ORIGIN

He'd passed through a few caves in his travels.

Polaris had been too sterile. Too... empty of everything but rock.
Eridanus had been too noisy, and too full of light and greenery and shifting movement.
The dry heat blasting from Monoceros had warded him away.

Cetus, though... Cetus was, as Goldilocks might tell you, just right. Long, hairy limbs pulled the spider through the swamp, Legba finding that he delighted in the thick and drifting mists, in the darkness pooled beneath the trees. It would be easy for him to hide, here, easy to hunt prey but even easier to avoid detection, and that's what he intended to do.

He searched now for a place suitable to build a nest. In his mind's eye, he pictured somewhere secluded, somewhere quiet, somewhere he could hang dew-glistening web and lay hidden beneath-... well, beneath something. Tree roots, or a rocky ledge--he didn't know, just yet.

He paused, long legs dipping again into the deep water--thankfully long enough to keep his abdomen from sinking in the mud--and tested his magic against the wet.

"Ahh, you like it wet," he chuckled, as dormant spores lifted and flourished across the substrate.

Good. He could make use of that. How, he wasn't quite sure yet--but use it, he certainly would.

Leaving the patch of dull brown mushrooms behind, the young spider moved on, searching Cetus for a home.

The spiderling picked his way through the trees, hairy legs tapping here and there as he chose his path. The mud beneath tasted silty, salty, and a little foul, but that was just fine by him.

He crawled his way beneath arches of tangled roots, and over lower-hanging ones, pausing often to lift his frontmost limbs and test the air. It remained damp, and misty, but empty of life, and that, too, was just fine by him.

Legba paused upon finding fungus, though. The first was a shelf of brown ridges, perched somewhat precariously across a leaning, half-rotten log. He drew up and examined these closely, all six eyes glowing with bright interest.

One limb drew slowly across the fungus, and he then wiped both over his chelicerae.

"Inchrestin'," he mused, and then turned, and raised his front half high. Legs splayed as he concentrated again. Almost at once, a ripple of life spread out before him--a wave of brown spores rising, popping up and out along the surface of a branch.

...So he could make fungus, then, not only out of nothing, but from samples that he found.

Inchrestin', he thought, again, but this time didn't say aloud.