The next day, I woke up covered in webbing and feeling just a smidgen trapped.

I supposed I'd invited this kind of awakening by falling asleep surrounded by spiders. Hopefully I'd be able to sneak off without offending them, though. I wasn't sure what it was supposed to mean that I'd been essentially tied down in my sleep, but I was fairly certain that it meant 'dinner.'

I did not like the idea of being dinner.

I shifted my hand a little and was relieved to find that while I was covered in webs, I was not trapped in them. Not dinner, then. I had been covered like the tree I was leaning on, just another thing to live on, and I would be able to get free just by tearing the webs. That would be awfully rude to the webs' inhabitants, though.

Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly sit there for as long as the spiders lived. That would be a looong time, if what they were telling me was true-they'd said they lived as long as Elementals!

Nonsense, of course, but nice to think about. I'd never met someone who could live that long besides another Elemental before.

Meh, whatever. Lifespan wasn't very important to me, since there was never a guarantee that Fearlings wouldn't kill me tomorrow. No point in having a long lifespan if you might die young anyway.

Mwahahahahaa! I have captured the Storyteller! a tiny spider voice squeaked from the vicinity of my knee. I looked down, moving slowly so as not to disturb the spiderwebs in my hair or the spiders within them.

Sure enough, there was a baby spider on my knee who was almost dancing with glee. Such a cute little thing, but he was dripping venom that was burning through the knee of my pants. And he'd captured me, which probably meant that I was dinner.

So you have. Are you going to eat me now? I asked politely. It had never hurt anyone to be nice on their presumable deathbed.

The little spiderlet tapped my knee in indignation. No! Tell another story!

Well, he had trapped me fair and square-I couldn't move without disturbing the spiderlets still sleeping on me. According to Elemental tradition, that meant I had to do something for him, and while it wasn't exactly a normal kidnapping request, it was still valid.

Hey! You wanna hear about the very first Elemental ever to have a familiar?

It was one of my favorite stories-had been for as long as I could remember. Some Elementals had familiars, animals that they'd bonded with and granted some of their powers. I had always loved that idea-a friend and an equal to play with.

The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, or perhaps beside that time or inside of it or even above it, there was an odd Elemental. He was a Stone Elemental, and as everyone knows Stone Elementals are a bit strange, but this one was particularly unusual.

He lived with a human.

Not just any human, either. He lived in the great palace of the ruler of all of the humans on his entire planet.

The Legend was like a king, except he only ruled one planet and he was chosen for his famous adventures rather than birth. Stone had brought the Legend with him on many adventures, possibly because he'd trained the human to attack Stone's enemies. Some of these adventures had been grand, and the title Legend had been bestowed with no hesitation upon the human.

Somehow, Stone had been convinced to live with his human while this was going on. The bond between the two only strengthened with time, and before long Stone could not bear the thought that the Legend would be torn from him. Humans were fragile, and got carried away as often by sickness as by battle, and even simply because they had grown too old! Stone was determined that his human would not encounter the same fate.

After much experimentation and research, and more dumb luck than either of those things, Stone found a way.

He called the Legend to him one day and renewed their bonds of friendship and loyalty before asking the Legend to trust him.

"I had an idea," he told his human earnestly, "and I need your help."

Of course, the Legend agreed to help Stone with whatever he required-the trust between them was old and deep, and the Legend would have followed Stone unquestioningly to death. He didn't even ask what Stone intended to do, such was his trust-though some maintain that that is human nature at work more than decades of friendship.

Regardless of what prompted this decision, Stone's human agreed to help him and Stone was only too happy to try out his idea. He delved deep into his core as if he was going to summon his hardest rock. He dug deeper, deeper, and deeper still until he found what he was looking for-the very core of his magic, called liquid magic by scholars. He dragged it out of himself and to the surface, where it flowed into the Legend as if it had always belonged to the human.

Stone's power was never depleted by this, strangely-some human-lovers even say he became stronger. He and his human had many more adventures in their lives, which are stories for another day. But the Legend was rumored to be beloved by all ordinary stones and caves after that, and experienced unusual longevity and vitality for humans-indeed, he could be mistaken for a queerer, weaker version of an Elemental. He fought with Stone for as long as they both lived, and they died together in the Duel of Two Fates after a long, full life together, peaceful and content.

After I finished the story, the baby spider looked up at me from my knee and gave the impression of satisfaction. I realized that I had once again gained a small army of baby spiders in my audience, and I waved to some that I recognized. I didn't think they could take being hit by a snowball yet, tiny and fragile as they were. Maybe after a little while-spiders were so peculiar! At least none of them were sleeping, so I could stand up without worrying about disturbing them.

And now, I'm afraid, I've been here too long already. I'll come back to visit soon!

I stood up slowly and carefully, making sure that all of the baby spiders had plenty of warning but no time to try to capture me again. They would get no more stories from me!

Besides that, I had a Kozmotis to visit, and maybe I'd be able to find Wind again!

Wow, there are a lot of spiders in this story. About half the working titles of my chapters involve spiders. Oh well, sorry about how short it was, but it would have been weird to have the story and then the actual plot coexist in one chapter. Also, I couldn't make the Stone story longer or it wouldn't be a good folk tale.

Thanks to all of my reviewers and my anons, I hope you enjoyed!

EDIT: WHATA:SJDFASLDFKASJDF THIS HAS TEN CHAPTERS HOW I DON'T UNDERSTAND I am so happy right now I never thought I would make it to the double digits!