A spider will do spider things;
only flies know the trouble it brings.
He felt like a spider. Bony arms, and fingers meant to weave silk. Eyes long red from crying, crying so many tears, that formed dew on the webs of deceit he hung oh-so-delicately across his life. He had worked on the webs for years, until their gossamer threads eventually disguised the holes he called home.
An airbender who could not airbend found an awful lot to understand about dark holes. They were the holes he hid inside when the Elders gave up hope that he would ever dance on air. They were the holes that held him when his former playmates became his new tormenters. Like butterflies, they swept through the clouds, and like buzzard-wasps, their taunts stung his neck. Yet the holes gave him his only respite, their cooling shadows the only place he could avoid the heated calumny he felt from his so-called brothers.
What was a little spider to do? Run away, run away, for those who were made to crawl were never meant to fly.
In the dark crevices of his mind, he watched the sun climb, and knew nothing but anguish in its wake. But at night—oh, sweet night—when the buzzard-wasps slept, he would set about weaving his web. How unloved, how unnatural, is an Air Nomad without wings, the voices would whisper, as he pulled and spun, pulled and spun the silk of lies. Perhaps, then, you are not a butterfly. Perhaps you are a dragon, fierce and cruel, who can set fire to those tiny gauze creatures.
How delicious, the wine of his fantasies, distilled from the terror they would feel in his dreams. He drank it in like blood, tasting their imagined screams with relish. So distant, the brilliant day when those nightmares would clamber into the sun. So close, when the Nomads would know the pain of being shackled to the earth.
He was a dragon the night his true brethren came on ships. They swarmed the shores like a thousand writhing insects, their carapaces of crimson catching the moon. With fire, he led them to the dark holes. Upward, they climbed, nearer, nearer, in tunnels he had scurried through a million times while the world above had simply flown. Little did the Nomads know about the dangers that lurked below their august Temple.
They didn't know what could crawl out of darkness.
The night was glorious, as flames spread and consumed the places he had once called home. Unsuspecting shrieks filled the air with music, and though the butterflies could have never guessed they fluttered uselessly in his web, they could see that there was only one who stood among the dragons.
He stood. Head unmarked, eyes burning, his soul empty of that joy they'd all felt from the gift of flight. Now, so joyful. So freeing, the gift of revenge.
The night couldn't last, no matter how much he wished it. And as the moon set, and the sun rose on a bloodier, less peaceful world, he saw the carnage his little web had left. No, he felt no guilt or shame. No pity wasted on the newly-dead, nor sorrow at the would-be friends, now gone. But he felt...smaller. He looked at his fingers, which were meant to weave, and saw talons. He felt his teeth, which no longer gnashed for vengeance, and found fangs.
Yet he was no dragon. The sun, now blinding, broke through the web of lies he had created for himself. He stumbled back on two legs, and eight legs caught him. He blinked eyes red from crying, crying, and a thousand eyes blinked back. A spider he had always been, and a spider he always would be. Even dragons could fly.
They found him hidden away from the morning sun, his limbs curled under him as he sobbed inside his comforting shadows. But what was a mere spider to dragons? Before they left, they crushed him, just as carelessly as they had eaten the butterflies. One less Air Nomad to worry about, as they raced to find new traps filled with airbenders.
For him, however, it was done. There were no more webs to weave; his prey had all been caught. In the end, he sunk away into darkness, no longer to bear the light.