Webs, webs gently winding her arms…Delphinium woke with a scream but her voice was too ragged and weak to make a sound. She frantically fought off the webbing and it landed on the floor of her room. Her…her room? Where were the trees? Where…she stared down at the rug while her heart hammered. She was in bed and she had defeated a shawl. A light and delicately crocheted shawl, with fringes, was lying in a round patch of moonlight.
She heard the swish of a nightgown and her sister was there. “There now.” Hope murmured in a low voice thick with sleep. She picked up the shawl and wrapped it around Del’s bare arms again. “There. Everything’s all right. The Spiders aren’t here.” Del feigned going back to sleep as Hope ran her fingers through Del’s shorn hair. There wasn’t a soul alive that could resist doing that, it seemed. “Softer than gossamer!” Master Frodo had declared as he had sympathetically cut away the burned, snarled bits until nothing was left but a dark brown halo around Del’s head.
Soon, Hope went back to her own bed. When her breathing became deep and steady Del pitched the shawl to the floor again and shuddered.
Her hair. Half the people in the Buckland had had their hands in what was left of it, pulling on her dark curls and exclaiming how silky it was and, fear not, it’ll grow back, my boy. Del didn’t mind. But some of those hands would suddenly slow and fingers would pass caressingly down the back of her neck and Del would go cold and twist away with a laugh and a ready joke.
Sammie had been bitten, poisoned, and Del was helpless. She did the only thing she could and pulled him close and gave him the kiss she'd always wanted to. It was good, so wonderful, and the Spiders were going to kill them both but neither cared.
It was hard, so hard, to leave that deadly happiness behind in the dark forest. She curled into a tight ball and protected her neck with her hand but she slept no more that night.
~