Summary: Raphael finds an uninvited guest in his room. Takes place about 2 month after Assessment. Raphael is 7 and Karai is 8.
Rated: K+
Word Count: 749
SPIDER
Summer was Raphael's least favorite season in rural Chiyoda, as it brought him closer to some aspects of nature that he would prefer never to come into contact with – bugs. The hottest months drove them out in unspeakable numbers and varieties, from the bumbling death throes of cicadas as they dropped out of trees onto unsuspecting victims, to the rarer but truly deadly giant hornets. Unfortunately, despite Raphael's extra vigilance with sticky traps and nightly bedroom checks at the height of the season, it was still entirely possible for him to find himself in his current nightmarish predicament.
As if by some instinct, Raphael awoke before Karai came in to pester him into consciousness, only to stare into the black, beady eyes of the largest spider he had ever seen. His mind tried to deny the reality of the fanged horror show only inches from his face, on the very same pillow his cheek was pressed to. He gripped his blanket and held his breath, not daring to move. The drab, brown spider broke their stalemate with a simple twitch of a leg, sending Raphael into a lightning fast huddle at the foot of his bed. Clutching his blanket to his plastron as if it could shield him, he took a deep, panicked breath and screamed. The arachnid hell-beast sauntered casually across his pillow where his head had just been, completely indifferent to the racket.
He was still frozen to the spot in wide-eyed terror when Karai burst through the door seconds later.
"Kill it!" he bawled.
Karai's troubled features turned quickly to amusement at the sight of the large but harmless spider reducing her bruiser of a best friend into such a sorry state. She rolled her eyes and snatched a book off of Raphael's desk and set about rescuing him.
"It's just a huntsman spider, Raph," Karai chided with a grin. "And it's a baby, even."
Raphael scuttled from the bed with shudder, bringing his blanket with him and letting it drag on the floor as he backed up, chest heaving. "That's...that's a baby?!" he wheezed. It was the same size as the delicate hand Karai held the book in.
"Yeah, they get twice this big at least," she said nonchalantly as she used his pillow to gently coax the spider onto the hardcover. "It's kind of cute, we should keep it as a pet."
"No way!" Raphael protested angrily. Karai balanced the book like a platter and slowly approached him with a devilish grin. "Don't bring it over here!" he warned.
"Come on, let's go put it outside. You should like them, they eat cockroaches," she said reasonably.
To Raphael, the idea of something gross being eaten by something grosser did nothing to appease his mood and he shivered. "Just go without me," Raphael said in a pleading voice, hoping Karai and her new buddy would put much more than five feet of distance between them.
"Ohhh, fine," Karai sighed in exasperation.
As she turned for the door the book slipped in her open palm and tilted ever so slightly but abruptly enough to disturb the spider. Huntsman's were docile, but this one had had just about enough and bolted up Karai's outstretched arm. She shrieked in surprise and flung her arm out almost hard enough to hurt, inadvertently sending it soaring back in Raphael's direction.
He dropped his blanket on the floor and frantically brushed himself off and ran around the room. "Getitoff, getitoff," he hollered.
Karai, now laughing so hard she could barely breathe, finally got Raph to stand still long enough to determine that he did not, in fact, have a spider on him. She shook out the blanket and searched for it as Raphael jumped at the sight of his own shadow. Ten minutes and a failed recovery mission later, they trudged down the halls together to the kitchen for breakfast.
Raphael was fuming over Karai insisting on playing around with the creepy crawler in the first place, and now not only did he have to burn his pillow and book, he couldn't step foot in his room without his skin crawling. "We are trading rooms until I see that spider dead," he growled between gritted teeth.
She was still struggling to control her giggling, amber eyes sparkling with nearly-shed tears. "Deal, you big chicken," Karai agreed, elbowing him playfully in the arm.
Shout out to TheIncredibleDancingBetty for inspiring this idea, and to BelatedBeliever and FaithfulWhispers for their support XD