My shoulder jostles back and forth. I gasp from sleep, eyes springing open. Moonlight illuminates an oval-shaped head looms over me, two wide brown eyes blinking down at me.

Ixek. He's come to collect the parcel.

I hastily finished his order yesterday, skipping my second meal to ensure that no one saw me with the strange piece of cloth he gave me. Many times, my fingers itched to lift the carefully creased corners and find out why Nal m'se was being so protective, and secretive of. But I resisted every urge as I pushed a needle with golden thread through the animal skin. I wouldn't betray the trust Nal m'se has in me. Fortunately, it wasn't long before the cloth was sewed inside, only to be retrieved by breaking the exterior thread.

"It's right here," I say. I reach underneath my pillow and hand him the animal skin.

Ixek turns the furry bundle over in his hands. A slight wrinkle forms in his brow. "And this is waterproof?"

I nod. My fingers clasp under my blanket. He doesn't see what makes the parcel special. I actually wove an extra lining inside the parcel to hide the sunlight thread, just to make sure it remains hidden.

Ixek shakes his head after a moment. "I don't know how you do it. But I'm trusting that you know what you're doing." His brown eyes focus on me. Under his scrutiny, I realize that he doesn't actually trust me, he trusts Nal m'se and her judgment.

It doesn't matter, I tell myself. Soon, he'll know for certain that it will repel water, after he does whatever he's supposed to with the parcel.

Ixek clears his throat. "I suppose that's all for now. Good work."

And with that, he leaves the cave, disappearing up the mountainside, into the night.

I lie back down, head resting against a bundle of blankets. A full moon brightens the camp with milky light. On nights like this, the stars beside it are overshadowed. But soon, the balance between the celestial spheres will even out as the moon shrinks.

Soon will be the next half moon, the deadline for the sunlight cloak.

***

"Guess what I brought." I can't help the grin on my face as I enter Mother's cave. I hold up the fragment of veraloe that Kletasuah gave me. "This will soothe your burns."

Mother blinks cloudy eyes at me. "You brought veraloe?"

I nod eagerly, setting my bag on the ground then racing to her side. Gently, I turn her left hand over. The hairline red marks that marbled her hands the other day are barely noticeable, no longer red or inflamed.

"Your skin is healing up nicely," I say. "You'll be..." I trail off. Saying anything about her being 'back to normal' is a lie, and we both know it.

"Where did you find that?" Mother asks, filling the silence.

I slide my thumb over the tight film that's grown over the split leaf. Gelly cools my fingers, and I gently spread it over Mother's leathery palms.

"Kletasuah gave it to me," I say. Pride laces my voice. Finally, I feel like I can do something useful for Mother aside from bringing her cold food and refilling her water every few days.

Mother frowns. "She's the healer now, is she? Old Earlhe gave up his ghost?"

I nod, though I cringe a little at her disrespect for the dead.

"Awfully kind of her to sympathize with my plight." Mother stares straight ahead, deadpan. She knows as well as I do that I didn't reveal who the veraloe was for. I scrape every last blob from the plant, smearing it on her other hand.

"There you go," I say when I'm done. "That should help you heal even faster."

A dip of her chin is all the acknowledgement I get. I head for the empty water basin.

"I'll get your water now. Then we can work on the spider silk." I hear a small humph from Mother.

"Should've waited on the veraloe," she says. "Now my hands are greasy."

Greasy isn't quite the word I'd use for veraloe, perhaps more like a wet, gloppy film.

"They will dry by the time I return," I call over my shoulder.

To seal my point, when I return her water basin to the corner of her cave, I lightly touch her palms. The only trace of veraloe on her skin is a faint, gauzy feel. Mother looks at me with displeasure, and I draw back, as if sunlight remained in her burns and had just seared me.

"There, what did I tell you?" I force a smile, a cheer to my voice, to counteract Mother's disapproval.

"Where's the ika silk?" Mother asks dryly.

I retrieve a webbed tangle from my bag. Mother cups her hands for me to give it to her. Slowly, she begins to pick apart the individual silken strands.

"All this must be separated before we get to weaving," Mother says. "You might've considered that before shoving it all together."

"I didn't have a choice," I try to protest. "I needed a place to stash it while collecting it."

And hiding it.

"You always have a choice, Celisae." Mother carefully separates half of the white sphere for me to work on.

I pick apart the tangles on the outskirts of the blob. Individual threads dive beneath each other. My nails attack knots, some small, involving only a few strands, others on a mass scale. Soon, my fingers have become embedded in the muddled core, as if they're now a part of the mess.

My eyes stray frequently to the cave's mouth. I have to finish before dark; otherwise, the tribe might notice my absence this afternoon. I stuck away during the second meal, a small wooden loom in tow for weaving the spider silk. It seems that mealtimes are when I'm least noticed, and I figure that the sluggishness accompanying large meals will dull people's observations, mainly that I'm missing. But at the rate these strands detangle, it might take longer than an hour, even a couple hours, to finish with the spider silk.

Anxious energy twitches my fingers, making it more difficult to hold them steady. I try to channel my nerves into my work, to speed things along. I grasp faster for the stray threads, pulling them over and under each other. My fingers pinch air a few times in the process, sometimes tighten the knots in the silk. A wrinkle forms in one strand, no longer the pristine silk it was when I first found it.

"This is not speed's work." Mother's voice breaks my concentration. It takes a moment to refind the piece of silk I'd been separating from the rest.

"Huh?"

"Speed makes sloppy art," Mother says. Her crooked fingers move back and forth through the thread, her wrists bent at awkward angles to compensate for her injury. "If you go too fast, you threaten to destroy everything you've tried to achieve. You fail to tap into that deeper meaning underlying the art."

But I'm not doing this for the sake of art. This isn't about finding or expressing meaning in the universe, this is about survival. I have to start working on the sunlight cloak, tonight if possible. I nearly snap and say my thoughts aloud, but I clamp my mouth shut. Mother wouldn't take my outburst well. Moreover, it would reveal that someone knows about her. Who knows how that knowledge might burden her.

Still, a trace of irritation mars my face. I can feel the jumble of emotions inside me — fear, frustration, and a general unease — manifesting as a scowl on my face. My gaze strays again to the cave outside, and my toes tap twice on the floor before I force them to be still.

"Really, Celisae, I don't see why you're impatient," Mother chides.

"I'm not—"

Mother silences me with a scoff. "Please, save your breath. I can that you want to leave me with every spare glance you take toward the exit. Do you feel trapped here? Trapped by this ika silk, or more likely, the time being spent to detangle it? You don't know when it will end, when you'll be free."

I say nothing, focusing on the silk instead of the bite in her words. It's true, I do feel trapped. I feel stuck in this spot on the floor until the ika silk decides to cooperate. When I look at Mother in my peripheral, her back leaning against the hard stone, my annoyance deflates a little bit. She's just as trapped as I am, except hers is neverending. At least I have the option to walk into the open, to live in community with the tribe, to see people on a daily basis and receive portions of food that were aside for me.

"You're the one who asked to learn about the ika silk," Mother continues. "But you can't learn if you're impatient or unwilling to devote your full attention. You can't rush the learning process, especially regarding art. Remember, art is a discipline that has no time limit attached. What else makes it surpass generations and live on forever?"

I feel my shoulders curling in on themselves. I wish the crags in the cave walls would open wide and swallow me whole.

"You're so tense, Celisae," Mother says with a shake of her head. "Relax your shoulders. Let them float away from your ears, your fingers drip like honey over the ika silk."

On my next exhale, I imagine that I'm releasing my stress to the air. I focus on the movement on my fingers plucking at the strings. With a fresh perspective, I realize that the sphere has dwindled in size, loose strands spilling over all sides. The more I work, the more I realize that it's almost like playing a laivo. I imagine myself pulling strings instead of silk, filling the cave with a heartfelt ballad.

Before I know it, I unravel the final loop, left with a pile of spider silk in my palms. Mother finishes around the same time. She glances over my work, then gives a satisfied nod.

"You brought a loom?" she asks.

"It's right here." I retrieve it from where my bag sits on the other side of the room.

"Very good. We shall begin the gloves." She straightens her spine, peering down at me with that teacherly expression I'm all too familiar with. "You can finish them on your own once you get the hang of the weaving... if you must return to the tribe."

I nod. Despite all the detangling I've done, chords of unease knot in my stomach. I shouldn't be so eager to get away from Mother. She barely has contact with human civilization, and here I am, itching to return to the tribe.

I blink back to attention as Mother leans over the loom. Her hands slowly place ika silk on it. While precise with every movement, I can see her physically suppressing the tremor that threatens to disturb her careful work. It saddens me to see her reduced to such a state. I remember when she could weave fabric faster than I can now.

"Weaving ika silk is easier than one might think," she says. "The key is that it requires a gentler touch than normal thread. As long as you're careful, you should get the hang of it quickly."

Once the ika silk forms the initial wrapping around the loom, she starts to interweave a new strand perpendicular to the previous.

"See?" she says. "All it takes is a gentle hand."

She pushes the loom toward me. I take a strand of silk in my hands. It's slicker than I'm used to, and I wipe my palms on my tunic to remove excess moisture. Carefully, I slide the silk over and under the previous strands. Mother leans back against the cave. I can feel her eyes on me as I continue the pattern.

Gradually, my fingers get a feel for the fine threads, instinctively know how much pressure to apply when lifting them, how they will slip out of place if they're inserted at the wrong angle or not pulled through enough. I don't know how long I sit there, consumed in my work, with my mother's presence for company. Though she doesn't speak — she knows how detrimental it can be to break a person's concentration — it's enough to have her at my side.

The gaps between the ika silk shrinks until a tightly knit cloth stretches across the loom. I have to forcibly stop myself from continuing. I could relish in the smoothness of the silk, the ease at which it slots into place, forever. There's something truly hypnotic about the ika threads, opposed to the plain cotton or wool I normally use. Perhaps it's due to the rarity of it.

Enough fabric has formed to cover one hand, so I remove it. It ripples over my skin like a gentle embrace. I pass it to Mother for her to examine.

"How is it?" I ask, gauging her expression. She turns the fabric over in her hands. Several tense beats pass, ones in which I can physically feel my pulse thrumming in my veins. Then, she focuses brown eyes on me and gives a slight nod. Pride surges through me, further speeding up my heart.

"You know how to sew the rest of it?" Mother asks. "Match it to your hand, then stitch the fingers?"

I nod emphatically. Weaving may be my speciality, but I could sew garments as well as any seamstress. In fact, I often chip in my skills when completing items for trade, particularly the waterproof ones.

"Make them skin tight," Mother says after a second. "You don't want loose fabric to impede your precision. There's nothing worse than loose fabric flopping around your hands."

"I will." I wrap an arm over her shoulder, giving it a tiny squeeze. "Thank you so much for your help. I... I couldn't have done it without you."

Mother's eyebrows twitch upward. "You make it sound like we're saving the planet."

In a way, we are. The only way I can weave sunlight on the scale that my blackmailer requested is if I have these special gloves. By showing me the method behind the ika silk, she saved the world we share.

"Well, we're protecting my hands," I say by way of explanation. "That's good enough for me."