9th of Summer, 517 A.V.
Something was strange tonight.
Evarista was overlooking the docks, her feet dangling off the ledge of a roof over a nondescript building. All the buildings here looked nondescript to her, with only the local denizens knowing exactly where to find what. The pleasant buzz of alcohol was still fresh in her brain, making the lights below blur together slightly. Although she usually enjoyed just watching the night city from above, tonight she found herself distracted by unfamiliar thoughts - as if looking was not enough any more. This was the first time anything like this entered her head.
Casting her eyes into the gaping darkness of the alleyway below, the girl idly wondered how often people passed there. She hadn't even made up her mind to do anything, but her face was already shifting without any conscious input. Pulling out a string of silk from her mouth, she let the moist ending drift with the wind towards the other side of the alley. She couldn't see the thin string with her eyes, and she didn't really rely on her eyes to navigate the rooftops, since it was pitch-black up here. The faint glow of the string's aura was enough to tell her that her string got stuck to the roof across, forming a bridge across the alley.
She paused for just a moment to evaluate what she was about to do. The "homemade" glue was supposed to stick like cement; she found that out the hard way. The silk was also tough enough to suspend fifty of her; she had found that out the hard way as well. It should be safe, then. Severing the string and gluing the other end to the ledge next to her, she repeated the process, sending another, longer string flying in the same direction. The direction of the breeze had changed slightly, so the second fiber stuck to the roof a fair distance away from the first. Irritating, but redoing it until it was perfect would be too bothersome. So, meh. Should still work.
Securing a pair of hook-like claws around the longer string, she swung down from the roof and slid down along with gravity until she was dangling in the middle of the alley. Wise enough not to look down, she used a pair of mandibles on her face to pull out a third string, and glued it to what she presumed was the middle of the second. Clamping her claws around the string to prevent her entire body weight from resting on her neck, she lowered herself down in small jerks, spinning this third thread on on the way, until her feet touched the ground. Since the buildings on either side of the alley were only three stories tall, it didn't take long. Gluing the end of the string to the walkway below her feet, she paused to figure out what to do next, conjuring up the images in her head half from memory and half from instinct.
It didn't take long to see that the next move would be to directly connect the anchor points on the roofs to the anchor point on the ground. This meant she had to climb back up. Twice.
Feeling the irritation rise again, Evarista suppressed it with the thought that there was a shortcut, and one she had some practice with. Trying to climb the wall itself like a human normally would, extra appendages notwithstanding, was a stupid and narrow-minded way to do things. All she had to do was to extend some really long legs all the way up to the roof ledge, hook onto it, and then pull herself up by absorbing the legs again. The best part was that it didn't require a lot of muscle work, only a good grip.
Thought and done. Two more threads to glue to the ground, with each of the other ends going on either rooftop. After hiking up her blouse, she let a set of chitinous legs sprout from her back and reach upwards, gradually extending along the wall and probing it to check for the ledge. Once again, relying on sight would do her no good, so she didn't even bother to raise her head to check what was going on up there. Luckily, it turned out that this wall had no windows, so when she finally grabbed something that felt like a ledge, she was fairly certain she'd end up on the roof and not in some angry fisherman's bedroom. Now she only had to hoist herself up by retracting the extra limbs. With no real muscle strain involved, the journey turned out to be almost effortless, save for having to keep a distance from the dirty wall to avoid scraping off her face on it.
When she felt that she was almost at the top, she finally
reached up with her human hands and groped around until she found a corner to grab onto. Of course, her lanky arms weren't enough to pull her up, so mechanical assistance from yet additional limbs was necessary to flop her grunting and huffing form over the ledge and onto the roof.
Dusting off her skirt and rubbing a fresh bruise, Evarista chewed on her lip thoughtfully. This whole idea would probably not work. She was about a thousand times too heavy to do it the way it was intended to be done, which assumed you were able to walk vertically on your own thread without issue. These "workarounds" were less than practical. Turning herself small enough to make gravity a non-issue was not something she was confident she could do.