The Weaving Pirates

“…What are you asking of me, Panda?” The young captain leaned back in the large beanbag chair.

The Hylotl kicked him, “Exactly what it sounds like, idiot! You’re tragic backstory! Why the hell is someone barely older then me a pirate?” She flops over onto a second beanbag. “And with that weird spider… thing… you turned into. Surely there’s some story behind that.”

Sar shifted into a more comfortable position, “I don’t think it’s… tragic. It’s just my story,” she kicked him again from her spot, “OW, fine. I’ll tell you.”

They both wiggled into more comfortable positions.

“My story starts with my parents. Two very intelligent people. Scientists from all over would come and talk to them about whatever it was that adult talked about. My Parents knew so much, but what interested them the most was spiders and those spidery people. The Arachne.

And me, I just like the Arachne cause I thought they made pretty cloth. So I learned to weave. It wasn’t long till my childish designs were becoming better then the tapestries that I had studied.

So, with my parents bugging them and me surpassing them. We might have pissed off one that knew magic or somethin’? I donno. Well, either way, they cursed me and my parents. Saying they’d only remove the curse if we could get enough money to pay them to remove it.

The curse was that once a month, usually about the third week for me, we’d turn into an Arachne. The transformation hurts, but I’m used to it by now. 

And well, my parents were enthused. Finally, they could stop buggin’ the Arachne for samples of things like blood, silk, and venom. I was meh about this all. It took a few months for me to get fed up with it.

So… I tried to convince my parents to fork the money over to the crazy spider person, but no. They didn’t. I don’t have that sort of money. So… I went into stealing things.

I became a pirate to pay off that stupid Arachne. There’s this interest on it though, so anytime I get near the goal, it gets bigger. 

I wasn’t getting anywhere by being a crew member for a Pirate Crew. So I slipped away and made my own crew, that’s you, this way I’ll make more. Hopefully.”

He shrugged, “See? Not all that tragic.”

She just blinked at him, “Not when you tell it… like that.” Her mind was cringing at the lack of theatrical elements and the lackluster storytelling.

“It’s tragic once you remember that a crew of two kids isn’t gonna do much.”

He waved her off, “Pa-sshaw. You have no faith in our skills. You’ll learn.”