He was looking at his results, quietly, as he pondered. Yes, he had a very long life ahead of him, yes, he had amazing potential for growth, yes, he was highly intelligent. But his basic affinities were simply too low for the tower.

And yet the tower reserved him for when his affinities rose enough to justify giving him an education.

There would be no marriage for him. But there also wouldn't be a real place in his hive. He was smart enough to understand that even to his mother he had lost all meaning, or he would as soon as she understood what it all meant.

Too good a potential mage to sell as a marriage partner, so his mother couldn't buy herself a consort with what she got as his price. And yet, his affinities almost nonexistent, so low he didn't know how many centuries it would take for him to be able to learn what the tower had to teach. After his basic schooling he could neither attend the female queen's classes nor the classes for the various jobs, nor any kind of schooling for consorts.

He was, without a shadow of a doubt, falling through all the cracks even before he was allowed to take a single step outside his own crib.

Unexpectedly, there was freedom in such a life of senseless waiting.

And so he sat high up in the tree, letting the soft tune of his flute fly freely with the wind. High, jubilant and passionate in the strong spring breeze. It was strong and full, triumphant in summer. It was a gentle goodbye broken by slightly sad, slow melodies that spoke of wisdom when the leaves turned red and yellow. Winter was a soft thing, full of majesty and quiet solitude.

They had taken the girl from him and the old woman. He would have a brother, he'd heard, a brother that would be sold for his mother's dream of becoming a full queen capable of giving birth to many workers.

And so time slipped by as the boy grew up, seemingly forgotten by everyone. Though he passed the tests at school with full marks, nobody came to celebrate with him and his schoolmates, who had never expected him to stay in their class, only looked at him with a bit of pity. A few kisses on his cheeks had been the only goodbye and since then he hadn't seen any of them. They were busy learning secret things in secret places from their mentors, true to their hive's policy of shadows and doubts.

But he was still there, in his childhood room that had never been changed.

He was still there, he who had once thought it sad that the girl with the flute had nothing but her tunes.

He who, in the end, was left with nothing but time and his flute, waiting for the day of his next testinga hundred years later, hoping for a better result that likely wouldn't come.

And one day, at the start of spring, in his 12th year of life, he drifted a little further away from the hive as he played his simple little tunes.

The snow was still covering much of the bears' village, but the first few flowers of spring were peeking out of their white blanket. Little bits of green and occasionally a yellow, violet or white little flower slowly exposing their petals to the bright sun. It spoke to him, their melodies inspiring him to play a flowing thing of a melody, impulsive and free, without a frame that might make it a song. He didn't want to play a song. He just wanted to let his heart sing of what he felt, endlessly and free, if just for a little while.

The little black and yellow form danced through the gentle warmth of the lively rays the sun was sending down, flying slowly in circles and twirls, playing with the shadows the leaves of the high trees cast in these mountains. As that little form flew by he played in hardy shrubs that had only just started growing new leaves, playing for it of all the future would bring. Of silver leaves shining in the sun, of little flowers and seeds that would come and spread, of strong winds that could never affect the shrubs that had roots deep in the stony heart of the mountain. If he had magic he could have let the leaves grow to full glory, but as he was he cold only give his best wishes and blessing, wishing for deep, sturdy roots and a year full of growth, for good soil and many leaves.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

For a little while he played above a pond in the higher mountains. It was not a deep, clear crystal lake, the place where the musicians of his kingdom liked to praise the beauty of the mountain. No, it was a little pond with green plants growing at the bottom and more green on the surface, with many spiders walking over the surface, tadpoles swimming in swarms, fish with silvery scales and reed all around. There was nothing refined or elegant about the pond, but it was full of life and so busy he couldn't help but admire it all, playing day after day as the tadpoles became frogs, swarms of lighning bugs and flies danced above the surface, as the frogs left only to return. And then winter came and the pond froze over, entering the long sleep until the next spring woke it once again. A year passed by as he watched the life cicle of the pond and his heart grew lighter. His free melodies that never seemed to stop anymore grew deeper and more subtle, gentler and full of humor. His fall hymns were no longer a goodbye, they were a see you again, until next year. His winter tunes were no longer the sad, majestic things they had been, but gentle lullabyes that wished for beautiful dreams to all that were asleep.

As time passed by and he turned thirteen, then fourteen and fifteen, he spent less and less time in his kingdom. He heard that his mother found a good queen for his brother whom he had never seen and got herself an older consort, a widower with much experience, more than 3500 years old and no longer in his youth.

As they began to prepare for their departure and nobody really knew what to do with him, he sat at the edge of his pond with a little smile. It was spring and he was more than capable of surviving by himself. He was no longer a child and there was no place for him where he truly felt he belonged inside the kingdom. But it didn't really bother him as he played his melodies on his simple flute. It was not the same he had once recieved, but one he had made himself from a thin reed he found one day, years ago.

He didn't really leave the kingdom. He just never went back one day. He said goodbye to his pond and kept flying, deeper into the mountains. Had he been a large mammal it might have been dangerous, but who would hunt a bee? There were no flying insect tribes in these parts as flowers were too rare, insect eating tribes did not eat sentient insects people and he knew how to avoid natural predators. Where he would go was never the question, not to him. All he wondered was where he would find new melodies in these harsh mountains.

Freedom. He was free and it was a strange thing. He had never fought for his freedom. No, he never had to. He was simply forgotten for a while and before anyone noticed he had disappeared.