Dear Diary,
I have to apologize for not writing for some time, but the last few days weeks months were ABSOLUTELY terrible!
It all started when my uncle Poseidon got fancy of this one human woman. That would be nothing new, knowing him just as much as I know his brother, my father, who is exactly the same womanizer. Anyway, as expected they shortly got to do the THING. That would not be a problem either as it had nothing to do with me. Usually. But NO, they decided to do it in MY temple. MY temple where I am forced to watch almost everything! IT. WAS. DISGUSTING! I wanted to vomit rainbow! And I did... Several times...
Since I could do nothing to the uncle, I decided to do something to the woman. Her name was Medusa, of all things. My skin still crawls whenever I remember that dreaded "Gorgon project". Luckily Persy already dealt with that nasty thing.
Note to self I should polish Aegis more often, it has been losing its shine lately. I'm sorry Aegis, I've been busy...
Anyway, I've changed that Medusa woman's hair to snakes because uncle Poseidon fears dislikes them. But since I'm such a humanitarian, I've made sure any man, that woman looks at, turns STONE hard. Literally :p
Then the MORRON Ares, decided that he IS a better god of war than ME. Like sorry, but charging at your enemy until everyone is dead is not a war at all! Luckily one of an uncle Poseidon's offsprings commit suicide on some random olive tree. It was "definitely" not me who pointed his anger at Ares.
If that was not enough, that cow Aphrodite, managed to have her temple made on the island of Lemnos! It was supposed to be mine! Just you wait you b*tch! My 5D move has already been made and everything is going according to keikaku the plan. You'll never see it coming until it is too late! I'm not a goddess of wisdom for nothing!
After that, this one woman, Arachne, decided to start inventing things far beyond what are humans allowed to create in this era. And this is a big no-no. Like, we cannot have humans thinking on their own too much. One invention here, one advancement there and suddenly they are all non-believers! Which means no sacrifices, no thank you. Now I want a lamb with wine...
As I was saying writing, this woman was using my name to further her profits and because of that, it was my job to deal with her! I had better plans that day! Damn it!
Note to self Apologize to Artemis, the sooner the better
I went for the classical old-priestess human hubris warning. I challenged the woman to tapestry crafting, no way she could get better results than ME, I'm a master at this stuff! And in the beginning, it looked like my win. But then the woman must have pulled some kind of trick and finished hours before ME! What a cheater!
The tapestry I made, was decent, like me, the goddess Athena, I would NEVER put all my power into this BS. Anyway, it was clear that I won! Except that Arachne b*tch, bribed the the judges and completely humiliated me! So I decided to turn her into a spider if she likes to weave SO MUCH!
BUT then! But then, she shines some laser pointer at me and suddenly I'm bleeding gold like a pig! I was never hurt this much! It still hurts, even when the hand grew back! If I get my hands on that...
I must ABSOLUTELY not tell ANYONE, about this! Dad would be mad and NO ONE wants to anger Zeus! I also don't want to be punished by him, he deals very stupid punishments!
The poet, Sappho, visited me once again, with a new poem she composed. It was short and, let's say, sensual, it certainly highlighted her talents. Then we talked like usual. I was mostly interested in the outside world situation, political and societal developments and technology that people used. While Sappho could not always provide the most recent information, as she was a poet and not a scholar, I did not mind. After, what must have been, decades in isolation I was glad for this form of social interaction. And by the evening she left.
Lately, Sappho seemed to be frustrated and her visits were more sporadic. Fearing that I must have offended her somehow, which would not be surprising, given the time spent in complete isolation, I decided to prepare a gift for her as an apology or an incentive should she not be offended by any of my actions. That needed to be found out first before I started to apologize. Because apologizing while no wrong has been committed, would lead the other party to believe that there was. This would then set up precedence where the other party would be suspicious of me, should I ever present them with another gift, whether my intentions were genuine or not at that time.
Another problem was, what sort of gift I could provide. Venturing forth into civilization was out of the question, as interacting with other humans, could not go well with the way I was. At best they would end up calling me a monster at worst they would try to kill me, probably with fire. There was always an option of stealing something during the night when humans slept, but since Sappho lived among them, the person who was robbed could recognize the item should Sappho carry it on her person. Not to mention it was bad for the free market.
No, the gift would have to be something that could be procured from within my living space, the forest. But sadly there were no items in the forest that young intellectual woman like Sappho could want. I highly doubted she would appreciate furs from the big game I collected over the years, or its antlers. I was decent with wood carving, as all my utensils were made out of wood by myself, but ancient Greece was known for its pottery, so giving her wooden plates would be redundant, or maybe outright offensive. And there was no need to bring her spirits even lower than they were now.
Collecting a young deer from one of my webs, I pondered what else was there to make as an apology gift for Sappho. Untangling deer's antlers from web fibers, I realized that there was only one thing in the entire forest that could be turned into a gift for Sappho and that was spider silk. The same spider silk, that my web traps were made of. The same spider silk that came out of my... Not daring to finish that thought I resigned myself, there truly was no other thing to make a decent gift from. Maybe I could dye it, to make it less recognizable as spider silk. With a plan in mind, I went to make purple spider silk Ampechone for Sappho.
"Arachne!" I heard a familiar woman's voice calling me.
"Sappho"
She has not visited me in some time. Luckily my conversational abilities did not deteriorate too much and she was right in time for me, to give her the Ampechone, I made. Whether as an apology or as an incentive remained to be seen. Now, how should I breach the topic? Of course, an apology outright would be me admitting some kind of wrongdoing, which was not committed. Giving her the present out of nowhere would create societal expectations of me expecting a gift in return. To breach the topic I need to understand why the gift was prepared in the first place. I made the spider silk scarf because I feared that Saphho would be offended by some of my actions. I thought that she was offended because of her irregular visits and somewhat visible irritation. What I clearly ignored beforehand was the fact that she might have not been angry with me. That I did not offend her, but rather someone else did. It was easy to forget, while living in isolation, that I was not the only person she would come into contact with. So the cause might have been external. This could be supported by the fact that Sappho kept visiting me. In that case, it might be easiest to just ask her outright, what caused her irritation and should it be me, then I would present her with the Ampechone. Should it not be me, then I could still give her the scarf as repayment for visiting me and conversating with me, which ten would incentivize her to visit me further.
Sappho marched straight towards me, with broccoli in her outstretched hand and parchment in the other, which I assumed was one more of her poems. It was nice of her to think about my dietary needs, the forest where I lived was not the most suitable place for gardening, yet despite that I managed to create a small garden of domesticated wild berries. Sadly I could not get my hands on any other seeds so the broccoli was a welcomed change in my diet.
After welcomes were exchanged Sappho got right away to read her newest poem. It was about a tall woman, with a face like Aphrodite, an ample chest, and strong arms embracing what must have been her lover, or maybe a close friend, it was quite hard to decide which it was. Somewhere along the way, Sappho, in her poem, started to rave about the tall woman's legs and I wondered how should I prepare the broccoli since it looked like it would be blooming soon. It must not be local but rather imported from the mainland, given its state. Hopefully, the vendor did not charge Sappho too much for it. If they did then, it could have a negative impact on Sappho's finances, with her occupation being a poet, her income could not be that stable, but rather quite irregular, depending on commissions. Smiling, I realized that this could be used as a way to present her with the Ampechone I made.
"Did you like it, Arachne?" the poet asked me about the poem that was just presented.
"It was beautiful, like always. You are very talented, Sappho. I believe that your poems will become known all around the world, one day,"
I expected a smile or at least happiness to appear on her face, thanks to all the praise. But I was mistaken. Sappho's body language did not display any usual sights of happiness or satisfaction. Rather her face became blank, and unreadable, which could only mean that my praise caused a negative reaction and she was now doing her best not showing it outwards. What a blunder! It was clear now, that it was possibly me who caused her the frustration. Did she not want to be praised? Did she perhaps expect to be paid for her poems by me? We never made such an agreement! And if it was some local societal custom I could not know, as Sappho was my only point of contact with civilization!
I only expected to be a testing audience for Sappho, to whom she presented her poems and from whom she received constructive criticism, to improve her verses. She had a demand for an unbiased audience and I had a demand for social contact, such a perfect example of the free market. If she expected to be monetarily rewarded, she should have stated beforehand. And it was quite clear that I possessed no money, living in the forest hunting big game and farming wild berries. And therein lies the problem! My demand for her company was far greater than her demand for me as her audience. I could not afford to lose contact with her, because no other person was ever willing to approach my living space. This was a clear case for an anti-monopoly bureau, alas there was none in this era. So the only other solution was to present a bribe. How lucky that I already prepared an "apology" gift for her.
Reaching for a purple spider silk scarf, I presented it to Sappho, in hopes she would like it and continue our semi-regular meetings, with poems and conversations.
"That is for me?" Sappho asked, surprised.
"Yes,"
"It's beautiful," she sighed, while critically examining the scarf in her hand.
Did she not like it? Was the color not to her liking? Could have been the material too alien to touch for her?
"If you do not like it, you can always sell it. It is pure spider silk, so it should fetch you a decent amount of money,"
Now I did it! It was not my intention to ever let her know what sort of material it was made of, but in case Sappho did not like the Ampechone, she should be able to sell it for a significant amount of money, since no other spider silk cloth would exist for at least next 2000 years in such quantity.
"Spider silk?" she asked.
"Yes?"
"So, this, came out of your butt," Sappho stated, a matter of factly, but glee was creeping into her face.
Did she have to state it out loud? This was just embarrassing! I wanted to disappear and even worse my face was going red from such a ridiculous statement. Alas I could not, there was no escaping Sappho. Sadly as a poet Sappho did not have much knowledge about spiders, probably no one in this era had any detailed knowledge about spiders. In that case, it fell onto me to explain the process of spider silk creation and dispersion. And so I did, to the best of my abilities, based on the knowledge from my first life and personal experience of being, what could be only described as a spider centaur.
"So, Spinneret," Saphho said, thinking deeply.
"Yes,"
"Can I see it?" she asked almost innocently, stars shining in her eyes.
"NO!" I retreated a few steps back.
"Ahhh... Don't be shy..." she cooed slyly.
"You insufferable woman! From now on you will always stay in front of me so I can see you at all times! Under no circumstance, you are to come near my rear!"
"I might even make a poet out of you, yet" Sappho laughed wholeheartedly, wrinkles sprouting on her face.
Besides the slight wrinkles on her face, I've also noticed a few little strands of silver hair on her scalp. In that moment a realization dawned on me. What I thought to be a short while, might have been a few years, or maybe even decades. And in all that time I remained almost unchanged. The implication of such was magnificent. Like this, I would be able to avoid meeting Being X again for a very long time. What a joyful occasion, which drove a smile to my face.
"Thank you," Sappho said and hugged me?
I stood there completely still. Shocked by the sudden ambush. There were no murderous intentions behind her actions, she just suddenly got closer and hugged me before I could react. There was no bloodthirst, no ill will. This was almost as comfortable as sharing body heat with Serebreykova back in my second life on the easter front cold nights.
After a bit, when my hands could not move, she let hold of me and picked hers gifted Ampechone and buried her face in it. I probably misheard her muffled voice, but the words "face" and "sit" were clear enough. But all I knew was that hugs were warm and Sappho had graduated from acquaintance and conversation partner to trusted asset.
"High Weaver! High Weaver!"
"What is it, acolyte?"
"It's that woman, Sappho! She-She returned with purple Ampechone!"
"What of it?"
"High Weaver, she departed to our lady's domain without it!"
"Truly? Hmmm... We will need to keep all eight eyes on her. Discreetly, above all!"
"As you wish!"
"We must not earn Lady Arachne's ire,"