The rubber-band game had taken taken hold in Spider Heaven. It involved tensioning a rubber band on an unassuming victim and snapping it, preferably in a place where the skin were most delicate. Mistrial liked her affection to be equal parts sadism so she took to this game with unfettered spirit and made the mistake of playing it on Kate Hex who had been snoozing on her belly along the sofa in the parlor. Kate responded by twisting around wildly and ramming a finger up into Mistrial’s eye, shoving it up back into the socket so it burst with fried star-patterns, then remained a while to scream over her as she writhed on the ground. This did not however affect Mistrial’s esteem, as she felt equally aggrieved, and just as Kate had, in her seat of anger, resolved to “solve” her, she intended to be the one to solve Kate instead, with the understanding that two wrongs don’t make a right but and yet at some point along an intensive string of wrongs the math opens up to new possibilities. Mistrial wore an eyepatch after that, she wasn’t sure if the eye were broken or cursed, but Kate’s touch had given it a new life of vivid colors and crazy patterns that swirled and lagooned. Another slight hiccup occurred where while in town selling produce Heathcliff had broken a bottle on someone’s head and stabbed them in the face with the jagged edges. Nobody could really judge the matter as there were no witnesses. It was known that something had been said, some verbal exchange, between the two parties earlier in the day, but no witness had come forth with reconnaissance of the subject matter. In their hearts, the coven stuck with their own kind over the townsfolk. Townfolk, they were convinced, were possessed of a stunted and mean spirit - if any soul lived in there at all. Like chattel, they were satisfied, and satisfaction was antithetical to the spirit of witchcraft whose glorious spirit is to go beyond the ordinary, the known: to snap the pathetic killing jar of a social order unaware, or worse, accepting, of the closed system it recycled its shallow ideations in. After some reflection, Mistrial felt the face-stabbing was a wholly good thing, and merited no further speculation. She was glad of it, and clung harder to the object of her affection, who in turn was deeply ingratiated by the infamy of stabbing someone in a cold-blooded fit of rage and finding strong support for it. The next incident was somewhat more dubious, though, more embarrassing than anything, and they only heard of it because the Canary had whispered it into a tree hollow. The tree then snitched, all things being equal to a tree, to Valorie who was starved for any ounce of attention. According to the rumor, a few days back Heathcliff had excused herself in a hurry and the Canary, against all words of caution, had pursued at a distance to spy over this person she still considered a stranger and interloper in the household, when at some distance from the house she heard a loud wailing, and there saw Heathcliff laid out upon the earth, clawing at her clothes, and there, emerging from her VA-GI-NA (these words the Canary apparently enunciated clearly and loudly,) was some sort of fanged intestinal snake that began yelling at Heath about returning to the Red Devils and how ungrateful she was, and how awful, how difficult it had been bearing her burden all this time, and the whole time Heathcliff pleaded and cried and ended up in such hysterics that the snake snapped and started biting her up and down her body and that’s when the Canary turned away and thought that other people ought to deal with their problems and not let them get out of hand like that and it was really no business of her’s anyhow. Mistrial asked Heath about the episode and Heath said it was a regular snake attack and she must have squatted over it to take a piss and was so surprised she collapsed on top of the poor thing and in trying to escape aggravated the assault beyond ordinary and the Canary must have seen this and invented a fanciful story around it. Mistrial preferred believing that to the horrible mysteries of the crotch snake. The whole affair came to a head for poor Canary when Heath casually let slip around Kate that the Canary was blabbing secrets into the hollows of trees again. The Canary, rounding the corner with a bowl of hot soup, threw it down Heath’s back and ran out the house. Kate Hex flashed with ire and told Heath to let the kid be - she’d take care of it. So Heath and Mistrial snooped endlessly to find out what punishment would be metered out and found Kate Hex talking down to the kid who wrung her decrepit little hands over and over like she were trying to scrub something out. Kate was really laying into her and gave some direction to the tongue and the Canary stuck it out, looking at the tip of it, and Kate grabbed hold of a sudden yanked it like she expected to come away with it. The Canary slapped her hands around her mouth and Kate walked away. The little girl looked around and then ran up to the window they were looking through to catch a glimpse of her reflection, sticking out her tongue and observing it from every angle. A totally normal pink tongue. But it was the last time they’d ever hear her speak again.