The Web

Widow the spider stared in awe at her one hundred ninety-six children spinning their beautiful webs. Suddenly, all of the children stopped. Widow heard a small cry echo through the cavern.

“Look!”Muffet, the oldest spider, mocked. She pointed to the crying spider, Arach. “Look at his ugly web!” she yelled.

Arach started crying harder. Even the youngest spider’s, Dew’s, web looked like the others’ brilliant webs. Arach knew his webs would never look like the wonderful art the other webs were. Arach covered the whole back of the cavern with his webs, but none looked like the others’.

The sun set, and all the spiders went to bed in their freshly made webs, except Arach. He spent the whole night trying to make a good web next to all of his siblings’ webs.

When the siblings woke up, they found Arach’s web next to theirs, and they punished him for it by yelling at him.

Widow walked over to the siblings. “What is happening!?” she exclaimed. All the siblings stopped crowding Arach. Widow looked sadly at Arach. “I’m sorry this happened,” Widow said. She escorted Arach away up to a high ledge that had a perfect view of all the webs. “Name who made each of these webs,” Widow said to Arach.

He looked at his mother in confusion. “Why?” he asked.

“Just do it!” Widow snapped, and Arach looked over at the webs.

“Mom, I don’t know,” Arach said. “Do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Widow told Arach.

“Then why did you ask me?” Arach asked.

“Just for that reason,” Widow said. “The webs are beautiful, but nobody knows who made them.” Widow pointed at Arach’s web. “But your webs are unique and different; everyone knows who made them.”

As Widow and Arach climbed back down to the ground, Widow said, “It’s great to be different, because everyone knows who made that beautiful web.” Widow pointed to Arach’s web.

"But that web isn’t pretty!” Arach told Widow.

Widow smiled at her young child. “It is,” Widow said, “in its own special way.”