She started, "I was hoping to learn about the prophecy and what a behagthi is? Also, what's the relevance of the wolf? Oh.. but please if you know anything about how to go back to my world."

En'tum sat on his log bench and leaned forward to the warmth of the fire, his bones creaking at the movement, "That takes a whole lot to cover."

She sighed, nerves wringing with pent-up curiosity "Is there anything I should be worried about? Any expectations I'm set to live up to? Because there might be a chance you might be mistaking me for another person."

He stared into the fire for several beats with a sort of deadly calm that made her nervous. "Do you know the story of creation called the Red Spider?"

"No, sir. I'm hopefully guessing I'm about to find out." She was way out of her element. Any information she can use to make the world make sense again was welcome to her.

He chuckled, "Has anyone ever told you that you are too polite for your own good?"

"My grandmother taught me my manners well, especially with my elders. How I'm raised is something I cannot help, but I'm certainly willing to positively contribute even at my disadvantages."

"It was a rhetorical question, River." he sighed, his gaze glued to the fire.

"Oh." she said, blushing furiously.

It was 5 years ago when her grandparents died in a car accident. Ever since then, she has managed to improve her own independence by voicing out her will, asserting her capabilities, and owning up to responsibilities. Shamefully, being around elders retrogrades her progress by a whole large stretch. They prove to have a backsliding effect that leaves her feeling diminished like a futile kid.

At her silence En'tum continued, pointing at the red quilt stretching across their seat. It had a design of an odd-looking spider. "This is our most holy goddess, Natura Brumcia when she was only in maiden form. It was how she looked before her marriage. Four hairy spider legs and her body shaped as a brown circle signifying her wildness that cannot be tamed. She was both creator and destroyer: creating chaos and wildly destroying everything on her path."

River had a vague feeling about what was going to happen next. "Let me guess," she said, mouthing off before she can think better of it, "A man fixes the girl and saves the day."

En'tum didn't catch her pejorative tone. Instead, he looked deeper in thought to have even noticed her dry tone of distaste. "Even better, a behagthi saves the day. He had no name. No title. No family. He was an outsider-- our first behagthi who has fallen from another universe."

He stood, moving close to the window and watched the sky above. "It was the call of madness, you see. Her madness was a devastating magnetic force that had pulled him into the path of Natura Brumcia, a wild madwoman, spinning deliriously and wreaking havoc in her own universe. When he first laid his eyes upon her, he was terrified, trembling in shock and fear."

Lost in his thoughts, he continued to stare outside the window "But his perspective was fresh and his wisdom was untold; having come from another universe. He began looking at her like she was a discovery, resolving to use a distant and calculating point of view. He realized there was a certain logic to her madness. She had been a creature of habit, spinning in circles that produced a geometry of artful shapes. Each time, over and over again, she produced her pathways as a pattern so profound and astronomical that it would have been impossible to see with normal eyes. But, a behagthi is never normal." he said, glancing back at her.

She peered down at the red quilt blanket, noticing the geometry of circular shapes that made it seem like petals of a fully bloomed lotus flower. It was a pattern of Natura Brumcia's movement, it looked insane but at a wide-angle view, she found it had a certain geometric beauty to it.

"He tried many things to stop the madness," En'tum continued, "Even by blocking her habitual path. But by the force of a goddess, he was thrown off her path many times. Then, in a flash of inspiration, and at most, he probably had been influenced by her foolishness because he took a wild stab in the dark by making a dangerous move." he said in an ominous tone.

River was riveted by his story, not realizing she was holding her breath and gripping the blanket tight.

"Not caring for thought or risks, he reached out to her and grabbed a limb. When he did, the force of her momentum stretched her outward, extending her limb to the point of breaking. Just as she couldn't stretch no more, she began launching backwards toward him. But, the limb was damaged by the push and pull. It was stretched thin, elongated in the furthest lengths-- as it was pulled back by force it became something else entirely. It no longer resembled her limb. It became an ebony fabric stretching across our universe looking like the blackest sky of the heavens. It is how the dark space of the universe was created, it was transformed from a spider limb of a young goddess. Yet still, it was not in Brumcia's nature to stay put. So she abandoned her newly transformed limb, cut it off herself, and began spinning wildly once more."

She gasped, "That's insane."

The old man grinned, "She is a creature of habit. She would spin. As she had always done before. Young ones are stubborn that way."