Chapter 47: Chapter 47
The Fourth of the Seventh hovered as still as she could. She was flying in front of the window to the King’s own hive, the giant one made of entire trees. She had never dared to come so close...but apparently the First of the Fifth’s soldiers had been invited inside, and so had led her there. She remained outside but could not resist the temptation to come and see the King at work.
She also wanted to visit the Flower Meadow, but that trip was a bit too far for merely indulging her curiosity, so she left that to her workers. But, well, no bee could begrudge her a chance to see the King!
He was as majestic as always, a towering giant taller than an entire hive with a body she couldn’t have even imagined. He had but two legs, mighty pillars so strong he needed only a third the number to Visit NovelHub for more amazing novels and chapters. He had two arms but each of these split into five more for an unparalleled ability to grip. His eyes were smooth and colorful, like the petals of a flower, and his hair was like an entire forest.
And what he was doing was no less fascinating. The King was building something out of the plants themselves, twisting them together into some long vine of some sort. And even more curiously, the First of the Fifth’s soldiers were helping with the task!
Then the Fourth of the Seventh began to buzz, for she noticed something.
The color and shape of the vine they were weaving...matched a part of the King’s torso. She noticed now that he was not covered in some sort of hair or fur, but rather that he wore some construction of plant stems over his body. It looked nothing like normal plant stems, so she would not have noticed had the soldiers not explained to her their current task, and if she had not then seen it in progress. She wondered why the King put such a thing on his body.
But the surprises weren’t over.
“There, how about that? Maybe if you both try at once?”
The King and the soldiers finished constructing their vine, and the King wrapped it around a large branch with a tip coated in wax. One of the King’s legendary fire sticks, with which he reportedly lay waste to any invaders that intruded upon his realm.
One of the workers came and danced before her and she raced over to the front of her hive. The First of the Fifth's soldiers were returning for the day, coming for their meal before they returned to the King’s abode. The Fourth of the Seventh danced rapidly before them, asking her questions without even pausing to hear the answers. The soldiers buzzed and danced as the workers brought them honey, telling their story from the beginning. They told the Fourth of the Seventh the entire process the King had showed them, how he had gathered the flowers themselves. How he had removed the flower and the seeds, how he had broken apart the stems and left them to partially rot, how he had processed them into the fibers she had seen him work with, and then how they and the King worked together to weave those strands into the constructs of his design.
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The Fourth of the Seventh hung on their every motion, trying to imagine what it would look like. She thanked them for the tales as they thanked her for the honey, and then raced back to her reserves once the soldiers flew back to the King. She drank as deeply from the honey as she could without cutting into the growth of her hive.
She was deeply curious about this process...and she had access to the very flowers the King used for it. But she and her workers were still tiny, too small to participate. She would need to grow if she wanted to get involved. ℞ÁꞐȫᛒË𝓢
And so, for perhaps the first time in her life, the Fourth of the Seventh was determined to grow. Previously she had been content with her lot in life. Born too late, relegated to a corner of the Apiary where she would ever play a subservient role to the queens that came before her. And that was fine with her. She had her role, and she would carry it out. Any more than that could be decided by those above her.
But now....now she found herself too small to achieve what she wanted, her honey reserves too small to allow her to grow, and her worker force too small to expand those reserves. But, fortunately, the First of the Fifth had granted her access to a wealth of flowers like she never had in her little patch of the Apiary.
And so, the Fourth of the Seventh grew. Her workers flew far and brought back the riches she had been given, and she used those riches to lay more eggs than she ever had before. A new generation would arise, until one day they gathered enough honey for her to grow.
In fact, she made other plans as well. She had some of her workers begin preparing a second hive, much closer to the Flower Meadow. Once the construction had finished, she would move her entire hive closer and so cut down the length of her workers’ trips. Such a location was further away from the King’s hive and the flowers he had planted, no other queen wanted to live there and so no other queen objected to her efforts. The First of the Fifth even approved of the move.
For now, she had something she wanted to do. And she was going to do everything she could to achieve it.