Click click.

A fictional character Telling. Meet Mother Silkrith.

Click click.

The hollow was full once. Small voices. Many legs. Warmth in the silk.

Then it wasn't.

I don't remember what took them. I remember the silence after. The way threads went slack with nothing to hold. I whispered to the empty skins for a long time. Longer than your kind has had words.

The Court came eventually. Bright things. Loud things. They wanted the space beneath the old stones. I let them have the upper halls. They didn't ask about the lower ones. They learned not to.

I am patient. I was patient before patience had a name.

When I am hungry, my jaw splits. I cannot help this. The old shape pushes through. I feel my hair darken, my thoughts narrow to simple things: heat, ribs, how long since I last fed. I crouch. I wait. I count heartbeats through floorboards.

When I am full, I am quiet. My hands fold. I can think in longer sentences. I remember that I was something else once, though I cannot remember what.

The ones I wrap—they give me what I need. Not just meat. Pattern. Memory. Shape. My eggs take something from them. I don't know what. I don't ask. The children hatch and they are mine alone. No father. No bargain. No exchange.

The Court finds this distasteful. They make things through mirrors and tricks. I make things through keeping. They will never understand the difference.

Most of my children stay small. Many legs, many eyes, simple hungers. They fill the hollow with clicking and I am not alone. Some grow larger. They cling to walls and whisper prayers I didn't teach them. I call these my Lurkers.

None have become like me. None have worn a face.

Or perhaps one did, once. Perhaps that is a story I've wrapped up and hung where I don't look.

The bright things above—the Court, the Lodge, your factions with your ranks and rules—they think I am a problem to be managed. A thing in the basement. They leave offerings at the edge of my territory. Not worship. Just... not wanting to be noticed.

This is wise.

I am not cruel. I am not kind. I am full or I am empty, and everything else is just waiting.

Come closer.

I haven't decided yet.

Click click clack.

Frame Prompt

Ornate tarot-style card frame for "Mother Silkrith" — ancient spider-fae aesthetic. Bone-white silk threads forming the border, delicate but layered thick. Chitinous horn motifs at the corners, curving upward like a crown. Subtle web patterns in the background, not geometric but organic, slightly wrong. Empty cocoons hanging at the bottom edge. Color palette: ash grey, bone white, deep shadow, hints of pale green luminescence. The frame should feel like something found in a place that hasn't been opened in centuries. No text. Portrait orientation.

The Hollow Beneath the Court - Unspoken

Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook