//------------------------------// // The Cleanup // Story: Hive Versus Hive // by Impossible Numbers //------------------------------// Outside, cotton candy clouds floated on the sea of sky, turning everything pastel. Seabreeze watched from the window of his home, twisting his lips in disapproval. The bank of the pond was a drop of roughly three inches, a good diving height for a Breezie. On his side of the pond, he knew the toadstool houses blended in with the daisies, threadgrass, and mossy humps, while on the other the palace melded with the exposed brown slope of the hill, resembling a gingerbread house beside the world’s biggest chocolate cake. The regular view of the palace always reassured him and steadied his breathing, but he saw that magnificent building every day, and the familiar spirit of Awe in his expanding chest was competing with the even more familiar spirit of Annoyance. He could see one or two Breezies watching from the palace windows, but most of his fellows were lying on the toadstool caps or on the mossy edges of the pond, watching their fellows in turn. Others on the bank wiped water-resistant oil and wax on their limbs and on each other’s bellies. They were going pondskating. Waterfalls ran through the middle of the palace in steps like blue cushions on a throne. As he watched, a Breezie whooped, sliding down each fall before the oily and waxy legs hit the pond, and then spinning like a skater across the surface. All around him, others were dancing or chasing each other or simply holding their legs stiff and letting the slight currents float them along. Splashes were the theme of the day, combined with laughs and chatter and the swish as spindly forelimbs sloshed back and forth. Finally, his disapproving look went up to the pink portal. No one was there. Growling, he gave the bamboo bucket next to him a backwards swipe and marched over to the door, sweeping his wings along the ground in his haste. Only when his two front legs were on the door handle did Zephyrine give a meaningful cough. “Look at them!” he said. “They have left that portal wide open. Anything could wander in or out. They are the most selfish, unthinking –” “You keep this up, and you’re going to explode one day,” said Zephyrine soothingly, who was lying on her own crumpled wings with a sleeping mask over her eyes. She had a small daisy wreath wrapped around her head. “Let them have their fun. Nothing’s going to happen. That Flutter Pony was a fluke.” Beside her, Saltshaker was napping on his side. Angelic as he seemed, his snore was a saw grinding on a violin string. “Someone needs to take charge,” Seabreeze muttered. “Terrible things will happen if no one is there to look out for them.” “OOOOOhhhhhh no, you’re not getting out of chores that easily.” With a sigh, she snapped the sleeping mask off and flipped forwards. “It’s sad how many times you try to wriggle out of this.” “I am not wriggling out of anything!” Zephyrine gave a small “I don’t believe that for a second” smile. “It’s your turn to clean this place, and we shouldn’t keep putting it off between us, you said. You promised.” Oh dear, he thought, she has got you there. But she must know that, compared with guarding, a promise like that is not so important. Merely thinking that made him squirm. He’d never broken a promise yet, up to and including “I will get home safely with the pollen, I promise.” “AAAAAwwwwww,” he groaned. “Do not make me choose. This is not something I can drop. Could you do the cleaning this time?” His lip pouted in a silent plea. “No. It’s all very well guarding a gateway to another world to prevent a horrible tragedy, but dear, you do that all the time now. Shake that boring routine up a bit! It’s a nice day. Exactly the sort of day to be spending outside where it’s fresh and cool, eh?” She gave him a wink. “Fine,” he said, groaning the groan of those backed into a corner. “Then you will go on sentinel duty, and I will clean. So long as someone is taking it seriously!” That worked at least; her eyes lit up at the prospect of getting some warm sunlight on her. She’d always been an outdoors type. “Hmmm,” she said for the look of the thing. “Throw in a truffle dinner tonight, and we have a deal.” “You mean I have to go truffle-hunting too?” Horror filled his mind with a menagerie of pincers and claws and tentacles. Even as a much more adventurous child, he’d stayed away from the darker sides of the far off hillocks; only the bravest went that far, and unfortunately truffles just sprouted up wherever they liked and never thought about the poor Breezies. “Am I being punished for something?” “What? What’s wrong with truffles? They’re the tastiest things in both worlds.” Zephyrine rolled her eyes and slipped past him to the door. “At least you got your temper back, I see.” Seabreeze fought against the smirk. “You are a self-indulgent little gadfly, you know that?” “The important thing is that I’m being indulged. Have fun cleaning the corners.” The door slammed. He went back to the bamboo bucket and upturned it. Six thumps bounced off the soft floor. Hastily, he checked Saltshaker wasn’t waking up, but the snores continued to strain across his ears. “Well, come on,” he said, prodding the six things one at a time with his leg. “You do not get to sleep until this mushroom is clean enough to eat off of. Or clean enough to eat.” Six cracking black carapaces shuddered. Seabreeze curled his lip and kept a leg firmly ahead of him as a prod. The Cleaner Pillbugs unfurled, exploding with too many white, wavy legs for his liking. They flipped over and, under his prodding, shuffled over to the corner. The front one plucked bits of black dirt from the vertex and stuffed them under its segmented shell; Seabreeze ignored the munching sounds that followed. It was traditional. If there was one thing Seabreeze could get behind, it was the honest old friend of tried-and-tested tradition. Remembering things like “make sure the pollen stock lasts two years, just in case” or “always wash your legs before eating” or “don’t forget the pine branch for the Solstice Dance” was Breezie, through and through. But if tradition was a friend, then this one job was his bad habit of leaving hairs on the carpet. In any case, Cleaner Pillbugs stank worse than the stuff they were cleaning up. He heard a whoop, peered out of the window, and kneaded his face with both forelegs. Zephyrine was skating on the pond. Not her too! Why does no one do what they are supposed to? he began thinking, and he was too busy being angry to hear any other part of him trying to correct that sweeping statement. I tell them why it is important. It is not as if I am bossing them around or yelling at them or calling them names. I want them to understand. And they still act stupid or act badly or do not bother acting at all. One of the Cleaner Pillbugs belched, breaking up the red mist that clouded around his mind. Blinking, he looked down and saw the six of them piling over each other to get at some dust bunny. Behind him, Saltshaker gave a snore to rattle the house to its rhizome foundations. “Do not forget the mess you made last time you lost your temper,” he said sternly to the arched window, and he thought he could make out the outline of his reflection. “Do not be rude. Do not go off in a huff. Do not forget to be nice more than nasty. You would not be here if it was not for that nice pegasus helping you.” And still I am getting angry. What is wrong with me? Why can I not stick with this? What was it Speckleteeny said last time? “Honey catches more flies than vinegar,” he repeated, frowning. That phrase wasn’t his; the young Breezie had come back from the Fire-collecting Forage with it on his lips, and for some reason it stuck in everyone’s heads. Apparently, it was a pony saying. Seabreeze said it a few times under his breath, because he wasn’t sure he’d actually believed it the first time. His antennae twitched. Seabreeze ignored the scratching of legs on armour as the Cleaner Pillbugs scrambled over each other for a piece of diamond-hard grit. He tuned out his snoring son’s endless assault on his ears. Straining harder, he cut out the faint splashes and laughter and chatter and the occasional whoop from Zephyrine. There it was again: a slight buzzing, as though his own brain was humming from the inside-out. By the time Seabreeze burst through the door, the Breezies were screaming and rising up like the silent explosion of a dandelion caught in a gale. Everything had gotten darker. The buzzing was everywhere. Soon, the entire air was nothing but one deep ocean of buzzing and humming and whirring and droning. Seabreeze craned his neck until the entire sky was laid out before his gaze. There were no pastels to be seen. It was darker than night, and filled with moving shadows. No, no, no! His legs didn’t bother waiting for his brain to come alive, and hopped back into the toadstool at once. He rushed over to the wriggling little body; even the legendary snores of Saltshaker lost the struggle against the wall of noise, but the baby’s face woke up and contorted into a screeching cry anyway. “Get out of here!” he yelled across to the Cleaner Pillbugs, but they simply curled up and became black balls rolling along the floor, denting it slightly as they went. Zephyrine held the door wide open and gestured urgently. Her face was glowing with paleness despite the eclipsing shadows. They reached an inch before the darkness broke up. Beams of light shone down as though to spotlight interesting patches of ground. Next moment, a body thumped, its six legs bending to take the impact. Both Breezies yelped and backed off. The first Flutter Pony spun around, tusks clicking over its bared teeth. Two pinpricks strained to pick out their details. Both wings stopped buzzing and became as stiff as a sword slung over its shoulder. Another one landed behind Zephyrine. By the time they’d rounded on it, yet a third hit the ground next to Seabreeze. Darkness shattered and fell away overhead, but each dot of light now fell on the backs of more Flutter Ponies. On the palace, on the hill, on the toadstools, and on the mossy ground, they soon became a thick blanket and the dots of light pooled together into a sea of brightness, letting in the day once more. Seabreeze and Zephyrine rose into the air, and immediately a ring of Flutter Ponies matched them. Their massive manes thrashed about under the turbulence of a dozen buzzing wings. “Who are you!?” shouted Zephyrine over the noise, trembling where she hovered. “Yes!” shouted Seabreeze. Fire burned in his chest. “Who do you think you are!? You should not be here bothering us Breezies! This is our home!” Around him, the chuckles themselves sounded like buzzing, though of a softer timbre. Although the mouths smiled – wide enough that he could count teeth – the pinprick pupils drilled into their heads until both Breezies had to look away. Beyond their circle, other Breezies cowered within huddles or hovered like planets with rings buzzing around them. And still there were more Flutter Ponies, some dotting the air at random, and the rest crisscrossing the sky as living chains. To Seabreeze’s surprise, the thought of hitting one came to him. Breezies didn’t even like thinking about fighting, but this thought popped into his head with no shame or worry. In vain, he forced his mind to focus on more traditional responses like running away. As soon as he turned, however, the nearest Flutter Pony darted forwards, cutting him off. The pair of tusks clicked and clattered. Their owner seemed to be struggling to chew his own tongue – or “her tongue”, or “its tongue”; Seabreeze couldn’t tell – while its eyes narrowed with the effort. “Go.” It gagged on its own word, but there was no mistaking the word itself. “You can speak Breezie?” said Zephyrine, drawing closer to Seabreeze. “Yes.” It coughed out the word and punctuated it with a click. “Go palace. Our home now.”