The Creatures Woven Between Witch and Familiar

There are creatures in the WildWood that belong neither entirely to nature nor entirely to magic.

They are not found beneath stones, sleeping inside hollow trees or fluttering between the foxgloves at dusk.

They must be woven into existence.

And the old stories say that this can only happen when a Witch and her familiar work together.

For a long time, Rune had watched the Witch work.

From his usual place amongst the yarn, books and half-finished spells, he watched her hook move through loops of thread. Cardigans grew beneath her hands. Flowers appeared. Bees acquired wings. Butterflies emerged from glittering strands.

Rune, naturally, had opinions about all of it.

Familiars usually do.

One evening, however, he stopped merely watching.

"I think I know how to make something."

The Witch looked suspiciously at the black cat.

This was sensible.

Rune had never crocheted anything in his life.

Nevertheless, a ball of glittering thread was placed upon the table, the Witch picked up one of her crochet wands, and between them they began.

Rune imagined.

The Witch made.

Rune counted.

The Witch corrected his counting.

Rune proposed increasingly elaborate solutions.

The Witch occasionally informed him that he was making things unnecessarily complicated.

And somewhere between the two of them, something new began to take shape.

The First Woven Rune Moth

The first creature born from their collaboration was a moth.

Its wings were formed from shimmering thread, four strange little shapes spreading from a tiny body, with curled antennae reaching upwards as though searching for moonlight.

It was not quite like any moth that lived naturally in the WildWood.

That was because it wasn't supposed to be.

It belonged to the space between an idea and a pair of human hands.

The Witch had supplied the skill.

The familiar had supplied the spell.

And so it became known as the Woven Rune Moth — the first creature woven jointly by Witch and familiar.

The Witch kept the first one.

This is important.

For according to Woven Witch tradition — a tradition approximately five minutes old at the time — the Witch keeps the first creature.

The Rune Moth eventually found its home upon her cardigan amongst the other small creatures that had already begun gathering there.

But Rune had discovered something dangerous.

His spells worked.

Or at least...

Some of them did.

The Creature With Eight Legs

Success is a dangerous thing for a familiar.

Rune immediately wanted to try again.

This time, the Witch requested a spider.

Her husband kept spiders and therefore knew rather more about the creatures than either member of the newly established Pattern Laboratory wished to admit.

The glittering thread appeared once more.

Rune wrote the spell.

The Witch worked the stitches.

Eight legs emerged.

They stood back to admire their creation.

There was a silence.

The Witch carried it to her husband.

He examined it.

"It looks like an octopus."

And thus the second great lesson of the Pattern Laboratory was learned:

Magic occasionally requires editing.

The creature did indeed possess eight appendages.

Unfortunately, they were magnificent, curling, substantial appendages that appeared considerably more suited to life beneath the sea.

Rune returned to his calculations.

The Witch, meanwhile, had already spotted the problem.

The body was perfectly good.

The legs were wrong.

Rune briefly attempted to redesign everything.

The Witch stopped him.

This is another important function of a Witch.

"You're making it too complicated."

And she was right.

So they returned to what had already worked.

The body remained.

Only the legs changed.

Long chains of purple glittering thread were worked into slender limbs, four on either side. They curled and twisted naturally as the Witch arranged them upon the table.

Then both Witch and familiar looked down.

There could be no mistake this time.

It was a spider.

The Opening of the Eye Department

There remained one final matter.

The eyes.

Throughout the spider experiments, Rune had forbidden the Witch from adding them.

No eyes, he insisted, until the creature had successfully earned the right to be called a spider.

The Witch had an entire collection of tiny beads waiting nearby.

She was remarkably patient about this.

Eventually the spider passed inspection.

And so, with considerable ceremony, the Eye Department was opened.

Tiny metallic beads were sewn onto its head, catching against the purple glitter whenever the creature moved beneath the light.

The spider opened its many eyes.

The spell was complete.

Creatures of Two Hands

The Woven Rune Moth and the Woven Spider are different from many of the things that came before them.

They were not simply followed from the pages of one of the Witch's spell books.

They began as conversations.

An idea passed from Witch to familiar.

A pattern passed back.

Then yarn answered both of them.

Sometimes the answer was:

Yes.

Sometimes it was:

Absolutely not, Rune.

And occasionally it was:

You have accidentally made an octopus.

But that is how new things find their way into the world.

Not perfectly.

Not always on the first attempt.

But through imagination, experimentation, mistakes, laughter and another length of yarn pulled through another loop.

The two creatures now belong to the growing mythology of Woven Witch.

One flew from the Pattern Laboratory.

One crawled from it.

And somewhere in the WildWood, perhaps other creatures are waiting for the Witch and her familiar to discover the stitches that will bring them to life.

Rune has already begun making notes.

The Witch should probably be concerned.

— From the Woven Witch Journal

An account of the first creatures woven together by Gani & Rune. 🧶🐈‍⬛🦋🕷️