Why Spider Has Only Eight Legs

From The Gospel of St. Notham, Book of the Connodo 1: 1-42   [1] Yod paced across Its dream; It was the dream. It rocked back and forth within Its own mind, and there was nothing more or less than that. Its smaller Selves' many eyes rolled wildly as Yod sucked them in and blew them out again in fits of desperate creation and destruction. Craving both solitude and companionship, there was no way for It to escape the paradox of Its own personal All-ness. Yod screamed and stamped and banged against Its Self-made barriers like a mad thing until small cracks began to appear at the edges of the dream.   [2] The dream shook and rattled as Yod shouted and slammed, until a piece broke away within Yod's own jangled energy, met the chaotic waves of potentiality that seeped in through the cracks, and manifested a tiny Something. It drifted through Yod's dream, trailing a single gleaming white strand of silky, sticky thread that stretched across Quondamarie between itself and the center of the Source.   [3] The creature's twelve legs waved gently.   [4] She wondered if there was anything here that was nice to look at, for to her, un-attuned as she was to the higher frequencies of Purideaic thought, Yod's dream was only a dark and empty Void.   [5] “What am I?” she mused to herself.   [6] Yod stopped short. A noise, a voice, had come from outside Its own mind. It spun around and saw the little creature. Yod brought Its energy down so that It could see this tiny material speck more clearly.   [7] "What are you?" Yod said.   [8] "I was hoping You could answer that," she replied. To her, the voice came from the Void itself, for all here was of Yod, and Yod was all.   [9] "Are you a spy? Did Nus and Tra send you in here?"   [10] "I don't know what a spy is, but it sounds like a nice name. Spy. Spyyyyy. Yes, I am Spy."   [11] The creature—Spy—was doing things and saying things that Yod didn't expect. She had even chosen her own name!   [12] Yod was pleased. “You came from Me, you are part of Me...yet you are not Me!"   [13] "Is that so?" said Spy. "Well, all right, then. What is this place? Why is it so dark and empty?"   [14] "It is not empty; it is Me. I am its boundaries and its center. But You can move through this space and see Me from every angle. You can sink into time and find single moments of My existence, where I only know only an endless instant. You will travel throughout My realm. Rejoice at every perspective. Then I will take you back into MySelf, so that you may tell Me your own impressions of My glory.”   [15] Spy had existed only for a very brief time, but she already had a couple of opinions. She did not like the idea of being “taken back” into anything, and she thought that Yod was rather presumptuous.   [16] “I can’t explore a dark Void,” she said, stalling for time. “Each point is exactly the same as all the rest. I'll need light, and markers, so that I’ll know where I’ve been. I guess this is a good a starting point as any.” Since there was nothing there besides Spy and Yod, she removed one of her own legs and placed it in the space before her.   [17] The Void had never held so many new ideas and changes at once before, and at once, the leg burst into flames.   [18] Yod was pleased. “Now there is light as well as darkness across My entirety! The light is good, and it’s Mine!”   [19] Spy wrapped a length of her Quandamaric silk around the base of the fiery leg and let go. Down, down, she fell, spiraling through the shadows cast by the fire. When she was flying so fast that the light and shadows began to make a noise in her ears and ruffled the hairs on her body, she stopped, removed another leg, and placed it in the center of the whirling, rushing sound.   [20] Yod was pleased. “I'll call this wind!” It chortled. “It moves the light and shadows! The wind is good, and it’s Mine!”   [21] Spy wrapped her silk around the second leg and allowed herself to drop once again, sailing out and down in a long arc to the other side of the Void (which, strictly speaking, could no longer be called a “Void,” since it now contained things and did, in fact, have the beginnings of a shape).   [22] She felt herself growing heavier as she sunk to the bottom of the wind, where the shadows were thick and rolled lazily over themselves, back and forth, back and forth, making her long to float among them, to feel the sleepy energy of the shallows, the secrets of the deep, the passions of a churning storm...but she held tight to the silken thread and plunged into the liquid darkness. It was cool, and coated her skin, and she removed a third leg to mark the center of the shadowy depths.   [23] Yod was pleased. “The light is hot, the wind is dry; but the shadows are cool and damp! I call this water. Water is good, and it’s Mine!”   [24] Again, Spy wrapped her silk around the third leg and released her grip. It was difficult to float freely now. Yod's dream was growing thicker and denser. Still, she traveled as far as she could, holding the silken thread tightly.   [25] Slower. Darker. Spy’s skin was scratched raw by the hard, unyielding edges that Yod's frequency had become here. She finally had to press and dig her way through an immense heaviness. When she could go no farther, she stopped and removed a fourth leg, dug a small hole for it, and planted it in the solid form.   [26] Yod was pleased. "This is Earth!" It said. “Light for warmth and shadows, air to move them, water to cool them, and earth to support them! The earth is good, and it’s Mine! All of this is Mine!   [27]"Return to me now, Spy, that I may absorb your knowledge and memory of all the things you’ve seen and felt. I will be whole again, and with your added perspective, My essence will be greater than before.”   [28] “You're quite far away from me now,” Spy called. But she could see Him easily: with the fire, and the air, and the water, and the earth, He had taken a form like unto a massive serpent, with the regal head of a fanged beast.   [29] She could also feel heat beneath the rock, and having learned something about spirals by now, she had an idea. “Half a moment; I will make a shorter path.”   [29] Summoning the rest of her strength, she dug with her remaining eight legs and broke through the earth. She tunneled down, down, down, until she began to see the light of the fire once more.   [30] There she quickly tied the end of her thread to its own beginning, and as Yod reached out to snatch her back into ItSelf, she leapt into the center of the spiral, trailing thread behind her.   [31] “Come back! Come back! You belong to Me; you belong within Me, you can be nothing without Me!”   [32] “We'll see about that,” said Spy.   [33] Now that Yod's dream contained space and distance and time, Spy could evade Yod's grasp. Yod chased her back and forth, round and round, as she flitted from Fire to Air, from Water to Earth, back to Fire and again and again across the new universe, until the space was filled with smoke, steam, spray, mist, mud, and lava. Bolts of flames shot down toward the earth through the air, and liquid fire came blasting up from the earth to meet it.   [34] At last Yod caught Spy and held her in Its eye. “All of this is Mine!” It said, “And you are Mine, too! I created you, and now you must return to Me!”   [35] Spy smiled—it was the first smile to grace the new universe—because she could see that Yod was neatly entwined within the spiraling tangles of her webbing. She could still move freely along the thread, but Yod had a place now, trapped within ItSelf.   [36] And now Spy could see Yod.   [37] Spy sank her fangs deep into Yod's form and injected a drop of energy from the Source, which she had carried all the way across the Quondamarie.   [38] Yod screamed again, One Scream which became a multitude of screams as Spy finally pulled the web taut and sliced Yod into an infinity of pieces.   [39] Yod-as-Many fell through the light and shadows, wafted on the wind, floated and sank in the currents of the water, and came to rest across the Earth.   [40] “I won’t return my mind to You,” Spy said, as she dropped to the ground in a glade of newly-sprouted apple trees, “as my mind is my own, and no-one else's. You will learn what it’s like to live separately, and then each piece of you can decide for itself whether or not it wants to return to being just One.”   [41] Thus was the first Fall of the Dabboth.   [42] To this day, Spy still spins her net in spirals and runs across her silken strands with only eight legs. We honor her sacrifice when we divide the spirals of time itself into segments of twelve.   Now, go and be quiet for twelve hours, and when twelve months have passed, pass this tale along to someone else.