The air outside the cocoon, though dank and thick and stagnant, is rich with oxygen after the constricted pocket to which she'd just awakened, and Maiko expels all the contents of her lungs and goes utterly limp-- she lets tension seep from her muscles until her whole frame feels like rags and bones, and black rings enwreath her vision.<i>The little death,</i>she thinks.  Consciousness retreats into a tiny cave deep in her mind, shrinks into it like a serpent into a hole, aware and peeking out at her own body.<br/><br/>For a moment she's seized with a dream-like memory--<i>her master's grip on her windpipe with one forearm, his other arm twisting her muscles and sinews into a constricted vice behind her waist, her feet sprawled uselessly and struggling for purchase against the floor.  'Stay focused' he hisses into her ear.  'Be greedy for control inside-- do not waste your energy with useless counterattacks.'</i><br/><br/>In the spider's den, she fills her lungs with the cooler, richer air outside, feels the snake coil deep inside the crevice and prepare to leap forth.<i>'If you fail now,' he hisses,' I will snuff your life, and I will rape your corpse and leave you for the vultures.'</i><br/><br/>She opens her eyes, the lesson clear.<i>She bucks back her head so hard that she splits her scalp on her master's teeth, her shoulder wrenches from its socket and a tendon tears in her forearm.  The pain causes her heart to flutter like the death-throes of a moth, and broken she strikes out for the kill...</i><br/><br/>Lashing out against her bindings, using the space she'd created between herself and the cocoon, she rends the hole around her freed arm and forces her way through the widening gap.  ((str: 13+3=16))