* * *
I waited outside Lara’s new chamber. I wasn’t allowed to go in. It didn’t matter. I could smell enough to know what was going on. The salt of sweat, the stench of blood, and the sweetness of the new larva vibrated against my antennae. As did the cries from my queen and cries from someone else.
The posterior of my abdomen throbbed. I gnawed at the uncomfortable pressure of the fabric Drone Marco had stretched around me. I had tried to tell him I didn’t need it but he’d insisted. He was as bossy as a fuzzipillar shepherd.
Many humans entered and exited in distress. When that aphid dung Juan was permitted in, it was too much. I snapped at the nursemaid who guarded the door and pushed past her.
My Black-Eyed Queen lay in bed, bandaged with white fabric. Blotchy, red swellings marred the places on her face that were exposed. Her belly was wrapped up. It was flatter than it had been, a larva secure in her arms. My queen’s eyes were half-slits and she smelled of chemicals, but her lips curved up as she saw me.
Her voice was barely a whisper, but I still heard her. “There’s my Rover. You were right. The nectar made my baby strong. My beautiful baby.” She turned her gaze to the bundle she held. Tears filled her eyes.
I hung my head in shame. Surely, she didn’t understand.
“That isn’t a baby. It’s a monster. That toxin you’ve been drinking did this,” Drone Juan shouted. Drone Marco held him back.
Drone Marco spoke coolly, as evenly as a queen. I wasn’t listening. My attention remained on my Black-Eyed Queen. Her breath came out in labored rasps. I smelled death. No nectar could cure this.
“Love my baby, Rover. Don’t let them hurt her. She isn’t a monster.” She closed her eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks and soaking into the gauze. Her breath grew shallow. The gurgling and ticking sounds I associated with humans stopped inside her.
I raised myself to see over the edge of the bed. The larva she held in her arms wasn’t the golden brown of her own skin or the lighter tone of Juan’s, but bright orange like nectar fresh from a fuzzipillar’s mouth. This miniature human was hairless, save for two places that sprouted up like antennae, though I later learned they were not. She squinted like a drone emerging from the underground palace for the nuptial flight. I touched an antenna to the cheek of the baby human, expecting to find it soft like her mother’s. Instead it felt firm and hard as armor, though it wasn’t armor judging by the way she could manipulate it and scrunch it from one expression to another.
I saw no monster. Only a beautiful larva. Her splendor was so great that my antennae hurt to smell her. I had never understood the word love no matter how many times my Black-Eyed Queen explained it. I wondered if this pleasant hurt was it.
Drone Juan reached toward the larva, fingers stiff and curled like claws. Before he could harm my charge, I snatched his wrist in my mandible and twisted, the armor inside his soft flesh crunching. He screamed and dropped to his knees.
I was no longer a drone. I was the queen’s nursemaid. I would not allow Drone Juan or anyone else to harm the future queen.
Carefully, I scooped her up and carried her away.
* * *
Weak from my injury, my young charge and I rode a fuzzipillar to my former home, for I knew no safer place than a nursery. An entire cycle of seasons had passed since I left my old hive and I no longer smelled of my people. I waited until a scrawny young hatchling emerged from the tunnels. I snatched her up and rubbed her scent over me and then over the daughter of the Black-Eyed Queen before I released her. Every worker, shepherd, and nursemaid we passed in the tunnels twitched her antennae at me, noticing the foreignness of my scent. Yet they must also have been convinced by the young scout’s, for none stopped me or attacked.
There in my hive, I stored the future human queen in with the larvae to be fed the most precious drops of nectar.
* * *
You are not so different from them, Daughter of Lara. You have two legs and arms like them, and eyes on the front of your head. But you also understand the language of this hive. The nectar gifts you with skin like armor and makes you strong like my kind.
I am an old nursemaid who has seen too many winters. Soon I will be forced into the role of honey-pot. You will have to leave this place and brave the world above without me. Take a fuzzipillar to be your legs and a store of nectar as your food. Go on the day of the nuptial flight when predators will focus on those in the air. Return to your human hive and tell them all you have learned.
They must come to understand there will be no children and no future hive if they do not change their ways. It is true the nectar will produce unusual larvae. That doesn’t make you a monster.
It means you are their future.
The End
As a child, Sarina Dorie dreamed of being an astronaut/archeologist/fashion designer/illustrator/writer. Later in life, after realizing this might be an unrealistic goal, Sarina went to the Pacific NW College of Art where she earned a degree in illustration. After realizing this might also be an unrealistic goal, she went to Portland State University for a master’s in education to pursue the equally cut-throat career of teaching art in the public school system. After years of dedication to art and writing, most of Sarina’s dreams have come true; in addition to teaching, she is a writer/artist/ fashion designer/ belly dancer. She has shown her art internationally, sold art to Shimmer Magazine for an interior illustration, and another piece is on the April 2011 cover of Bards and Sages. Sarina’s novel, Silent Moon, won second place in the Duel on the Delta Contest, hosted by River City RWA and the Golden Rose contest hosted by Rose City Romance Writers. Silent Moon won third place in the Winter Rose Contest hosted by the Yellow Rose RWA and third place in Ignite the Flame Contest hosted by Central Ohio Fiction Writers.
Now, if only Jack Sparrow asks her to marry him, all her dreams will come true.
Sarina Dorie's YA novels Dawn of the Morningstar and Urban Changeling, and short stories A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting Humans, Greener on the Other Side, Zombie Psychology and other titles can also be found at:
More information and free reads can be found at Sarina Dorie’s website:
https://www.sarinadorie.com
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