This story is unrelated to anything and is a stand alone.

WARNING: Utter ridiculousness ahead! Please take the necessary precautions. I take no responsibility for laughter, snorting, spraying drinks, choking, or falling out of chairs. Please wear a seat belt!

A/N - If you take this seriously, you need more help than I. This story was written to explain the unusual creatures that live in my home ranging from: the Spider, wargs, elves, dwarves, a Vala or two and various other critters. You may NOT have my spider or wargs! Please get your own. Contact the Southern Maryland Warg and Spider Rescue. For elves, please contact the Homeless Elf Board to see about adopting your own. You may not have mine.

Now, on to the story!

A Mirkwood Spider Landed On My Front Porch

A True Story

by Nieriel Raina

Chapter One: A True Story, I Swear!

It all started on a cool day in April, 2006. Birds sang joyfully, hailing the coming Spring, but as yet, the sun's warmth had not driven away the touches of winter, so I grabbed my jacket before I walked out the door…into a giant spider web. Stuck in the sticky, silky threads, I thrashed, but was unable to free myself. Now, I have always had spiders on my front porch, that was no surprise to me, but never before had one spun a web across the door, and never had the webbing been as thick as twine! There was no way one of my beautiful wolf spiders had spun this monstrosity!

I adore spiders. I guess I should go ahead and mention that up front. I have always found beauty in creatures that turns most females' stomachs, but I have never been a typical girl (now a woman of thirty-six). I never fit in with the primping females, nor understood their need to have perfect hair and nails. I have never in my life had fingernails longer than the tips of my fingers. For one, I bite my nails, but I have also always been involved in activities that are not known for promoting beautiful hands. I cut dog hair for a living. It is also difficult to play the piano when your nails tap on the keys; so even when I manage to not chew them down to nubs, I clip them short to avoid that nuisance.

And so, my fingernails were no help in releasing me from the sticky strands I was caught in. Still, I fought against them, twisting violently as I thrashed about. It is a wonder none of my neighbors noticed my situation or heard my cries of frustration. But my neighbors are not very friendly anyway and mind their own business. But there was one who heard, and she quickly came to my aid, though when I first laid eyes upon her, I doubted she was my salvation. At first, all I could see were large, black legs skittering towards me, then her body came into view. We have since determined she weighs at least forty pounds; I'm not sure if that is large or small for one of her kind, but to me, who had only recently seen bird eating spiders and thought them gigantic, she was enormous!

I did not even think to scream, for I was too fascinated watching such a creature move towards me. She was graceful, and her black body shimmered blue in the light, the soft hairs on her legs moving like grass upon the plain in the wind. She stopped before me, and well, I guess you could say she cocked her head and made a clicking sound with her jaws.

"You are a beautiful spider," I told her, completely oblivious to my precarious position.

To my shock, she replied! "Thank you. No one has ever told me such before. Perhaps, you are different from the elves who hunt my kind."

"Elves? Elves are faerie creatures, they are not real," I told her with a nod. She just looked at me for a moment, and I realized another such faerie creature was on my porch, so who was I to doubt the existence of elves. "Ok, elves. Why do they hunt you?"

"Because we eat them," was her reply, and that was when I remembered with horror that I was stuck in a large, sticky web. What was I to do? Yep. I screamed.

What happened next, I'm not exactly sure, for to my utmost shame...I fainted. When I woke, I was free of the web, in fact, the web was gone, but above my head, perched on the ceiling of the porch, was the spider. Surprisingly, I did not run inside, but figured since she had let me go, she must mean me no harm.

"Do I not taste good?" I asked.

"I do not know," she replied. "I do not wish to eat you. You were kind to me."

At this point, I glanced away and glanced back at her several times, just to make sure the juice I drank that morning had not fermented. But she was still there. "So...what do we do now?"

The spider shuffled, snuggled, something into the corner, and laid out her proposition. "I will live here on your porch and leave you alone. We will live in peace."

That sounded just fine to me, as long as she didn't eat me or the warg (he has his own story, so it is not worth mentioning here except to say I own a warg). "But what will you eat," I asked. Have you ever asked a stupid question? One you regretted as soon as it slipped out of your mouth? Yep! This was one of those questions, for stupid me reminded her of eating!

But she put me quickly at ease, and indeed, her idea worked well for me. "I will eat any solicitors and annoying children that come to bother you, and you will have time to write."

Well, I didn't know then what she was talking about with the writing, and I quickly informed her I had a child, so the children would need to be left alone. Instead, she was free to eat the neighborhood cats who wander at will and upset the warg. She agreed eagerly, offering to also eat lurking readers, but that comes later in the story.

Once we had our truce/friendship/peaceful agreement settled, I learned her story. I mean, how many people wake up one morning to find a spider on their porch? A forty pound spider? Yea, I didn't think you had.

Her story was interesting. You see, she is a descendant of a terrible creature called Ungoliant who lived long, long (we're talking ages and ages) ago in a place called Ennor (well, actually, Ungoliant lived originally in Aman, but that isn't important to this story) in Arda. And just because they are spiders...and eat people, they were given a bad reputation and hunted! But they really aren't as bad as I've been told, at least Legs isn't. Oh, that is what I named her. It was better than the name she had, one that hurts my ears when she says it. She says it is in something called Black Speech, but I don't know anything about that.

Anyway, in the wood where she lived, also lived elves. No, not those short people who help Santa! That is what I said, and Legs looked at me very funny. I guess in this wood named Mirkwood, the elves are quite tall and are terribly good looking. But they have nothing to do with this story, at least, not yet. You see, Legs's arrival, or maybe it was the warg's appearance, I'm not sure, began a chain of interesting visitors to my home, though why I call them visitors when they refuse to leave, I don't know! But I'm off track. I was telling you Legs's story.

Mirkwood had been darkened for many years by an evil power in the southern part of the wood. For nearly two millennia, the forest was dark, and that is why it was called Mirkwood. Makes sense to me! Well, after a long time of the spiders living happily under the dark trees, a great War was won a long way from the wood, and even there great battles were fought, and fire took many of Legs's kind. And the result was that the darkness lifted from the forest. The elves renewed their hunts for the spiders, and as Legs was fleeing from them, she fell into a deep dark hole...and landed on my porch.

Pretty cool, huh?

To Be Continued…

Author's Note: And now you're asking yourself WHY? Why is she writing this nonsense? Well, because I am burned out and need to write something totally off the wall in an effort to spark the muse back to life. She's been too overrun with far too serious plots of late. I warn you, this is a work in progress and probably the only one I'll post that isn't complete. It just really needs to be posted as it's written.

Reviews... The spider really likes reviews. May I refer you above to the reference to eating lurking readers? So yeah... you really want to review... trust me.

NiRi