Faustian Bargain (A Spring Fling)

The day she noticed him hanging out around the pink tipped, egg shaped blossoms, was the day she decided she was hungry for something more substantial than her current diet of flies and gnats. "Skinny little moscaterian", her girlfriends teasingly taunted; "cannibals" she muttered under her breath. It had been an exhausting morning, she was high with the heady satisfaction of completing a new web. The accomplishment boosted her self confidence far beyond its limited, passive, fatalistic approach to life. She wasn't so much a zen go with the flow sort of gal, more like a keep your expectations low, you won't be disappointed sort. There was just so much work to be done! Creating a masterpiece adequate to capture a meal large enough to sustain the gnawing pangs and rumblings was an all consuming task. That said, she wasn't oblivious to the seductive tactics her so-called friends employed. She watched them from afar while she was spinning. Lucinda found the overt gyrating of their legs and flexing thoraxes off putting and frankly a bit embarrassing. She wasn't the modest sort, it just seemed so obvious, were men really so simple? Yet that night she dreamt a powerful, forcefully, pulsating dream about the tan speckled spindly boy living amongst the slick leaves and bright flowers. When she awoke she could not deter her thoughts. She told herself she would just go for a look, possibly an introduction. "It was nothing", she reiterated. She spoke the words out loud, rationalizing her internal conflict to a fly as she was embalmed it. Lucinda was not fooling herself, she would find him and she would bring him home.

A creature of habit, Max, was still hanging around the Camellia blossoms thinking about constructing a web to procure an afternoon snack. Her presence caught him unaware, had he been calculating trigonometry aloud? "Sine over co-sine= tangent "soaka toe ah". "Why", he berated himself "hadn't he paid more attention"? Mortified he stole a sidelong glance, it shocked him to realize with a growing desperation, he was hoping she was still there.Glossy, ebony, perfectly curved body; he had never seen anyone like her before. Max longed to touch her to see if her skin would feel cold and hard like obsidian or dimple ever so slightly beneath his feelers.  Exotic, sleek and well lets be honest: sexy. This was not at all like Max, he had witnessed the disappearance of most his nest mates, he lost track of them early on. He on the other hand stayed close by his birthplace. He figured out how to suspend himself from the hard tight wrapped blossoms and never ventured too much further. Each day he started from scratch as the blossoms unfurled to reveal delicate petals. The petals of these fallen beauties carpeted the grass below the bush, but there were always more to take their place. It wasn't the most efficient lifestyle, but it was predictable. With this single peek in her direction, barely so much as a glance, he knew he would not be catching a snack this afternoon. He marveled at this stroke of luck; of all the leaves on all the bushes she had wandered onto his!  As he slowly backed up reaching out a leg to greet her, he remembered his mother's final admonishment the day he left the nest "Do not go home with strange women" she had warned, "it never ends well".