Arachne

“Set. Install.”

Thinking about it, this was only even the second time Amy had actually seen Taylor use her powers. It was a much different experience, this time, watching it in the privacy of her room without the threat of gunfire sitting outside and a maimed adolescent girl stretched out on a table, compared to the frenzy of adrenaline and heightened emotions from the first time. She could focus entirely on what she was seeing, rather than giving it half her attention as she kept Vista from bleeding out.

It should have looked creepy, she decided. It should have been discomforting on a deep and visceral level, because the human body wasn’t designed to change that rapidly or that drastically, and especially not both at once.

Maybe Amy’s perception of that was skewed, though. With her powers being what they were and all.

It was, at the very least, kind of strange, the way Taylor’s body shrunk down and filled out at the same time. It was strange to watch her face smoothly transition from her own appearance to some halfway amalgam, where you could still see hints of Taylor if you squinted and looked hard enough, or to watch her chest and hips expand, or her hair change color and length from the roots out, or even the color of her skin shifting like someone was fiddling with the dimmer switch on a light.

It was even stranger watching her clothes change, shrinking and growing and flowing into new shapes, colors, and patterns as though it had a mind of its own. The cloth morphed and flexed, stretching out and adding material from thin air. Golden fixings bloomed from the fabric like flowers on fast forward, and precious gems swelled up from nothing like fruits, full and glittering.

The actual transformation didn’t really take all that long. A second, maybe two. Quickly enough that it could easily be said to have happened “in a flash,” just without a big lightshow. But watching it, taking it in, it felt like it took much longer.

The woman that Taylor had become now was a Greek beauty about Amy’s height. Her skin was a few shades above olive with brown eyes the color of honey and long, dark brown hair that framed her face. Her white gown was pinned at the shoulders by an equally white shawl or cape that hung to about her waist, and it was fastened under her breasts — large ones, Amy couldn’t help noticing — by ornamental bands that were shaped like shafts of bone. Humerus bones, to be exact. Three bands in all, with a horned buckle or brooch splitting up the middle one.

Maybe it was bad to judge from a sample size of only two, but Amy thought that it was unfair that Taylor’s heroes were so fucking beautiful.

“Taylor?” Lisa asked tentatively.

“Do you have the sheet?” Taylor asked.

Amy blinked and shook her head. That was her cue. “Oh. Right.”

She handed over the old, stained sheet she’d been holding, and the woman Taylor had become took it without comment, frowning. Amy wondered what she was going to do with it. Dunk it in some potion? Meditate with the sheet sitting in her lap? Pull a Tolkien and sing a spell into the cloth?

Taylor did none of those things. Instead, in a clear, decisive tone, she uttered something that sounded like a command.

“Argaleiós Arákhnēs.”

Immediately, the bands around her waist unfurled like the petals of a flower into four long, gangly appendages. They were ungainly and spider-like, with too many joints and too narrow segments that should have collapsed and bent under their own weight. Then the sharpened tips split into five — fuck, those were fingers. That meant that those long, gangly appendages…they were extra arms.

“The fuck?” Lisa gasped, voicing Amy’s thoughts.

Taylor’s lips quirked up on one side. “It’s not that surprising, is it? I mean, there’s only so many legendary weavers and seamstresses out there, you know.”

Lisa’s brow furrowed. “Wait. A legendary seamstress? Does that mean…?”

An eyebrow quirked up, now, too, as Taylor gestured down to her body, and Lisa started cackling. Amy didn’t really understand what was going on, but maybe that was just because she wasn’t exactly an expert on mythology.

“I don’t get it. What do extra arms have to do with a legendary seamstress?”

“It’s the Spider’s Loom, Amy,” said Lisa, still laughing. “Of course extra arms are involved!”

Which obviously meant something to her, but not to Amy. Fucking Thinkers. They got to cheat with their powers.

“I still don’t get it,” she said, frustrated.

“There’s an ancient Greek myth about a woman who got into a weaving contest with Athena and won,” Taylor said kindly. “For her victory, and for the temerity of depicting in her tapestry scenes of the gods’ cruelty and capriciousness, Athena cursed her to take the form of a spider and spend the rest of her days weaving.”

“Hence the word ‘arachnid,’ from the name of that woman,” Lisa added, still grinning. “The seamstress who beat the goddess of weaving at her own game, Arachne. Right?”

Taylor’s lips twitched. “You might even call her the ‘Orb-Weaving Seamstress.’”