You walk past the pigeons and the ants, feeling slightly squeamish and like you were going to hack up a lung, but otherwise undeterred. Hardly the worst thing you'd seen here.
You stepped into the next room, the same way you always did, albeit coughier. In the back sat someone. The Weaver. This place left you second-guessing, but not that bad. The tapestries, the webs, the flowers intertwined and woven into the webs. They were the Weaver, alright. The Weaver sung a song to themselves, as if they didn't so much as notice you there. It's a familiar song, one you could trace all the way back to before--before? It started out soft but slowly it got more frustrated, still gentle, but faster they went, more rage went into each word. The lyrics felt like they were about a reference just out of reach, one you might've gotten earlier, but whatever they meant they were singing their heart out.
You stepped closer, picking one of the flowers that were tangled in the webs. It was pink, and while other similar flowers were tangled throughout the room and it was quite distinctive, you couldn't pinpoint a species. Still, it struck you as familiar. Everything here did, the songs, the flowers, even the strings themselves. It was as if they themselves were intertwined with your fate.
The Weaver stopped their song suddenly, glancing up at you. "Feel free to take a flower, I have plenty, but leave those ones. They were a gift." You listen, putting it back in place the best you could and settling for a blue... iris? Actually looking back, you aren't sure if those pink flowers are unique or if you've just been here so long you've forgotten what flowers look like. They smiled. "I find that interesting."
"You... do?"
"Flower meanings. Let's just say I have experience with them." Their smile became a bit more forced than before. "A blue iris. Hope. I know more than anyone that flowers tend to have more positive meanings than negative--it's a pain to try and find ones that're only negative--but still. I didn't even know I had any blue irises lying around."
The two of you fell silent for a while. You would sit down with the Weaver, but spiders were crawling around. Threads snipped and reattached different places, or on rare occasions left dangling. They seemed preoccupied with this busywork, but still, yeah no thanks.
After a while of this awkward standoff over who could stay silent the longest, you won that contest, leaving the Weaver to talk. "You should turn away. I can't help you, I got just as lost. But... I believe you might not." Just the right strings were cut now, choices that could've been made but weren't. You would've tried for the door just past the Weaver, but suddenly now, you just couldn't. "Who knows, maybe we'll find each other again." You had a feeling that wasn't actually a maybe--they seemed certain, one way or the other, just unwilling to say. Of course, when was anyone just open about anything here?
You did the only thing you could do--turned around and walked back the way you came, waving back at the Weaver as you left. Oh thank goodness, this wasn't the ant room. For a moment, you were grateful for the nonsense that were the turns in this place.