Only the sounds of light buzzing in the hive and Enno’s ever-present drowsy muttering interrupted my thoughts as I looked up at the stars. Since obtaining this vessel I could now call a body, the days, even weeks, had flown by. A feat I was wholly incapable of. It had nearly been a month since I first met my children face-to-face, and so much had changed within the hive, and I could not be more proud of my darling little children.

Our numbers had grown tenfold, dwarfing even the hive my mother had once created with our limited understanding of the world. Enno’s tireless laying of eggs at everyone’s - especially my - behest had brought us a truly wonderful family. Each bee worked tirelessly at their chosen task, content knowing that their good work would go unrewarded. Well, except for the time I opened in my schedule to pass them by and flash them a smile of the Mind. It had taken more than an entire week just to learn how to approach each bee in this body, only for me to realize that distracting them during their work made them woefully inefficient. Alas, I was the only thing in this world I suspected that could draw their attention so.

Thankfully, once the outpouring of adoration receded from their Minds, they engrossed themselves into their work once more, which I appreciated. It was nice to be loved, but it was truly great to see my children supplanting this world’s original facade with the fruits of their labor.

As best as I could, I folded my arms behind my head, as a person was wont to do when they wished to relax themselves. Of my experiences in this form, familiarizing myself to the quirks and intricacies of human behavior was by far the most complex and most frustrating. Every time Enno sent footage of my practice to other humans under our control, he had himself a nice laugh at my expense. Not that I bothered getting him back for it, since it was some of his only respite during the day-long egg-laying sessions that had become his norm. Every time they criticized my behavior as overly masculine or ‘like a puppet controlled by a prancing chicken’, I simply sniffed and turned my nose. It was not my fault that all of my knowledge and practice came from a bozo originating in an entirely different world. I could study the movements of people all I wanted, but the part of my Mind that was Enno held decades of experience already, and it was difficult to break myself from those habits. Besides, they suited me just fine as long as I could move about and have pleasant interactions with my children. Why waste time conforming myself to these creatures’ norms?

Unfortunately, my left arm was bent at an uncomfortable angle, so my attempt to relax was for naught. Such discomfort brought memories of my first bad experiences in this body. Embarrassing myself by tripping over a stone the very day after hugging all my children in a wonderful line. The looks of disgust thrown my way by ever fernen I encountered, sharply poking into my Mind. And worst of all, seeing poor Ben and Beelzebub approach from the distant sky, unable to will my wings to fly up and meet them after their hardships.

Those two had been distraught when they felt my appearance that first night. All their siblings, lining up to embrace me while they hurried home with all their might. It was only thanks to the healing Ability Enno had devised prior to the ordeal at Lemonholm that they rushed into my arms at full physical health, bearing scars of the body and Mind. Ben was especially distraught, his injured wing which hampered his flight being a primary reason they had taken so long. But the squeals of delight he raised once I pointed out that his noble injury in battle only brought him all the closer to us, dragging our crumpled, useless wings into view. ‘Dragging’ was perhaps an exaggeration - Enno was perfectly content to show that the injury I once sustained that had forced us to fly with Mind was similar to Ben’s newly sliced-off wing.

Of course, as he always tended to be, he became more preoccupied with the baggage they brought in tow. Elofan had been immediately descended upon by the fernen, saving her life with their medical attention, and it had taken some convincing to grant the same level of care to the two humans tagging along. Surprisingly enough, it was Elofan herself which had implored her people to tend to the humans, and we were nearly as surprised to see Ben and even Beelzebub bow their heads to the fernen for their help. It reminded me of a notion I’d learned from the humans of camaraderie through hardship, partially through the mercenaries of this world and partially through Enno’s television subscriptions. A single event had turned Ben and Beelzebub into the bees most sympathetic to those humans - perhaps even other humans - in the entire hive.

It had also turned them into the most staunch voices on improving our strength. Experiencing such a battle firsthand was unlike anything the rest of the hive could fathom, although they insisted they understood. The haunted feeling from the pair’s Minds said otherwise. The Knights of Somuia and the MIS, along with other violent humans, had become a central threat at the forefront of their thoughts. Beelzebub trained harder than ever before, forcefully pulling the rest of our warriors with her through a new gauntlet of hellish regimens. Ben was similar, beginning a movement of non-warrior bees to take on lessons and training that would give them the bare minimum skills to fight. Beatrice was over the moon, of course. Her insistence on preparedness finding an ally in Ben of all bees was the tipping point that brought many to her side, readying themselves for the threat of humans. Though the two battle-hardened bees insisted that the threat was not humans.

Once again, I shifted uncomfortably. These were the concerns of the hive over the past weeks. Preparing for a looming threat. Building ourselves higher than before. Bringing food for our growing numbers, and restoring the forest along with the fernen to create a new place for an abundant source of food, as per their Mother’s command. Of course, Enno concerned himself with all of this, but his Mind was always moving, seeing things other couldn’t. It wasn’t until I paid attention that I had identified a different concern from that day that the team from Lemonholm arrived.

Vlugh was a changed man, that much was clear. His once cocky, surefire and whiny self had been replaced with a ghost. Grehn always stuck by his side, and Vlugh repeatedly tried to remove himself from the only one here who called him a friend. While Grehn tried to talk to me, hoping to find a spark of his former leader, Vlugh avoided both me and Enno like a plague. His Mind was fuzzy, too much for us to know all of what went through his thoughts, and Enno wanted to force him to explain himself, but I stopped him. A clear thought was coming through.

“Soon.”

Vlugh would approach us, of that I was certain. What he waited for, I did not know, but I trusted the honesty of his Mind, as much as I trusted the Mind of any other. A Mind could hide nothing from us, after all.

But Enno… Of all the changes rippling through the hive these past three weeks, Enno was the one most present in my thoughts. Considering that his thoughts were my thoughts, this was perhaps unsurprising. But the increasingly grim man had darkened considerably in recent memory, even more than I recalled since his arrival. In part, I blamed myself. Enno was, I knew more than anyone, a person who feared nothing more than being left alone. He so paradoxically pushed others away that it was easily mistaken, but I was privy to his deepest thoughts. It was that fear that drove him, and I had promised not to leave him alone after obtaining this new body. And I hadn’t! At least, it hadn’t felt like it. We still talked constantly, what with being a single Mind and all. We were forced to practice manipulating our Minds together, at large distances and in odd situations. And I had to be the one who initiated the egg-laying Ability, what with our displacement of power. He had grown remarkably quickly. But it still wasn’t enough, it seemed.

My concern for him nearly matched my concern for the both of us. After all, we shared a Mind, and these issues were not a matter of his sometimes gruff personality. It was a symptom of our union, of the mockery of nature that we were because of whatever experiment the Bee had performed on us. I was equally subject to problems. The difference between Enno and me was that I had yet to be capable of doing anything crazy, on account of having no fingers. That had changed.

Miraculously enough, I had no idea what he needed. If I didn’t know, it meant nobody could possibly know. If I could not find the answer within myself, the next course of action would be to look outwards, but at the time, there was nothing on the outside that showed signs of being of help. The hive could not have the answers, with their unconditional love for the both of us clouding their judgement and any weaknesses of ours affecting their strong perceptions. Fernen? They were wise, but the longer we worked together, the clearer it became that there were core differences in the way their Minds worked that made them of no help whatsoever. So then, the humans? Hah. Perhaps if I could convince them not to want to kill us on sight, I could then ask them if they had a solution for my friend’s problems. But it was those problems that resulted in their current, unfortunate situation.

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“Queenie, Enno is an idiot. Freaking idiot. You’re dumb too. Idiot. Obviously, you guys are too unique for anyone to solve your dumbass problems. Just deal with it like the rest of us. He says he wants to be alone, so let him be freaking alone. He’s gotta deal with it and stuff. For that matter, leave me alone. Every time I just want to think of something nice, you just have to interrupt me and start pretending to be my freaking mom or something. My mom died. Probably. You’re not my mother and you never will be.”

“Indeed.”

“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH-”

“….”

I finally shifted my arms from underneath my head and crossed them in defiance, as humans were wont to do. Unfortunately, this action also caused my head to become sore against the hard, cold ground. Perhaps I should not have been so hasty in denying the offer for the builders to construct me a proper living space. The four voices in my head, if they noticed it at all, paid no heed to my annoyance and continued their incessant gibbering. It was truly good Enno could not hear them, or he might be as sleepless as I had been since I became the proud owner of this flesh sack with no wings or antennae or proper vision, like a decent body should be.

When our Mind had been altered by the CBU all those weeks ago, offering me the control over this body, there had been a host of unintended and odd effects. None expected, but all within the realms of our calculations and all well within the expected series of risks that could be dealt with while we reaped the benefits of the transfer. But these voices had been one I could not accept Enno encountering. So, before the CBU had done its job, I had requested it to do something it had never done before. Hide things that happened in our Mind from Enno. It had found a method with some effort, but it was now so powerful that such a feat was apparently not as difficult as I expected. Truth be told, I partially regretted the order, as something told me Enno had either figured I was hiding things from him or he had desired something similar, because I was sure he was now hiding things from me. But the regret was overcome with satisfaction as it allowed me to isolate a certain B-box he would otherwise, probably, have been exposed to once the transfer occurred.

When I found myself in Yelah’s body, the first thing I did was order the CBU to hide the scream. I heard it immediately, and knew Enno would hear it, but it had been successfully hidden from his Mind. What I had not anticipated, however, was that three other faint voices would soon join the constant scream of agony and fear and anger. And upon my investigation within our Mind, I found there, hidden in a B-box deep within Yelah’s body, were four unique B-boxes. Though only one could truly be called a ‘box’ anymore.

The first voice was the cries of a child. A human child. A female human child with striking red hair, gasping for breath and sobbing in pain. This was Yelah’s Mind, I knew immediately. The resemblance was uncanny, and the feeling of her Mind identical. The faintly golden-yellow B-box had transformed into the shape of a toddler, a young Yelah, resulting in faintly glowing golden skin beside her distinct crimson locks. Of course, my confusion was also boundless, though soon replaced with a theory. It had been my assumption that Yelah’s Mind had been absorbed into our own, strengthening our Combined Mind, the place where the CBU stored her for later in a truly brilliant use of the Ability which should have been comprehensible only to a god like the Bee. So if that were the case, then what the voices were was obvious. And the truth was only clearer once I looked closer.

The second voice was that of the Vulch. Here floated a milky white orb tinged with gold, most unlike the exactly matching form the B-box became for Yelah. My guess here was that since we had so utterly destroyed the Vulch from within, our consumption of the dregs of his Mind resulted in little more than a faint construct of his original self to exist here.

The fourth box was the only one that could still be called as such. It was a room-sized cube of darkness, swirling with blacks somehow deeper than the pitch black shade it already bore. This was the source of the scream, the scream that rang out in Enno’s voice. And so, this was likely a stand-in, a representation among the Combined Minds of Enno, annoying as it was. Annoying not for the scream, but because I bristled at the fact that this creation of mine, a construct I had formed long ago to contain Enno’s darkest thoughts and memories, was what the CBU deemed to represent our Combined Mind. It was this box I intended to hide from him, and the CBU thought it humorous to use it in this little gallery of madness. It could not convince me otherwise that this was its goal, considering all four B-boxes had been waiting lined up for me to investigate. Second to last, there was me. My typical glowing bee body, adorned with a floating crown of blazing gold, was how I always appeared within our Mind.

Despite these bizarre formations and the oddly artistic display the CBU had prepared for me in my new body, it was the final voice that confused and disoriented me the most. Memory serving, the other being that had been absorbed into our Ability was the thug Yafoot, that strange man who worked under Harven and had been violently yet valiantly killed when confronting Jill Yemonto during the takeover of Yiwi. Perhaps true to his name, the final B-box was in the form of a single human foot, no color besides the regular B-box gold. It was bloodless, cleanly cut, and struck me with a deep and primal fear. Back then, I had not found the man particularly impressive or of much note, so why did this facsimile disturb me so? It was difficult to place. The other Minds avoided the foot. Even the screaming box seemed to defy logic and always seemed to inch away from it every time I turned around. The CBU itself dared not interact with the foot, leaving it in place and doing all in its power to perform its tasks with as little disturbance to the foot as possible. At first, I believed it to be symbolic. Perhaps a lesson to us about folly or human nature. But I soon suspected there was something more to this foot, and to the man it should belong to. I was convinced he left this piece of his own Mind to us willingly and was still alive somehow. We could do nothing with it but enjoy the multiplier it provided thanks to Combined Mind, and we would likely never be able to derive anything more from it as long as we existed, so bizarre did it feel. In fact, it reminded me in some way of Enno himself. A stranger to this world, a being that didn’t quite belong. But the feeling was much stronger with this foot. Like it shouldn’t exist at all.

In the present, early teenage Yelah paced about, glaring at me every so often. She had not stayed a toddler, that was for certain. The past three weeks had seen her rapid growth through the stages of human life, paired with her improved strength and my becoming more accustomed to using her body. It was her I had focused on the most, being the only one who properly engaged in conversation other than screaming or saying the word ‘indeed.’ In a way, she reminded me of one of my bees, which was perhaps where her accusations of my motherliness came from. But this was not a pleasant reminder. It was more based on her instant and burning hatred for bees, especially Enno and myself, that mirrored the instant dislike all bees we birthed held for humans.

Instinctual hatred was, in truth, my fault. The hate came from me. Even now, I harbored thoughts I often imagined myself locking away in the screaming cube, thoughts towards humans. Even Enno. I hated them. I really, deeply did. I was no fool; my hatred for humans was both illogical and unproductive. Hell, I was part human now, for Bee’s sake! Enno was my closest confidant, my partner, my other self, and yet deep within, I knew I hated him for nothing more than the fact that he was once human. And for that, I felt a hatred towards myself. Enno excused me, of course. It was because my home was destroyed, my family killed, he’d say. Justified, even, he’d call my rage. But I disagreed. They were only a few people, not all humans. How could I hate them all, rather than the faceless few who burned my forest?

And so every bee is born with a deep-seated hatred of humans they themselves do not fully understand. Only with tireless work or extraordinary circumstances, like those of Ben and Beelzebub, can they break free from the curse I cast upon their eggs.

I was convinced the screams and growls of rage Yelah felt were the same. So from the time she was a toddler, I tried to connect with her. I really did. But Enno, as a man with little experience with human children, was truly spoiled with bees, I had to say. The human child was unruly, disobedient, straight up mean. It was a creature of little more than instinct, like a drone, but with the same curiosity and inquisitiveness of a mature, Mindful worker. It was only now, recently, that she had grown to a young teenager, that I felt a chance was presenting itself. Before, she had been impossible. But maybe now I could get through to her.

“Man, this place is so freaking boring. Queenie, can you make me a penguin or something? Please?”

Oh! A step in the right direction, perhaps. Never had she asked me for something with a ‘please.’ She was even looking at me while asking, and without such a severe pout on her face! Perhaps she was continuing to grow, and if that were true, it would only be before long that she became an adult once again, restored to her former self and ready to have a proper dialogue about our issues rather than the grumbling I’d been dealing with for weeks.

“Well Yelah, perhaps-“

“Mmm. Forget it. Don’t feel like it anymore. I’m just gonna take a nap.” Yelah quickly turned her head, sighed loudly, and collapsed to the floor of our Mind. Seconds later, she was snoring and drooling all over her mentally constructed shirt.

…

I’d have to ask Enno if he might find a way to strangle a part of our own brain.