disappeared, and my father had developed some strange ability that I couldn't understand- no one could. Neighboring villages started to gossip about him, and an inquisitor came for him. The blacksmith's apprentice had found him two days later, dead, outside town. His core had been cut out of his chest. The boy only found out when he turned him over to check to see if he was injured.

With no man to legally own me after the passing of my husband, my brother's debt going unpaid to the apothecary was used to bind me to him. But he was drafted by the military with all the others last year, and so I was alone. I continued to tend the herb garden, and though I was unskilled in performing such a thing and it was punishable and blasphemous for a woman to do anything, there wasn't anyone else.

A few weeks went by like this, with me just tending the garden, harvesting and drying various plant parts for salves when I saw a beautiful young woman walk by outside my wind wall. The wall was needed to keep the strong winds, snow, and excessive sunlight from damaging the plants. Depending on the time of year, of course! The woman I saw looked over the wall, and started talking to me. I could only see her upper body just above her bust, and the makeup she wore was incredible.

"Young woman!" I couldn't help myself but to exclaim, "you are beautiful!"

"Thank you, grandma!" The woman didn't smile, but it only made her more elegant.

"She's fun." another female voice came from behind her, but I could only barely see the top of someone's dark red hair. There was another person there, though she looked a little strange. I hadn't seen makeup like hers before.

"What are you doing there?" the pretty girl asked me.

"Oh, I'm tending my garden. I grow herbs for healing and medicine. It used to be my master, but he isn't here anymore and he probably isn't coming back, so I have to do it myself now. I am barren and have no one to care for me."

"My mother is a wonderful father. This is the first time I got to go outside! One of my sisters came with me today too." I thought she misspoke, but I let it slide. Her beauty was really intoxicating, and her happy personality could enthrall me to whatever she said.

"Your sister? Is that the woman there behind you with the red-brown hair?"

"Yes. She is very smart! What are herbs?"

"You don't know what they are? They are plants that make you not sick anymore."

"My family never gets sick. I can't see the plants very well from here."

I got up and patted the dirt from my dress and decided to let these nice people come in for a nice cup of well-water. They must be thirsty after traveling from whatever village they had come from, and I wasn't one to be rude.

"Monsters from the forest!" I heard Chrysocolla scream.

I ran out of the yard faster, dashing out and opening the gate as wide as I could so the travelers could get inside my house where it was safe. I didn't think these people could fight; they were all women like me, and we would never be allowed.

As soon as I got out of the gate and onto the road a few steps from where I was, I looked in the direction I was warned about- and I only the three people I had already met standing there.

What I didn't expect was the reason they were so tall wasn't because they were riding or standing on something- but because they were actually giant spiders with the top half of a jumi attached in front! Drider! I had heard that these monsters was what the army had been fighting against, but they were horrible monsters, ugly and vicious. These most certainly weren't anything of the sort. I couldn't help but start laughing- I had been talking to one of these creatures and they didn't show the slightest aggression! Something snapped in me, and I don't know what it was, but I was overcome with how ridiculous the whole thing was. I looked over at Chrysocolla and Hematite, staring at me with eyes so big I thought they would block out the sun, the blood drained from their faces. The level of humour increased more than I could imagine, seeing that! The quietest of the three helped me stand back up once I fell on the ground in wild guffaw.

We all calmed down, though the spiders didn't need to, and had a pretty nice night. The doors to the stockhouse were twofold, which was lucky for us. The drider were able to enter, though never was any kind of building designed with that in mind! We had to clear some room for them since they were so much bigger than us, but luckily they were their own seating so we didn't need to deal with that. The quiet one pointed at Hematite and said something. "Bahn na'at taspii."

No one had any idea what that meant at all. By the looks of their faces, the spider girls that I had talked to didn't either.

This drider that had been quiet up until now, which wore a wayfarer's lantern akin to an idol, seemed to want something, but no one knew what. After awhile and with a lot of gestures, they made an alteration to a pair of breeches that I never would have thought of! Looking at the robe they wore, they already had something like it. I was getting very tired, so I went home. I don't think they noticed.

...

They were late, though it didn't actually make a difference. The tax collector came back. We expected he would demand one wagonload of food, but he asked for three! If we got all of the food we had left in all our homes, dug darkling roots out of the ground, and emptied the silo, we would be able to supply them. However, he said that monsters had attacked them on the way after collecting from Stalsglad, and though they had slain the beasts, the wagon and its contents were destroyed. So we had to supply them with entirely new wagons and supplies to fill each one. Three!?!

Gypsum tried to tell them that we didn't have any wagons, and even if we did, the entire village would starve and die before the next harvest would come and we wouldn't be around to supply them ever again. The commander was getting angry, but then I saw something. The drider... well, not the same ones... one was the same, the Wayfarer, but there were two others with her now. Sun and Djraine had told me that they had other brothers and sisters, but I didn't think I'd meet any this quickly, or at this moment.

The tax commander killed Gypsum right then and there. I could only see the approaching spiders and argument from my window. I dare not go outside! If I went outside then it might be realized that I wasn't anyone's property right now and I would become enslaved directly to the Duke, and no one would replace me as the acting herbalist. I never thought I would see such a thing, but I then witnessed the calm and gentle giant spider people become thoroughly enraged, and they tore the tax men into pieces.

The Wayfarer was very respectful to poor Gypsum, and even brought Zyratian out of the stockhouse. The children were allowed to come out for the Farewell Ceremony. They stayed by their grandparents, not speaking, like good children. They didn't make eye contact with the drider, either. I don't know where the bodies of the tax collectors went, but... well, it was better not to think about it.

...

The road to Stalsglad branched away from the road to Banagleem, my village. The road curved along, though, and gave us more than enough warning of any official envoy. I think it was intentional so we could get taxes ready before anyone would arrive, so the collectors wouldn't have to take longer than they wanted. It was a good thing for us- it meant they'd go away faster. On the road, we could see soldiers traveling with an inquisitor. They must be looking for where the tax men disappeared from, and they'd be coming here next!

I let the men know what I saw, and since I had talked to them more than anyone else, I was the one sent. I had never entered the forest- no one had- and I had no idea what would await me. I was terrified, but it only made me that much more alert. I couldn't slow down or waste time! Just shortly after entering the forest, I saw spider webs. Huge ones, spread across nearly everything. I looked at it again, holding back my terror as best I could. I knew who made these webs; they were kind and protective. I noticed there was a gap in the webs stuck to the bushes... it was a pathway? I guess the drider used spiderweb the same way we used fences. I followed along the path, moving as quickly as I could. I didn't want any spiders to crawl out from the webs and climb on me!

I imagined them on my back, and I felt them there, but I knew it wasn't real. I kept going, looking for the Wayfarer. I came around a sharp corner, and saw some strange plants. They were tall; taller than I was. They had some colored fruit of some kind growing from thick green stalks, and the fruit seemed to have hair. I had never seen anything like this before, and everyone knew fruits only grew in the cold months. This wasn't what I was here for.

"There are royal inquisitors on the roadway! They must have become angry since the chocobos returned riderless!"

The Wayfarer, and all the other drider- many of whom I hadn't met yet at all, nor could I have imagined, started to gather. "Don't worry, it's okay", the Wayfarer told me. She must have begun to learn our language, because I was able to understand the words. "I didn't get to meet all of the other drider. I'm surprised to see there are this many of you! It makes me feel a lot safer." I got a good drink from the shining lake the autumnfruit was growing next to, and freshened myself up as best I could while the spiders did whatever they were doing. I was going to relieve myself in the water, but a drider that looked completely different from the rest, with huge claws and powerful arm muscles, got very angry at me and backed me up out of the lake and made me go behind a bush to do it instead.

I was very uncomfortable, but I had learned to live with that feeling, so I didn't show it. Instead of running through spiderwebs and imagining spiders crawling on my back, I was now actually doing it to one of them! It was the big man with huge claws. He didn't seem to mind, and he was very quiet. Besides one of the drider who kept aimlessly wandering off and getting pulled on by his nearest sister, he might have been the most quiet of the entire tribe. I took the time resting on him to talk to the Wayfarer and introduce myself properly. The Wayfarer asked different questions about jumi cores and gemstones that only a man would ask, which was strange. Looking at the chest of everyone whose chest I could see, I noticed something.

The drider were not half-jumi like the stories told! They didn't have cores at all. Since some of them wore clothing that covered where their core would be, I had to assume none of them had one.

"I stazni oahrs they were seen and na'uts way?" There were a few words the Wayfarer said that I didn't understand, but I understood most of it.

"No, they were seen and heading elsewhere, but they would be arriving shortly after." I corrected him.

"Skor gebli oust rooms or j'ah'amys underground gau-eet food? If sammich some of us can hide fuhlam t'ehn tahma if it becomes necessary." There were a lot of words I didn't understand at all. I thought the Wayfarer was getting better, but maybe not. I did understand the words 'rooms', 'underground', and 'food', so I figured a storm room is what was requested.

"My late husband told me the additional wood would be too expensive so that's why everything is stored in the silo."

The drider all seemed to know what they were doing, and two even escorted me home. I was told they were going to seal the door and windows so none of the inquisitors or soldiers could get in. They could take the webbing off later, after things were safe.