Beforehand, Arachne prepares herself.
She knows what colors she'll need for the story she'll tell. Blues and white for the sea and the foam, gray and green for the olive tree, gold for the aegis. Yes, she's prepared. There is one problem, though, one that annoys her greatly. The center piece of it all, the star at the podium—she has no idea what she looks like.
Divine, Arachne supposes. Yes, too beautiful for mortal eyes to comprehend. She gets every color she can, yarns and yarns of them, just in case. She needs to prove her point, to show her worth, and she won't do that with a faulty work.
Still, she dislikes it, not knowing what she looks like, the only source of inspiration she could get being the cold statues in her temples.
Arachne demands a contest, and Athena comes to her, in a flash of lightning, thunder echoing her steps. And isn't that wonderful? To summon a goddess, an immortal being from Olympus to her meager hut?
She's the most terrific being Arachne has ever seen, with her unbound red hair curling around her perfect skull like a nest of snakes, a silver helmet resting atop her head like a crown. Her lovely face is cold and made of marble and her eyes, gray as her father's storms, dig into Arachne. She's beautiful. Looking at her hurts.
She smells of olives and sweetened wine and incense. Like one of her temples. Her body itself is a temple, one covered by a chiton gleaming white as a pearl, with weaved olive branches and complex patterns. She's taller than any human man, stronger than any by far. Her hands are perfect, not bony or dry like Arachne's. Immortal goddess that she is, what does she know of stiff muscles or trembling hands? Of needing to rest? And in spite of those limitations Arachne's mortality drags her down with, she has made out of herself a weaver as skilled as Athena, if not more!
The goddess is angry when Arachne tells her so. They take their places in front of their looms, and Arachne begins to weave.
With her bony hands she begins to work on her design, using the shuttle and needle and the thread she has. How lucky, she is! To have all the colors she needs!
Surely, even Athena herself will recognize her talent with the loom and thread, will concede that Arachne is better than this shack and plain clothes, that she deserves a place by her side, even with her aching muscles and tiring body and pained joints. She's no great beauty, Arachne, not like her goddess is, but surely someone as wise as her would admire her skill and spirit her away from the buzz of the insects and the flies, why, if even kings and queens commission her works!
She works, quietly, side to side of the goddess, and thinks this is what paradise is.
Athena doesn't look at her once. Not while Arachne spies on her to capture her likeness, but she fancies she can feel her eyes on her as she's intent on her work.
As she weaves the sticky white of the smith god's seed dripping down a slender leg, thinks, I'd try the same if I were a god, she wonders—does Athena weave for the gods up in Olympus? A mortal woman weaves for money or for her family, it is one of their duties to run a household, so does the gray-eyed goddess pose herself in front of her loom and weave exquisite see through dresses for Aphrodite, so fine it would be less indecent of she wore nothing at all? Does she weave matronly veils in blue and green for her father's wife? Tunics with thread of pure gold and lightning for him, capes dyed in the blood of soldiers for her brother? Gowns made of the shine of the moon and sun for her younger twin siblings? Is she to weave for her capricious uncle and the smith god who tried to marry her?
Yes, it must be the goddess that sits in front of her who does so. Who else if not her? Not the queen of the gods or her two sisters, Demeter frolicking in the fields and Hestia tending to her hearth. Not Aphrodite either, playing with the hearts of mortals. Yes, yes, it must be Athena who does so. Surely Athena would allow Arachne to join her in her tasks. Those human, womanly, tasks.
And then, all too soon, their time for weaving is done.
Athena presents a golden confection showing the gods on it. Beautiful, Arachne will recognize, because everything her goddess does is beautiful. Aphrodite's birth and the six original gods vanishing the titans, Hera and Zeus's marriage ceremony, her orchard of golden apples, Ares and her leading the troops to victory, Dionysus's ascension to godhood... The greatness of the gods, laid bare.
Arachne almost regrets not doing what she had originally planned to, her work showing all their faults. Almost. The one she has now is better.
The crowd gasps when they see her tapestry. It's long and lovingly done, shows the life of the goddess in her shack for all to behold.
Athena, not yet in her armour, being reared in the palace of her cousin Triton, all in blue and white to show the ocean and waves, next to Pallas. Their mock spars. The spectated match with Zeus, golden and white, in the audience and causing Pallas's death. Hephaestus's attempted rape of Athena, his seed dripping for her thigh, and the son it brought forth. Her furtively raising him. Hephaestus prostrating himself in front of Zeus and demanding her hand. The contest with her uncle for Athens, founded by the son of Hephaestus, the well of blue water and the gray and green olive tree in the forefront of the white buildings. The prophet Tiresias coming across her as she bathed naked in a spring and her blinding of him. Her turning Myrsine into the myrtle tree after the men murdered her, her turning Myrmex into an ant after she took credit for having created the plow, her turning Medusa into a monster. Her leading Perseus's blade to kill her.
Arachne paints her, all in gray.
The crowd is silent as they watch it, eyes wide and awed and afraid.
Arachne watches Athena, preening.
The goddess wordlessly reaches for her tapestry and unveils it further, stretching the cloth over to the floor and revealing the very top. The beginning, the end.
Her mother turned into a fly at the behest of Zeus, and him swallowing her whole.
Such a small thing, a fly. So insignificant. That was where the goddess had come from, the smallest of creatures.
Arachne knows the goddess's story more than any of her priestesses or priests, more than anyone else. She could worship her for the entirety of her human life, if she let her.
The goddess looks at her, at last, and Arachne puffs her chest, prepares herself to be spirited away—
Then there is pain.
She breaks and is unmade, her body twists and shrinks, her arms and her legs split into sections, hair falling and regrowing. Her head pulses and she feels like her eyes explode inside her skull, coagulate into a thousand fractions.
When she finally comes back, when there's no more pain, she opens her thousand eyes and sees the goddess looming above her, like the Athena Parthenos, stretching on and on towards the sky. She does nothing more than watch as Arachne scuttles away, sees how close she is to the floor, as she tries to jump to her extended hand. She runs to the loom, instinctual. Somehow she manages to make her way up her stool with her many limbs, working fine white thread into a pattern, into a ladder for her to use.
There is no one else in the shack except the two of them. They stay there and watch as a fly gets trapped in the web. Arachne unhinges her jaw and swallows it whole.
Like this, I consume you.
The goddess takes her in her hand.