Cadance could only blink in response. What else could properly convey her confusion? It was instinctual to do so when she was dumbfounded. Somepony might as well ask her to stop breathing if they thought she could find any other perfect response for any level of being flabbergasted.
"Is there something wrong?" Luna asked, cocking her head to the side and staring at the younger mare with a look that made Cadance think of the owls in the woods surrounding Wispgrove.
"Kinda...?" she finally managed, her breathing calmed with the wave of her pink forehoof and an outstretched foreleg — an old trick of hers. "But could you repeat yourself? Please, Luna?"
"Why?" Luna had a thoughtful, but concerned frown on her face.
"I wasn't sure I heard you right, that's all." If her words were not convincing enough, Cadance hoped her smile was.
Luna's frown deepened slightly, bearing subtle traces of skepticism. "Very well then. All I said to you was that I did not find spiders to be frightening. In fact, I think them to be very adorable and have kept thousands over the years. The smallest were only slightly bigger than my hoof you see — and that was just their body. When you factor in their legs, they were much, much bigger — and all the more delightful! The Everfree Forest was filled with numerous spiders located nowhere else on the planet. Some of the ones that Tia and I had there were as big as the average filly. I loved to play with them and pet their fuzzy bodies — they were just the sweetest things!" She grinned at the thought. "And there might still be some there, ones descended from the dear ones that we kept at the castle."
Cadance made a faint 'meep' of fear at the thought of there being spiders the size of children - which she did find adorable. "Hey, Luna?" she whispered.
"Oh, yes?" Luna looked at her innocently, a faint smile still adorning her muzzle. If Cadance looked down, she could see a distorted reflection of Luna's form in the marmalade that coated the bread in front of the night goddess.
"You're weird."
Luna's expression did not waver. "You are most observant. However, Tia says that creatures who are weird in the ways that I am weird have a special name now."
"Wait, really?" Cadance dimmed her horn as she set her teacup down on the picnic table.
"Indeed," Luna said, looking down at her lunch. She idly stirred the straw in her root beer glass, perking her ears as she heard it rattle and clink. "Tia took me to see somepony who said that I am not simply 'weird' but that I have 'the autism' as modern civilization puts it. 'Tis nice to know, I suppose. Now, why don't we do something more exciting?"
Cadance could still taste tea in her throat when she saw Luna light her horn up with turquoise magic. "Wait, like what? Isn't lunch fun?" She pointed her hooves to her garden salad and Luna's veggie-packed hero sandwich.
"We must see some spiders!" Luna cheered, giving Cadance a manic grin.
"Wait, wait—!"
...
Luna reached out a forehoof while Cadance balked and quickly shuffled behind the night goddess. Though the spider lumbered over to greet them, there was something about the sound that it made that defied all reason. Leg hairs brushed against crinkly leaves and all eight limbs were in motion as the creature approached the two princesses. However, the amount of shuffling sounds produced by the spider was closer to what an animal the size of a puppy would produce. Fallen leaves crinkled and snapped under the weight of the creature, and yet for something almost the size of the two full-grown equines, something was so much quieter about what was actually heard.
When the spider was close enough, they extended their mouth and gently nudged Luna's outstretched forehooves. In reply, the goddess smiled quietly, as though this were no different than letting a curious pet sniff a stranger. She stood by, unflinching, while her flowing mane gave a mindful twinkle. The wild, raw serenity she exhibited next to what would be considered barbaric and grotesque was something unmatched by the primped politeness of Princess Celestia. Once they were done with the initial 'sniff' test, the giant tarantula nudged at Luna with a gentle headbutt.
Finally, the goddess gave the creature a proper scratch. She smiled gleefully as she tickled the thick, coarse hair that made up the spider's fur. Brown and orange stripes met deep blue as Luna buried her forehoof in the spider's coat, giving it hearty scratches as she broke out into a mischievous grin. She moved her hoof back and forth, watching as the creature's eight red eyes become creased with joy. Their pinchers clicked with contentedness, and the merry sound bled into the din of the Everfree Forest. For a moment, Cadance was able to feel a flicker of ease in being in a place that was devoid of normal elements of Equestrian nature, like birdsong.
Slowly, the spider began to warm up to Luna's affection even more. Merry clicks began to spill into the forest and the thumps of eight great spider legs dancing with delight filled the clearing. The spider was stretching up to meet Luna's hoof gliding down their body, eager to have one itch after another scratched.
"See?" Luna said, her tone bright with joy. "There is no reason to fear these creatures. This one says their name is She-Who-Dances-When-Hugged, or G'rahrg in the language of the spiderfolk."
"Listen," Cadance squeaked, her ears still nervously swiveled to the side. "Luna, I love you, but that spider is still big enough to gobble up the little sisters of Twilight's friends."
Luna rolled her eyes and continued to give G'rahrg strong head pats. "Aye, perhaps so. Still, she would not, for none of the spider-folk prefers the flesh of ponies, whether they are descendants of my old pets or the subjects of Emperor Ahgg in Maretonia's rain forests. The spiderfolk of the Everfree are mere pygmies compared to his Great Spider Tribe."
"Oh g-gods," murmured Cadance with a shaky gulp. She raised her wings as if to hide behind the purple-tipped feathers. "So what do they eat?"
In response, Luna chuckled with a boisterous warmth not found in Princess Celestia's controlled, well-timed noblemare's laughs. While the sound was unexpected, Cadance knew that she should probably have anticipated an unconventional response from Luna.
"Dear Cady, the diet of Everfree spider-folk is no different than that of tarantulas, for the most part. They have become accustomed to the fauna of the Everfree, which includes a lack of birds and other non-thinking creatures specific to these woods. They will also feast on more raccoons and other common creatures, but never enough to want to venture near ponies. We often frighten them."
Cadance blinked again, shyly poking her head out and re-folding her wings. "We frighten them?"
"Indeed! Have you not considered that even spiders have fears?" Luna leaned down to rub her cheek along the top of the spider's bristly head. "Tia dismissed the idea of growing close to them, as the first runts gifted to us by the Empress Shelob, Ahgg's foremother, were afraid of our species. I took the time to befriend them when an Alicorn and ponies alike shunned the precious sweethearts. Soon, they understood that my divinity was not to be feared, for I wished to protect them. However, they remain afraid of ponies, and the ways that they tame, make war, and settle places. To them, you are close enough to a predator that they will reject consuming pets, for your smell lingers upon them and they wish not to lure your kind to their homes."
G'rahrg shuffled about with a strange deliberateness and followed the motion with a few twitches of her mouth.
"Oh, how interesting," Luna murmured. "G'rahrg has said that pony-smell and your magics make most companion animals taste terrible and that they already did not like the taste of most domesticated companions."
"Whaaa?" Cadance shook her head, utterly baffled. Her mane flopped with the motion, and one of her ears remained swiveled to the side as she pawed at the ground. "How can ponies be anything like predators? We're nothing like dragons, qilin, bears, yeti, lions, or—"
"Ahem," Luna cut in. The goddess was standing tall again, and there was a kind, albeit hard to decipher look in her eyes. "Think of the relationship that you ponies have with the chicken. You dictate the structure of their world, where they may go, and who they live with. In return, you claim their unfertilized offspring. That does not mean that they live without fear when you consider what their world is like."
"We don't have a symbiotic relationship with spider folk, though," piped Cadance. She trotted out from behind Luna and gingerly extended a forehoof to G'rahrg while her body trembled.
"Ah, yes," Luna noted, shooting Cadance a delighted smile as she watched the scene unfold in front of her with intense interest. "'Tis not an exact comparison, yet I do hope it illustrates my point well — just how might your crystal ponies relate to the Arctic now that the Empire has returned? Can you think of any creatures that would fear your subjects? What of the pastures that your ponies build for crystal sheep? Something completely innocent can be quite fearsome to the non-sapients that share the world with us, and they are not dark magic or foes leaping from myth."
"Huh, I never thought about things that way before," Cadance admitted, blinking nervously.
Eventually, G'rahrg deemed Cadance's forehoof acceptable and gave the pink pony an approving headbutt, to which Luna gave her own dance of jubilee in response. Her eyes shone brightly and Luna let loose a laugh of delight. Cadance had made a new friend.
Author's Note
In group therapy, there was a writing exercise. The prompt was to write a relaxing scene. Naturally, I wrote about petting giant tarantulas. I decided that the only suitable thing to do with my prompt material was to turn it into a bit of fluff and pony fiction.
