I woke up late that night, before the girls did. I had heard a noise I wasn't familiar with yet on this world, but that should be expected since I didn't adventure much at all yet! It did give me a chance to look into that destroyed covered cart, though. I was pretty sure someone had looted it, or maybe multiple someones multiple times, but I didn't see a reason to restrain myself.

The linen was even more ruined than my robe was, and it was brittle and dusty. It felt more like a wicker basket or extremely weatherworn piece of burlap than anything else, and that's probably what it was. I'd have better light than the lantern in a few hours, but I wanted to be off by then. Under the ruined covers, there was mostly splintered wood from the sides of the cart smashing in on itself, but the thing I was hoping for most was here, and that's what I cared about. It didn't look like I wanted, but that didn't really matter. Plus, it taught me that the people of this world, and this area, had indeed discovered an important invention. Glass! Unfortunately it was the worst glass I had ever seen. The windows of the jumi city were just wooden shutters covering dried grass blinds, and though surprisingly elegant for what they were, it wasn't what I was looking for.

This glass looked like it was made from the naturally formed little multicolored glass pebbles that are *just* too big to get stuck under your fingernails at the beach. It was glass, sure, but it wasn't silica... or maybe it was, but it wasn't made by forging pure white sand into invisible sheets. It looked like a whole lot of those little beads were heated up and melted together into a marble-like color pattern of various shades of natural brownish red, almost the color of iron oxide, but combined with maple syrup brown and pine wood tan. To make matters worse, the glass also felt and looked like it had been frosted like normal clear glass sometimes is to let in less light. At least I think that's why they made frosted glass. This was a stupid design if ever I saw one, but assuming that glass was expensive, this was probably requested as it appeared by someone rich, and in what this era seemed to be, that meant a noble. Well, either all that was true, or it was just an ugly culmination of various artistic experimentations by a glassblower, but if that was the case then the cart and lack of other stuff on it didn't make sense...

Well, no use pondering scholarly about things without references in this world. The jar was too big to fit in my pocket, so I'd have to carry it. Luckily, it had a mason-jar lid made of ceramics. Wait, no, that wasn't lucky! That meant the whole thing was garbage. I needed to be able to poke holes in the jar if I wanted to use it as a bug carrier. Sun hadn't tried to escape even once after I put her in the terrarium, so maybe this one wouldn't either. I think the only reason that Aneis got as excited as she did was because the crickets I gave her were coming from above. I'll have to ask later. Ha! I'm actually able to do that. What pet owner has ever wanted to be able to actually have a real back-and-forth conversation with their pets? All of them. I'm pretty sure the answer is 'all of them', and I could actually do it. Malas, the big dummy, was really the only one of my spiders that had ever tried to escape the cage. Some other spiders I had met, that I didn't have cages for, had even gone out of their way to find me. I... have no idea why.

I had read stories of people training their tarantulas to come when called, but for a deaf species, that was far-fetched. Once it was explained that 'oh well no they can't hear me per se, but they can recognize the vibrations of my voice in the ground, recognize it as notification of food and then follow the signal' it made perfect sense. I had read about tarantulas and other huge spiders walking up to people's front doors while they were watching, and then sit there and not move. The human would open the door for the spider, and it would enter, and walk through the house to the back door leading out. The human would open that door, out the spider would go, and that would be that. I could think of a couple ways to explain this, but it hadn't happened to me until one dark and spooky... okay it was just night time, and the spooky one was me.

A huge black spider, even bigger than Djraine was (and she was about eight inches across including her legs) came into my bedroom. I lived in the desert, and had the wooden door open but the screen door closed, so colder air could come in at night since there wasn't any in the day. The screen didn't fit on the doorway properly though, and there was a big gap at the bottom. Enough for a giant black spider to casually walk in, take a look around, and then turn and leave. Even me, a spider maniac, was afraid of this thing to the point I couldn't move. I knew spiders have terrible eyesight and it couldn't see me, and it was moving slowly, but my fear response said that it might dart towards me for no reason, and if I tried to catch it in something, it would jump on my face like a spiderlike creature from a space horror movie. Ridiculous. Nonsensical. Totally didn't care and went with my stupid fear. It took me years of internet browsing to figure out what species it was, and even then I wasn't entirely sure because none of the details matched. It looked like a male funnel web spider, but even nightmares-come-to-life Australia only had them up to 2 inches at the most, and this nightmare-come-to-life sitting in my bedroom and looking at me was at least six inches, if not eight and a half. Black carapace, shiny, no fur. The areas the internet had said they lived in were on other continents, and though international trade was a thing that introduced invasive and unintentional species and individuals constantly, I didn't think this guy counted. Failure to even attempt to catch him was just one more regret I had in that life. I could have at least brought the beautiful demon-made-flesh to one of the many 'insects and reptiles only' pet stores where I bought Djraine, Sting, Malas, and their food. Someone there could identify it... or have a better chance.

The spiders I found in this small stream-bottomed cave, though? I could catch these and take them back with us. They might even be able to somehow join us, though there would be a lot of growth to do if they wanted to be drider. I sure wanted them to be! Hopefully none of them were sapient and would argue afterwards. I put some sticks in the bottom of the jar, and around that time, Dulcet and Sun woke up.

"Good morning, ladies."

Sun was already hungry, Dulcet wanted to be left alone to sleep more. Nope! It's time for us to get moving, once I collect a couple of these spiders...

...

We were back on the road, walking along comfortably for a couple hours before we saw another swinging lantern in the distance coming towards us. Once we got a little closer to each other, it stopped swaying, and moved off to a side. I could now see the outline of a man's head and shoulder. His lantern was smaller than mine, but it was on a stick. We got up to him, and he looked very uncomfortable, but not outright terrified.

"Greetings, good sir." I said to him.

"Hi." Dulcet added.

"Hello, I... oh look." Sun pointed out that the man had a thing she hadn't seen before hung on his side. From one angle it looked like a clumsy club, but from another it was obviously a lute! Maybe this guy was a traveling minstrel or bard? It was very important I get on this guy's good side right away.

In older times especially, traveling storytellers such as bards or minstrels were the way culture spread, or more accurately, isolated villages were subtlely kept from developing their own separate culture. If stories of happenings were spread thoughout a kingdom, then the whole kingdom had the same opinion on everything since stories told you not just what happened, but which perspective it should be viewed from. Anyone having sympathy for anyone besides who the story suggested would be met with shame; the king or more likely his advisor would be the one to figure this out so their own agendas were supported, as well as at least some of the story's exaggerations. But if you have nothing to do but farm and gossip, it was a very welcome thing. They weren't educated enough to know what was going on, and even if they did know, it wouldn't be worth fighting against.

"Is that a lute?" I asked the man. I already knew it was but I figured I should show my wisdom.

"It is."

"A beautiful sound, that. Are you a bard?"

"A what?"

"Do you play music and sing? People offer you food and a bed when you entertain them?"

"Yes."

It was going to take awhile to get this guy to open up, and though I really wanted to go already and get to whoever oversaw this area... letting this guy be scared and tell everyone how horrible I am would really not help me in the short or long term. He had no legal power, but he did have people power, and that could be better in most, if not all, cases. The sun had risen and after that, the bard got a lot more comfortable. After we got to talking, I learned something interesting. The village I first encountered used to be next to the beach! The forest wasn't always there. I guess when I was put there for holding in the cave, the whole area was created and inserted, so this world was bigger than it was now because of me?