Challenge #01723-D262: Family is...?
I did not give that spider superhuman intelligence -- RecklessPrudence
Klaus looked at the spider. She was wearing a crinoline made out of her own silk. He turned back to Lord Falderil. "Really?"
"Absolutely not," insisted Lord Falderil. His lab had every known piece of intelligence-augmenting equipment known to Spark-kind and a few more that he had evidently made himself. "She was already intelligent. I've been augmenting myself so that I can keep up."
The giant spider, named Spinnerette, delicately put down her teacup. "I understand how this is confusing, Herr Baron," she said. Her voice was not smooth, but rather like shaped buzzing. Her mandibles were not made for human speech. And yet, she spoke the lingua franca admirably well. "I was sent to this reality from another one where insects rule. Papa found me and raised me as his own. And when he realised I was intelligent, he began my education."
"An education by courier, of course," added Falderil. "I couldn't send her to any of the schools. They wouldn't understand."
Klaus looked up at the giant spider's dark eyes and rather hairy face. She'd augmented some of the hairs near pairs of her eyes with mascara. And, yes, that was a string of pearls looped around the join between her head and her thorax. "I... see," he said. "And what happens when Fraulein Spinnerette decides to give you grandchildren?"
"That's... already happened. I suppose you might have noticed that this castle is remarkably free of mimmoths," said Falderil, talking very quickly. "Only one in one thousand giant spider young are capable of intelligence, and the others..."
"We sell them to mimmoth control organisations," said Spinnerette. "It's okay, Papa. It's just the way of my people."
"I still feel terrible about it," said Falderil. "In a way, they're my grandchildren."
Klaus took out one of his notebooks and added, A family can be a mad scientist and his adopted giant spider daughter. "I see," he said. "And what practice would you recommend for those... grandchildren... who have escaped their handlers or been released into the wild?"
"They're very easy to train," suggested Spinnerette. "My children would do just about anything for a bowl of fatty gravy."
"I have a very good recipe," said Falderil. "First, you get all the blood and fat off a full-grown sheep..."
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / AtelierSommerland]
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