Hive Versus Hive

by Impossible Numbers

The Foragers

From the window of his toadstool home, Seabreeze watched his fellows gathering over the pond and breathed a sigh of relief. Even when someone knocked on the door, his growl of frustration was quickly cut off. After all, what did he have to worry about now? It was already decided.

“I will get it!” he shrieked; his partner Zephyrine was nearest, but there was no way he was going to stand behind her while some fool gave an embarrassing speech. Besides, he had a good idea of who it might be.

The door swung aside, and Twirly almost darted backwards when she saw his stony face. For a moment, Seabreeze blinked in surprise, but the stone buried his face again. He could see the others a few yards away, all of them staring in his direction with splinter-like ears cocked.

“You’re sure we can’t make you come?” warbled Twirly, wringing her twiggy front legs together.

“I am staying with my family,” he said with practised ease. “That is the end of it. You can take care of yourself without me there to hold your hoof.”

Behind Twirly, the few faces glanced at each other with worry lines on their brows. He knew what was going through their tiny minds. Ever since the pollen-gathering, he’d been seeing those glances a lot.

The rest of the swarm were sliding bubble-blowers or limp balloon skins into pouches and sheaths around their waists, but they too glanced up at him from time to time. Behind the swarm, the wall of dull grey stone was shimmering, and the dot in the centre began to grow. As Seabreeze peered past his fellows, he could just make out the flash of white foam, and hear the rush of swashing water. Along the edge of the growing circle, the air crackled with pink sparks.

He glanced up at the haze of orange and pink lights melting into the sky, and nodded. It was right on time.

Despite himself, his own limbs – though warmed by the dark cotton sleeves of his coat – shivered, and he could almost imagine them handling one of those bubble-blowers right now. His gossamer wings shuddered with the flight not taken, and since they were wide and splayed like a butterfly’s, the shudder had finished at the base long before it had finished at the tips.

“Please?” said Twirly. She pouted in an attempt to win his sympathy, which he recognized at once and which therefore won no sympathy at all.

“How many times do I have to say it? No, no, no!”

Seabreeze almost stamped a hoof before he remembered Zephyrine was watching him. Calm down, Seabreeze. Remember what happened the last time you lost your temper.

“But…” he said, and he tried a smile, “I do not think you need me again so soon anyway. You are each pretty good on your own. In fact, why not take a break once this Forage has finished? You would get a nice rest, and someone else could take their turn next time. We rely too much on the same few Breezies anyway.”

Twirly nodded hard enough to leave her antennae a blur, but there was a small smile nervously venturing out of her stubby snout. That was another thing he was noticing more and more; other Breezies fervently agreeing with him. Up till now, they’d either just weathered his storm until it passed, or fled at the first sign of gales. No one had actually agreed with him, not even to keep him happy.

Seabreeze raised his voice and tried to smile. “Good luck to you all! I hope the breeze keeps your spirits high!”

A swarming murmur of agreement met his ears. He grinned and waved cheerily until the door eased shut, and then wiped the lot off his face and groaned with relief.

“I think it’s sweet,” said Zephyrine when he turned to her. “They look up and listen to you now. Poor Twirly used to shake so much whenever she tried talking to you.”

Behind her on a flat pebble was a piece of card the size of a Breezie shield. She was cooing over the baby’s shoulder, and little Saltshaker watched as a globe-like insect waddled across the floor.

I wish she would do something about those Springtails, Seabreeze thought irritably. They multiply like crazy. Besides, I hate having to ask every five hours.

“Why did you not go?” Seabreeze drifted over and sat down at the pebble, sitting opposite her. “You used to nag me all the time about ‘duty’ this and ‘honour’ that and ‘look, I’m pregnant and I’m still going out into the Big World’ everything. Now, I cannot remember the last time you went on a Forage.”

Saltshaker gurgled, planted both front limbs down, and missed the Springtail entirely; it had been too quick. All three of them watched as it sprang to the ceiling.

Zephyrine shrugged and rose to pluck the Springtail off the domed ceiling. “The Big World isn’t so great. Fly here, pick up some stuff, fly back… When it’s not trying to kill you, it’s dull, dull, dull.”

“It is our duty,” said Seabreeze with a rebuke in his tone of voice. “If it were not for us, this world would have fallen apart long ago. Do not give that to him! You have no idea where it has been!”

“Oh phooey, my mom used to let me play with these things all the time when I was that age, and it never did me any harm. ‘ere ‘oo go, den. ‘oo’s a gwabby widdle poppy seed, den? ‘oo are. Yes, ‘oo are.” She rubbed Saltshaker’s belly until he gurgled with delight.

Seabreeze grinned with daggers in his face. “Is that why it gave you that mite plague last time?”

“Those weren’t mites. Those were just itchy spots. You got some too.”

“I got them off you. We were both younger and dumber then. I, um… wanted to show solidarity.”

Zephyrine squeaked a laugh. “You mean after you found out you had it, or after you went off and sulked for three days?”

Seabreeze’s grin softened. “It was before they found out you had it and before they made you have your first bath in a year.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she said, so calmly and serenely that he quickly glanced at the ceiling and sealed his lips. Zephyrine was to hygiene what water was to a pampered Persian cat, but he still had flashbacks about the last time he brought it up.

A snap of a spring, and Seabreeze ducked as the Springtail, which was the size of his head, shot past and ricocheted off the wall behind him. Saltshaker flopped forwards and crawled on his belly over to it, but Zephyrine still had her skewed smirk aimed at her partner.

Both of them turned to face the card. Square lines crisscrossed its surface to form a grid – they’d both engraved the lines in with a cactus thorn one afternoon – and little carved sunflower seeds lay scattered across the pebble’s surface beside it. Seabreeze felt his mind unclench. As he placed a hoof on each seed and scraped it across to one of the grid’s cells, he dimly remembered that Zephyrine hadn’t beaten him in weeks.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “You don’t like going out on Forages any more than I do.”

“Why does that matter?” he said with a careless shrug. He didn’t look up. “If the ground fell apart and the sky blew away, and everyone asked why, I could not say ‘because I dislike fetching stuff’.”

Even as he spoke, his gaze shifted towards the window, where Breezies were flittering past and giving each other last-minute cuddles and kisses. Suddenly, this little game seemed like a chore.

I should be out there with them, he thought. It had nothing to do with duty; he could feel it in his splinter-like bones, and in the way his popping heart sped up at the thought of seeing the Forage from the inside, instead of seeing it from the outside.

No, you should be in here, said his own peeved voice. You are part of a family. Family members do not abandon each other and rush out for two trips in a row, just because everyone stares at you in awe.

Which is ridiculous anyway. He hadn’t been the only one of the famous Last Minuters; almost two dozen others had survived and returned from the Pollen-collecting Forage too. That was what they’d been called. Usually, if any Breezie left the return journey to the last minute, then they never came back and everyone assumed they were dead. In theory, they could’ve come back whenever the portal reopened, but then in theory the moon could turn into cheese.

This one time it had turned out differently. And of all the Last Minuters, he just had to be the one everyone fawned over. Even the other Last Minuters – Twirly, for instance – looked at him as though he’d cut through a hurricane.

All I did was shout and swear and nearly get stung to death by bees, he thought. Yet even as he did so, a flicker of pride lit up inside his chest, and no amount of scorn or irritation could drown it.

Finally, the sunflower seeds were all in place. Strategies and tactics crowded into his mind, shouting for attention while he examined the card ‘board’.

“You can go first,” he said with a smug grin. “Since you will just keep losing otherwise.”

“How nice of you,” she said, returning with a sly smirk. “Since you’ll need all the thinking time you can get.”

This sort of thing was frowned upon in real matches, but part of the game’s fun was in needling the opponent. Zephyrine tapped her chin and flexed her antennae like itchy fingers.

The instant she reached down, he stood up and said, “How about we watch the Breezies go this time? It will only take a minute.”

“Seabreeze! Don’t get up like that! I almost got the hiccups again!”

“Ah, you are soft as a marshmallow. Let us watch from the window. If anything goes wrong, this might be the last time we see some of our friends and neighbours.”

That is a lie and you know it! said the same hectoring voice from before. No one has ever been lost in years. The ponies and the other creatures have taken care of that. After he passed Saltshaker, who was trying to lie down on the stunned Springtail, he squinted through the glass and tried to ignore his partner landing heavily on his back and shoulders like a lead cape.

Beneath the shadow of the doll-sized palace, the Breezies hovered and fanned the air with their oversized wings. By now, the portal had swollen to the size of a pony’s head, and two brave souls ventured through it. Scouts, muttered his memory without prompting. I hope they find the griffons where they should be, ready and waiting.

Even from here, he recognized the brown feathers and yellow beaks on the other side. They were new griffons this year, and if their size was any indication, they were young chick-cubs. Always the most punctual and eager-to-please. The two scouts returned at once to wave the sign for “all good”; Seabreeze recognized Hugglenut and Milktears from their yellow and blue manes.

Old gossip drifted into his memory. He wondered if the pair of them would get together during the Forage. After all, that was how he and Zephyrine had met. Both of the scouts moved aside to clear the passage before he remembered. Neither of them were going this year. They had other plans.

With a cry of delight, the swarm poured through the expanding portal. Cheers rose up from the toadstool homes and from the brown, mossy rooftops of the birdhouse dwellings and from the palace. Their friends and neighbours waved and blew kisses and danced while the Forage piled up around the pink sparks.

After a while, Seabreeze grunted and wondered if it’d be rude to turn back to the game. Behind him, the baby giggled and two Springtails smacked off a wall. They were multiplying already.

Once the last of the swarm darted out of sight, other Breezies rose up and covered the entrance like a net, eyes narrowed and looking out beyond the pond and the castle and the toadstools to the hillock range on the horizon. Seabreeze sighed. Sentinel duty. He’d have to take a turn up there with them one day. At least it wasn’t today.

“One more ingredient,” murmured Zephyrine in his ear as she peered out, “and then it’s World Harvest Day. I can’t wait to get the family together again. It’ll be spectacular this year, I know it. We’ve still got those Firecracker Fireflies from the Winter Forage.”

Relax, he thought. Stop being such a great stick-in-the-mud. No one has tried anything in years. Yet Seabreeze was the sort of Breezie who hated reassurance, because one word was always lurking nearby: “nevertheless…”

“Those silly things?” said Seabreeze, who hadn’t so much as smiled when the swarm left. “We ought to stop bringing back Big World souvenirs. This is not the Big World. That is why the sentinels have to watch the portal in the first place.”

“But they’re safe,” said Zephyrine. “Now, are you going to fume out the window, or do I get to kick your butt at Hive Versus Hive?”

“It will all end in tears,” he said gloomily to the windowpane. “You just wait and see.”

He turned around and got hit in the face by a Springtail, much to his son’s delight.

---

Comments

[redmar]

This looks like a great start to a story and Seabreeze's comment about griffons makes me think that Gabby is among the griffons halping this year which means it is good for Seabreeze to stay home because he wouldn't get along with her.