[The Muffet who appears in this memory is still unmistakably herself, but she's visibly younger than the one her fellow castaways know- not a child, certainly, but at least five years behind the woman she is in the present day.]
[The surroundings appear to be a stage, in what is clearly recognizable as a school auditorium. She's dressed like a dancer- hair pinned up neatly to keep out of the way, wearing a simple white leotard with a wrap of short, sheer cloth around her hips as a skirt and a pair of ballet shoes, both of the latter two items a deep purple several shades darker than her bare skin. Looking thoughtfully around her, she makes one quick, neat little gesture over one of the backstage lights.]
[From somewhere distantly to one side of the stage, an announcer calls her name and declares her the final contestant for the freestyle division in the calm, slightly bored tone of someone who has, by this point, been doing more or less the same thing all day. The music starts as she steps smoothly out to face the audience.]
[Her movements are elegant and poised, vaguely reminiscent of ballet but clearly a style all its' own, something developed and practiced by a culture with a distinctly non-human amount of limbs.]
[And a few other inhuman qualities, too- as Muffet moves forward, steps soft and delicate at first but growing more precise and swift as the tempo increases, a keen eye will see than she leaves lines of gleaming silk behind her, so thin as to be nearly invisible. They form behind her feet as she passes over the stage and spin around her gracefully-positioned fingers as she raises her hands just so, anchoring each line to just the right spot as a silken structure begins to take shape, somehow always stepping in just the right way to avoid becoming tangled in or tripping on her own thread.]
[As the music reaches a crescendo, she twists her fingers into the strings, steps into one small, specific spot on the stage, and pulls.]
[One string catches on another, coming up against another in turn, pulling each other upwards until, in one graceful gesture, Muffet has managed to raise a cat's-cradle maze of tightrope strings suspended in the air above the entire stages, one line coming to a stop just before her right foot.]
[She steps smoothly upward onto the line, continuing onwards and upwards without missing a beat, as though she was still dancing on solid ground and not an ever-shifting maze of wire-thin strands. As she moves she pulls some strings into place and lets others go, the gestures so neat and carefully timed that it all looks like part of the dance, and the entire structure moves and changes with her as she goes, her precision timing allowing her to make each step confidently without ever once glancing down to make sure that she's putting a foot down on a line instead of plunging into empty air.]
[As the music comes closer and closer to the end she dances on wrapped in threads, both a puppet pulled by them and a puppeteer pulling on them, somehow always managing to put herself where she needs to go. At last, the song finishes and she stops dead in midair, suspended above the stage...]
[And just as the very last note sounds, one final line is pulled forward, trailing all the way from backstage... where it pulls the switch of a stage light into the on position, causing Muffet's structure to be lit clearly from behind and illuminating each and every previously too-thin-to-see line of silk with its' glittering light, revealing the true shape of the web she'd carefully formed behind and around herself as she danced delicately out into the air.]
[Hanging above the stage as silence descends at last, Muffet sits in the middle of a massive pair of feathery, intricately-detailed, gleaming silken wings, unfurled as if to take flight.]
[The silence lasts a few heartbeats more before applause erupts from the audience, the very loudest clapping coming from all four hands of the joyfully beaming little spider monster sitting in row three.]
[Muffet smiles warmly and curtseys while still in midair, before letting go of the strings clutched carefully in her fingers bit by bit, slowly lowering herself back to the stage and letting the web come apart around her as the lights are turned off again.]
[She faces the judges and curtseys again, then turns and walks offstage with her expression serene... only to break into a wide, delighted grin the second she makes it backstage where they can't see her, barely managing to smother her fit of gleeful giggling with a pair of her hands.]
[A few deep breaths and she manages to get herself back under control, continuing out through the backstage area and into the hallway- until her poise is abruptly shattered back into laughter as the spider monster from the audience runs forward and greets her with an embrace that blurs the line between hug and tackle.]
["Aunt Riane, I'm so glad you came to watch!" "My little one, if you honestly think I would have missed this, then you've gone and danced yourself delirious with exhaustion." "Now, how is it you think you can get away with calling me little when I can pick you up with one hand, again?" "As I've told you many times and will tell you every time, little one: when you've been there to see someone hatch from the egg, they will always be smaller than you in your head. It doesn't matter how big they grow."]
[Still beaming fondly at her, Muffet's aunt crawls up her arm to sit comfortably on her shoulder as they walk out of the auditorium together, their chatter falling into the comfortable banter of a good-natured family argument that's been repeated so many times it's become tradition.]
["Now, there's just one thing that confuses me..." "Oh? What is it?" "Well, I admit I was never as good at rise dancing as my sister was, but I can't remember ever having any routines that involved using lights."]
[Muffet smiles impishly.]
["It's not as though there's any rules against doing it- I checked. ...And anyway, it is the freestyle division. So, of course, I danced freely. And with style."]
[Riane manages not to crack up laughing at her niece's expression of blatantly fake innocence, but only barely.]
III. Rig the game
[The surroundings appear to be a stage, in what is clearly recognizable as a school auditorium. She's dressed like a dancer- hair pinned up neatly to keep out of the way, wearing a simple white leotard with a wrap of short, sheer cloth around her hips as a skirt and a pair of ballet shoes, both of the latter two items a deep purple several shades darker than her bare skin. Looking thoughtfully around her, she makes one quick, neat little gesture over one of the backstage lights.]
[From somewhere distantly to one side of the stage, an announcer calls her name and declares her the final contestant for the freestyle division in the calm, slightly bored tone of someone who has, by this point, been doing more or less the same thing all day. The music starts as she steps smoothly out to face the audience.]
[Her movements are elegant and poised, vaguely reminiscent of ballet but clearly a style all its' own, something developed and practiced by a culture with a distinctly non-human amount of limbs.]
[And a few other inhuman qualities, too- as Muffet moves forward, steps soft and delicate at first but growing more precise and swift as the tempo increases, a keen eye will see than she leaves lines of gleaming silk behind her, so thin as to be nearly invisible. They form behind her feet as she passes over the stage and spin around her gracefully-positioned fingers as she raises her hands just so, anchoring each line to just the right spot as a silken structure begins to take shape, somehow always stepping in just the right way to avoid becoming tangled in or tripping on her own thread.]
[As the music reaches a crescendo, she twists her fingers into the strings, steps into one small, specific spot on the stage, and pulls.]
[One string catches on another, coming up against another in turn, pulling each other upwards until, in one graceful gesture, Muffet has managed to raise a cat's-cradle maze of tightrope strings suspended in the air above the entire stages, one line coming to a stop just before her right foot.]
[She steps smoothly upward onto the line, continuing onwards and upwards without missing a beat, as though she was still dancing on solid ground and not an ever-shifting maze of wire-thin strands. As she moves she pulls some strings into place and lets others go, the gestures so neat and carefully timed that it all looks like part of the dance, and the entire structure moves and changes with her as she goes, her precision timing allowing her to make each step confidently without ever once glancing down to make sure that she's putting a foot down on a line instead of plunging into empty air.]
[As the music comes closer and closer to the end she dances on wrapped in threads, both a puppet pulled by them and a puppeteer pulling on them, somehow always managing to put herself where she needs to go. At last, the song finishes and she stops dead in midair, suspended above the stage...]
[And just as the very last note sounds, one final line is pulled forward, trailing all the way from backstage... where it pulls the switch of a stage light into the on position, causing Muffet's structure to be lit clearly from behind and illuminating each and every previously too-thin-to-see line of silk with its' glittering light, revealing the true shape of the web she'd carefully formed behind and around herself as she danced delicately out into the air.]
[Hanging above the stage as silence descends at last, Muffet sits in the middle of a massive pair of feathery, intricately-detailed, gleaming silken wings, unfurled as if to take flight.]
[The silence lasts a few heartbeats more before applause erupts from the audience, the very loudest clapping coming from all four hands of the joyfully beaming little spider monster sitting in row three.]
[Muffet smiles warmly and curtseys while still in midair, before letting go of the strings clutched carefully in her fingers bit by bit, slowly lowering herself back to the stage and letting the web come apart around her as the lights are turned off again.]
[She faces the judges and curtseys again, then turns and walks offstage with her expression serene... only to break into a wide, delighted grin the second she makes it backstage where they can't see her, barely managing to smother her fit of gleeful giggling with a pair of her hands.]
[A few deep breaths and she manages to get herself back under control, continuing out through the backstage area and into the hallway- until her poise is abruptly shattered back into laughter as the spider monster from the audience runs forward and greets her with an embrace that blurs the line between hug and tackle.]
["Aunt Riane, I'm so glad you came to watch!" "My little one, if you honestly think I would have missed this, then you've gone and danced yourself delirious with exhaustion." "Now, how is it you think you can get away with calling me little when I can pick you up with one hand, again?" "As I've told you many times and will tell you every time, little one: when you've been there to see someone hatch from the egg, they will always be smaller than you in your head. It doesn't matter how big they grow."]
[Still beaming fondly at her, Muffet's aunt crawls up her arm to sit comfortably on her shoulder as they walk out of the auditorium together, their chatter falling into the comfortable banter of a good-natured family argument that's been repeated so many times it's become tradition.]
["Now, there's just one thing that confuses me..." "Oh? What is it?" "Well, I admit I was never as good at rise dancing as my sister was, but I can't remember ever having any routines that involved using lights."]
[Muffet smiles impishly.]
["It's not as though there's any rules against doing it- I checked. ...And anyway, it is the freestyle division. So, of course, I danced freely. And with style."]
[Riane manages not to crack up laughing at her niece's expression of blatantly fake innocence, but only barely.]