It was actually thanks to Northern Lights, his spectral hound, that buck had found such a perfect string of trees. Though the hound hadn't deigned to join them on their return, watching Beneath the Surface and Sweet weave branches together wouldn't exactly be interesting anyway, so the buck wasn't super surprised. While Sweet had arrived on his back, the spider had quickly skittered up into the branches and began bouncing on a few of them, hopping back and forth between the trees using the closest branches. Slowly walking through himself the buck noted the few that seemed best to begin with, and the two eventually began their work. Slowly pushing some of the larger branches closer to the trucks together, and tucking them gently into place (he didn't want to harm the trees) the buck, occasionally with some silk help from Sweet, shifted the further branches he needed closer for the next stages of the process. This step required some adjustments through the process, though that was common in such a large project like this, after all, one could never quite tell how something so large would lay out once moved, so he occasional had to stop and step back to view everything from different angles, and occasionally he almost knocked the whole thing apart and Sweet needed to add extra support, or he had to shift something a different way then the buck originally thought.
Eventually though he was able to move up, and start stringing the branches of the individual trees through each other, weaving the branches together so as to connect the trees along the line at a higher point, instead of simply pushing each individual trees branches inward. While a bit easier to achieve, it required much more back-tracking as it was harder to tell if things would look right until he stepped out and reviewed it from the straight path between the two lines of trees. This step also required even more of Sweet's help, but for a different reason, as her small legs were better able to weave the smaller branches together for support when he was forced to hold things in place with his mouth. At these steps his hooves no longer worked except as lower branch support due to the height of the branches they worked with. Eventually the two lines of trees had their upper branches woven together enough to create a slight wall at around head-height, creating the beginnings of a tunnel of kinds. The buck took a moment to admire his work, and examine the branches sweeping over his head, testing some heights by jumping and trotting, etc. to avoid another kin either smashing up his masterpiece on accident or simply having trouble walking through. It defeated the point after all, not that he would be upset if it was undone, just wanted to avoid it being caught by a stray horn if he could.
Slowly the two worked their way up the branches, creating the top of the tunnel of sorts, starting with the edges of the 'roof', working more slowly as they were working with not only smaller branches, the the tilt and angle was more important at this step. Sweet also began to create more elaborate webs over the outer edge so as to catch the light when one walked through, which also slowed their progress compared to prior steps. He hadn't originally thought to use Sweet's webs as more then support until one day she wove her full web across something he'd pulled together, and the way it shown and glistened in the light was enchanting. Honestly he'd been a bit surprised he hadn't thought it before when he admired her skills, but she was the expert after all. He learned many things from her about weaving, more then he expected honestly. Regardless, eventually as they worked to finish the very top, the buck found himself with his head slid between interwoven branches, front hooves pulled up to get the height needed, holding several deeper branches in place while Sweet slid some smaller twigs in for support and wove them together. Though with his trembling legs and almost vanished head, he could imagine it looked quite odd from an outside perspective, regardless it would be quite lovely when they finished, and they were so close...
LOLLI qAq wrote: