Shelob stalked in the shadows, lurking. She rarely slept. Her children were hatching soon, bred from darkness. She snapped her mouth open and closed a few times. She had eaten her mate weeks ago. Their kind was decreasing, and she wouldn't admit to herself that she wasn't helping matters.

She was growing, her flabs of flesh getting tougher, stronger. Her webbing was thick, her poison deadly.

Orcs had started coming through her tunnels. None ever left. She could never have enough meat. She was the beginning of terrible rumors.

Her attention was drawn to her egg sac hanging in a corner. Her many eyes glinted in the dark. She crept forward. Thousands of tiny creatures wriggled in the translucent threads.

One escaped the net. Then they all did. A million little spiders swarmed the rocky walls, crawling over each other. The bag hung empty in seconds.

None were left by the next day. Hunted down, trapped by the webs of their own mama.

Shelob lurked in her tight crack in her gloomy wall and clacked her mouth open and closed.

She was still hungry.