It's not that I mind the work that much, but by myself I am too slow to do it all, yet it needs to be done.
Sometimes my master is host, and my workload doubles. These are times I like the least, but I do what I need to get my master's house ready for his guests. Master helps too, in his own way, but mostly he keeps himself behind doors, locked away from people. It worries me sometimes, but then he comes out and I see that he is alive and well and I am glad.
I clean the paths. They are not really dirty, but they are full of things that would hurt the feet, if stepped on. I brush them aside, as only I can do, and my master sees this and is pleased.
I was not always here, washing and cleaning; once, I walked these paths on my own, travelling where I might wish, free and unbound. But I do not dislike the master, for he saved me when I was in need.
I see that this wall has begun to crack, so I fix it; I am good with the walls, and they are needed to keep the others out.
I strengthen the wood of the tables, so that they will not break when my master's guest beat upon them with their fists, not in anger but in agreement. It confuses me that they should do this, it seems so wrong. But my master, when I asked him, said it was not wrong, and I believe him, for he is good to me.
He feeds me, from time to time, with things he finds on his journeys. He is away quite a bit, and sometimes I wonder if he will ever return, but he always does return. And he will return again, I am sure of it.
There are usually others here, but today I work alone. It puzzles me that they are not here, but I am not worried, for my master has needed their help in the past, and has taken them on his journeys. Perhaps one day he will need me on one of those journeys, and will come and say to me "Come, you are needed where I travel."
Until then, I clean and I wash, I strengthen the walls and the tables, I keep the others from coming into his home. My home. Our home.
I've never had a home before, and I didn't know what it would be like. I've had masters before my master, but they did not keep me well, and they did not have a home.
They travelled too, those other masters. But they kept me bound in a box, unable to see where we were or what they were doing. When they let me out they only let me do the things that they said, and then let me go away. I was not happy then, I suppose.
My master has been gone a goodly long time now, I think. I do not know for sure for I can not measure time as he does, but it seems to be much longer than a week, I think. Much longer.
He has never been away this long before, and though I do not worry, I wonder.
The guests that my master has are very different from my master, and yet they are the same. They talk of strange things and stranger things, things I do not understand. I have asked my master of them and he has told me he will teach me of these things. He told me this before he left, that he would teach me these things when he returned.
He has been gone a long time now.
Some people have come to my master's home. I greet them as guests, like my master has told me to do, but they do not greet me back. They are not like my master or his guests, they are like the others we keep out.
They should not be here, I decide, so I try to fix the hole they have come through. I try, but one of them doesn't like me, and hurts me.
This is not good, and I worry.
I tie their legs to the floor. They are strange shapes, these others. They hurt me again, and I worry more.
I need to save myself, and the house, so I bind them into it, solidly like I fix the walls and the tables.
They do not move. I will keep them here, then, until my master gets back. He will know who they are, and what they are here for.
Until my master returns, I will keep his house strong, and the others here will wait with me.
I decide that there is much work to do, so I release one of the others, but change him so that he is like me, and may help me do my work.
This works well, so I change the rest as well. I now have a family, and will have them until my master returns. I hope he does not take my family away from me, then, but my master knows what is best.
I puzzle over what one of them said to me when I let him go, before I made him like me.
He said: "A Goddamn Pattern spider as a Familiar! That sonofabitch!"
I do not know what it means, but it is alright. I will ask my master when he returns. Until then, that one works well, like me.
The image that came to mind as I wrote that is when you return to a house after having been away for a while, and the spiders have crawled everywhere, and spiderwebs are starting to show up all over the place.