Cohost writing prompt: @littlegods — A Little God of tangled things
Nobody's quite sure why the last guy out here had three old telephone poles planted in the barren wasteland of the back yard, but that was the start of it. Nina took a hammer and some nails and a ball of twine out back one afternoon and ran some string between the poles. It seemed the thing to do.
They've all had a hand in it since then, as the mood strikes, but Nina's hands are the ones that touch it most often. String, old rope, leftover wire; a spreading field of tent pegs and posts that anchor it at dozens of points, a dense web, and in the centre, like the worst yarn ball imagainable, a growing lumpy mass that's heavy enough now to make the original poles creak. Obsolete computer cables and the curly cords from telephone handsets are woven in there, ribbons, the short offcuts from the end of balls of wool.
It's about a year since it started showing up in peoples' dreams, when they sleep in the house. Since it started to feel present in a way that's more than simply being there.
It thrums, sometimes, on the edge of hearing. You could tell yourself it's the wind, or a harbinger that its own weight is going to snap those poles one day (and heaven help anyone standing anywhere near). Sometimes a high tension-note; sometimes a low chest-resonating throb.
You all know Nina talks to it. You're starting to wonder if someone should have asked, long ago, what-all she's been telling it.