Evening. Having lazed around a few hours after dinner to be rested, Evarista was back in her room, mentally recycling the auristic images of the afternoon to burn them into her memory. Time for round two. Now that she was much better prepared, yesterday's failure could not repeat. The rebuilding of the distilling apparatus was something she was already familiar with, and there seemed to be nothing wrong with it in itself, so now she just had to do it again as she did last time. Licking the back of her teeth anxiously, she prepared for the second attempt to turn her mouth into a silk factory. The containment bladder came first, then the funnel, then the bendy tapering duct, and the valve at the end. The duct and the gland were the most important parts, and it would have been wiser to examine the spider's duct more closely as well before attempting to practice, but the girl was too impatient. The gland had to be tested without delay, so that the lessons could be cemented. It would have been unfortunate if she forgot the details of the revelations by the next morning. To avoid that, she needed to materialize the abstractions.
Sitting down at the desk, she assumed her usual relaxed pose to avoid passively straining any other part of the body, minimizing distractions. Closing her eyes and once again forcing the aural memories to the forefront of her mind, she slowly generated the metabolic machine that would be necessary to produce exactly the needed type of material. The oblong building blocks, designed to fit perfectly together, separated by only a minimal amount of liquid to allow for smooth motion through the system. The reservoir filled with the jelly, but it wasn't the same as yesterday at all. She didn't even need to compare any auras, it was easy to tell by the texture. Let the plasma flow down the funnel, through the duct, around the hyperbolic bends and turns. As the substance reached the exit, Evarista put her fingers in her mouth, grabbed the tiny semi-liquid fuse poking out of the spigot, and pulled. The resistance of the bendy duct sheared the substance as it was pulled, forming a fiber. She was now holding the end of a wet string that had freshly emerged from her mouth. It's the same picture as yesterday, but would the creation stand up to scrutiny this time?
Blood pumping with apprehension, the girl held the string at the base, which was still attached to her body, and pulled with the other hand to test its toughness. It didn't break. Nice, so there was some progress. She pulled harder, feeling the string stretch a little, but still no breakage. This was starting to look interesting! Wrapping the string around her fingers to better secure the grip, she then pulled with real force. The fiber stretched slowly, but did not break. Hardly believing what was happening in front of her, Evarista clenched her fists and pulled as hard as she could, feeling droplets of sweat forming on her forehead. The string dug into her hands until it hurt, and just continued stretching. When it became almost twice as long as it was originally, she gave up and let her hands drop to the desk, breathing heavily. The abused fiber was still hanging from her mouth defiantly. Wiping her forehead with a sleeve, the confounded silk lover tried to collect her thoughts and evaluate this unexpected turn of events.
To start with, there was no doubt that this was silk. Or at least something as good as it. While her upper body strength was nothing to brag about, she didn't expect to make a fiber that she couldn't pull apart. The piece of cobweb she had experimented with in the garden was also rather tough, but would surely have broken if she pulled it with all her might. Although, now that she calmed down and examined her creation more closely, the answer was obvious: the thickness. Of course! She was quite a bit bigger than the average spider, and without thinking about it, she had made a silk gland of massively up-scaled proportions. The fiber she was holding was about as thick as a fine wool thread used for sewing, which had to be many times the radius of anything an average-sized spider could spin. So, her product wasn't necessarily as strong as the real thing on a per-weight basis, but her advantage in body mass allowed her to cheat a little. No problem with that, though. This wasn't anything short of a success.
More importantly, how would she get rid of the string now? Having to ask a slave for scissors with it dangling from her mouth would be somewhat awkward. Right, perhaps her natural scissors would work. Trapping the base of the thread between her index and middle fingers, she flattened the digits into a pair of chitinous knives. The thread resisted even the sharp edges at first, but with some effort and the assistance of her other hand, she finally severed it. Holding up the liberated string towards the window proudly, she watched the remaining moisture glisten in the light of the newly emerged moon. This little fiber was definitely nothing to laugh at. However, it wasn't the end. Oh, almost forgot something important. Focusing on the shimmering thread, she located the aural corona, examining the tight and elongated building blocks she had tried so hard to replicate. There they were. The same shape and arrangement as the cobweb in the garden. The construction of the proteins was indeed the key to making silk. She had made them arranged correctly already in liquid form, so somehow, they could flow through all the twists and turns of the tapering duct without scrambling. That had to be the whole point of correctly generated silk dope. Considering the results, it seemed that there was no problem with the tapering duct, besides an inability to absorb all the moisture. Still, that was an insignificant detail. The improper creation of the liquid had been the real culprit yesterday.
Evarista couldn't explain why and how it worked, and wasn't really interested in that. She was no scientist, and didn't care to do any analysis beyond what was needed to make things work. Even so, there was definitely some work left to do. She didn't forget her auristic discovery of Archibald's five types of silk gland. Today she had only learned one, so there were four left. Who knew that some crawlie could be such a bottomless well of mysteries? Mysteries that she wanted for herself. Tomorrow, the ride would continue. Not forgetting to give the jar on windowsill a goodnight hug, the girl went to bed sober for the first time in weeks. Clutched in her fist was a slimy, stretched, and battered thread of genuine silk.