The Extent of Gratitude

            It was, to her, the ideal way of life.

Spider had naught a care in the world, only a sense of profound satisfaction. A web, crafted by her spindle legs, glimmered with morning dew in the sunlight’s warm embrace. She felt the sun’s tender warmth caress her abdomen. It filled her head with thoughts of joy, of love for life and thankfulness for everything on the earth. Everything was sacred. Precious. Deserving of her affection.

            But the sun held her love more than any other. For without it, how could she live? Nothing would exist without the sun’s blessings.

I must thank him, Spider thought to herself. And so, she set about crafting a web unlike any other. She climbed to the very tip of the tallest tree in the forest, a white pine swaying in the wind, and began her work.

With utmost care, she spun her pride and joy, the most beautiful web she had ever produced, fine strands of silken elegance possessing the strength to catch a bird. She wove it around the tip of the white pine, so that none of the tree’s upper branches remained free.

Then Spider leapt from her structure and the let the breeze carry her to a lower tree, all the while trailing a line of web behind her. She continued this process through sunrise and sundown, day after day, week after week, until a great monolith, a cone of ashen spider web, dominated the forest like the peak of a snowcapped-mountain.  

            “Sun! Gaze at what I have constructed in your name. All for you, in gratitude.”

            But Sun ignored her.

            Spider’s heart grew bitter and cold, until the sun’s rays no longer held any joy for her. Rather, they haunted her, like mocking reminders of her own insignificance, her own ineptitude compared to the sun.

            She screamed at him, one cold night, in a flurry of rage. “Am I not good enough? What have I done to deserve your scorn? Damn you, Sun. I wish you would take your warmth and leave the world in ruin.”

            But instead, the world around her fumed as Sun focused his attention on her. Her blood boiled in the heat and her legs shuddered. Images flashed in her head. The web she spun, filled with the husks of the dead. Realization crept in. In her lust for recognition, for love, she had tormented the world around her. She had cast out her own ideals.

            Death, it would seem, was her punishment.