Honey, Honey, Food for the Bees [Satra]

[Bee]

There was a bee nest in the tree and Yuri was desperate to get to it. To this end, he had begun stacking any object he could find in an enormous pile, disappointed that he could not scale the tree with his own limbs. What was the use of having six legs if you couldn't crawl a hundred feet up a tree? Sometimes thoughts like that ate him away inside.

At present his inventory included a small bench, a few pieces of broken wood, and a few rocks. This had given him surprisingly little progress in his goal. He had spent what seemed like weeks dragging the items over.

"Tree," he said, vengefully. He was also feeling quite bereft that it was denying him in this manner. Yuri loved nature. Did he not give ants their proper burials? Would not this tree allow him his nest, so he would have thousands of little bee-friends?

"You make me sad," he told the tree, and tottered off for another rock.

[Satra]

Makenna sifted through the pile of flowers she had laid out on her skirt. She organized them by color and size. Preoccupied by this, she failed to notice Yuri's intentions for a bee hive. When she looked up, she looked at his pile of debris questioningly.

"Yuri... what are you doing?"

Next to the young girl sat her mother, keeping a watchful eye on the pair of them. She needed a calm day. Spending time with Yuri and Makenna usually ensured that. The pair of them together usually rarely stirred up rowdy trouble. If they did, it usually had good intentions misguided by innocence behind it. She was fully aware of Yuri's quest for the beehive. It amused her, really. She made note of how low the bees flew from their hive and would stop him before he reached that point. She would let this play out until it was required she interfere. Until then, she would smile and watch the inquisitive little innocents played in the little corner of the world presented to them.

[Bee]

"Making friends," he said. He pointed upwards to the bee nest and thought that maybe Makenna might like to make friends with the bees too. They buzzed so nicely. He thought they were like little buggy Corvies, all black and electric yellow and always working at something.

Did bees run tests on each other? He'd have to ask.

Maybe Makenna could climb up and get them. She had hands that could hold things. But then humans were really delicate, weren't they? And Makenna only had two legs. He didn't want Makenna to fall and die.

"I'm making a booster so I can reach them." He pointed to his sad little pile, now. It seemed even sadder now that someone else would be looking at it too. "Wanna help? It'll go lots faster with two people and then I'll ask the bees to make you their new queen."

[Satra]

Makenna blinked when she saw the beehive. She was always a little iffy with bees. She loved flowers, but large quantities of them always came with bees doing their work. She'd been told what they could do with their sting, but she also knew they were minding their own business. She didn't like them, but she had a mutual agreement with them: she would leave them alone, and they would leave her alone. She wasn't quite aware of the train of thought, but she felt uneasy about pursuing friendship at Bee Headquarters. Something about it struck her as breaking the Mutual Ignoring Rule. She shifted in her seat and fiddled with her dress.

"I... I don' know, Yuri. I don't think bees speak our language..." The thought of being queen did appeal to her, though. Heilyn's face twitched into a smile. They were so sweet. Potentially self-destructive with their bright-eyed wonder, but sweet.

[Bee]

Yuri had planned to simply make buzzing noises at them, assuming that this was the manner in which bees communicated, but he really didn't know how they talked to one another. He didn't want to embarrass himself in front of the bees and Makenna and Momma. He considered this for a moment.

"Maybe we can teach them," he suggested. He turned to Momma. Now seemed like a good time to seek advice; Momma, after all, would know these sorts of things. He should probably learn to speak bee before he tried to teach the bees how to speak Common. Or Heart. Or Raemblen? (And Solandrian.) He had a lot of languages to master. "Momma, you speak bee, right? How do I ask them to come out and play?"

Assuming he could get up the tree to talk to them, of course. Stupid tree. He took small solace from the fact that it would eventually fall and rot. Trees really only became interesting after they had begun falling apart and playing host to other lifeforms anyway.

[Satra]

Makenna's eyes lit up. Could they teach them? That would be amazing! How would they teach it, though? Maybe if they talked at them enough they would catch on? Meanwhile Heilyn shrugged and shook her head, unable to get the look of amusement off her face.

"Sorry, Yuri. I only speak Bog-bee. Can't help you. However, I hear that bee tell each other things by dancing and shaking their body. You should try it and see if they respond." Seth should be here for this, she thought, the impulsive thought seizing her before she had a chance to banish it. Her imagination pushed on her the image of Seth, sitting beside her, egging them on to dance also. She shut her eyes and shook her head, as if physically shaking off the thought would help. She opened her eyes, sighed, the tried to recompose herself. Makenna blinked and stared at her mother. She did that sometimes. Get all distant, shake herself out of it, then try to resume whatever she was doing but with a sadness that wasn't there before.

"Momma, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Makenna dear. Why don't you go and join your brother and dance, hmm?"

[Bee]

Yuri, too, noticed the strange dip in his mother's mood--these slides that could occur at the oddest times, over the strangest things--but since Makenna had already asked the question on his mind, he decided the best thing to do, since Momma didn't wanna talk about it, was move things on to happier places.

He was briefly suspicious of this dance business--only creepy mime people and the worst sort of show performing acting-people communicated purely in body language--but only briefly. Momma Said It were somewhat magical words that tended to shut down the part of his brain that sustained incredulity.

"Hmmm'kay," he said, determinedly, and began to wiggle. Wiggling turned momentarily into flailing. He assumed a weirdly centaur-like crouch on his back four legs and began to shake his forelegs up and down and all around.

He hoped Makenna was putting on a better show. Humans were much more graceful. But maybe bees were awkward too.

[Satra]

Makenna nodded at her mother and got up to join Yuri as he began dancing. She watched him for a few seconds then joined in, repeat a few of the formal ballet moves she'd been learning in her lessons. Arms out, she displayed a few plies, degages and releves, imagining her instructor's metronomic voice as she did so.

Heilyn bit the inside of her lip as Yuri began to flail about awkwardly. With his oddly-structured body, the movements were even stranger then what they would have been if he hadn't been born with an extra set of limbs. Then to have Makenna right next to him moving as if her hand was grasping the bar in the dance rehearsal room was almost too much.

Makenna looked up, seeing no noticeable change in the actions of the bees.

"I don't think this is working, Yuri..."

[Bee]

Yuri stopped his dancing and looked up at the bees with Makenna. Indeed, they seemed not to notice their efforts at all, even when Makenna moved so prettily for them. Which meant that either they were going about communicating all wrong, or the bees were snubbing them because they were mean. And Yuri didn't want them to be mean because he wanted to be friends with them, so clearly they were not mean, and Yuri and Makenna had just failed again to understand how to communicate with them.

He was getting awfully tired of failure, but he was determined to see this mission to its successful conclusion.

"I think we might be dancing in Bog language," Yuri said, speculatively. This made perfect sense to him. Having hit upon the problem, he turned and faced the solution and said, happy and proud of himself for figuring it out: "Momma! You should show us how to dance the right way."

[Satra]

Makenna blinked.

"But I'm dancing like the Villa dance lady at the court taught me to dance... maybe you're dancing Bog, but I'm dancing like Villa?" Either way, these were Highland bees who needed to be talked to with a Highland jig or some such. Makenna turned around toward their mother and waved her hand when Yuri called to her. Yes! Mommy surely knew. No doubt about it. Heilyn laughed.

"I see. So you want me to teach you how to dance the right way, huh? Well, they're Highland bees, so I'll teach you to dance like a Highlander. I learned this one from the late Presiding King of Hearts himself!" She then proceeded to twitch and wiggle awkwardly. Ah, teaching her children casual racism. She foresaw no way in which this would be regretted. "Of course this is the way he danced. Other Highlanders do the same thing, except they turn their noses up forty-five degrees."