\herosection{The Hive}{chapters/2026.04.21-TheHive/image/the-hive.jpg}

\DROPCAP{../../dropcap_c/dropS.png}he had kept bees for her whole life.\\
Alone.

She moved through the apiary each morning \\
the way water moves — \\
unhurried, \\
with absolute certainty.\\
This life just suited her.

Her sister had asked only once, \\
in her last weeks, \\
and she had said yes before the sentence was finished.\\
That was in February.\\
Her son arrived in April with one bag \\
and the silence of someone \\
who had cried himself empty.

She showed him his room \\
and made him a sandwich.\\
Hardly a word was said all evening.\\
Her sister had asked, \\
and she had said yes.\\
Now the reality of what yes meant \\
was becoming apparent.\\
``Just a lost boy,'' she muttered.

The next morning \\
she brought him to the apiary.\\
``Needs to earn his keep.''

He was afraid of the bees from the first moment — \\
it was obvious from how he held himself.\\
She handed him a suit and veil without comment, \\
and set him to a simple task at a safe distance.

He lasted twenty minutes before a single bee, \\
drawn to the sharp smell of his fear, \\
found the gap at his wrist and stung him.

His reaction was slightly outsized.\\
He knew it and was embarrassed.\\
She said nothing, \\
only took his wrist \\
and worked the stinger free \\
with a practiced thumbnail.\\
From the shelf inside the barn door \\
she took a small jar — \\
her own preparation, \\
royal jelly mixed with herbs from the forest — \\
and worked a small amount into the welt.

``They're not angry,'' she said.\\
``They just see you.''

He looked at her \\
as though this were the strangest comfort \\
he had ever been offered.

She almost smiled.

The hive hummed.\\
Doing what bees have been doing \\
for one hundred million years.

\medskip

The fear kept returning.\\
Weeks in, he still approached the apiary \\
with that held-breath quality, \\
that watchful hesitation.\\
She noticed he had developed a habit \\
of studying each hive \\
before committing himself — \\
trying to read the situation before acting.

One morning, \\
they were inspecting a frame when he said quietly, \\
``What is this streak of chalk right there?''

She looked.\\
Looked again.\\
Closer than she should have needed to.

Fungus.\\
She hadn't seen it.

She took the frame from him, \\
carefully turning it in the light.\\
A small thing — \\
a hint of chalk in one corner, \\
an early sign of a problem \\
she would have caught a year ago \\
from ten feet away.\\
She would deal with it.

She set the frame back without speaking.

That evening she sat in the waning light.\\
She had been struggling more and more to see.

The work no longer belonged to either of them.\\
``More like shared,'' she thought — \\
``like a hive.''

\medskip

She was dusting the mantle \\
when her sleeve caught his figurine.\\
The kind a child keeps forever.

It broke into pieces on the floor.

The silence in the room was total.\\
She turned — \\
he was in the doorway.

After a moment, he said, \\
``I'm not angry, I just see you.''

She gathered the pieces carefully, \\
one by one, \\
and set them on the shelf.

\medskip

Early one morning — \\
the light still flat and new — \\
she looked up from a frame \\
to find him already working the next hive over.\\
Calm hands.\\
Sure movements.\\
His body no longer braced \\
against what might happen.\\
Still watchful, \\
but differently — \\
the watchfulness of attention \\
rather than fear.

``Listen.\\
Something sounds off with this one,'' she said.

``Let me take a look.''

Good man, she thought.

The hive hummed.
