Bee-Webbed

The peace after the hornet war is a careful one.

White Hive and the Forgotten Crevice share the garden but not their stores, their queens, or their flight lines.

Colin walks the landing board each morning, counting the foragers who return and listening to the ordinary hum of a colony that has begun to heal. Then he smells silk on the clover route. Fresh. Invisible until a wing meets it. One forager does not come home.

What begins as a single web is the edge of something larger. Spiderlings are drifting from the old rose against the cottage wall, where the Weaver still tends her nursery. Routes close. Stores thin. Both hives pay the tax of the web.

To reach the centre, Colin will need more than the strength in his wingbase. He will need Brutus and Bramble, the woodlouse Flint and his tunnels, and a temporary alliance with the old hive. The silk does not care which house a bee serves. The garden will not hold its peace unless they cut the anchors that hold the Weaver's web in place.

But even if the centre falls, the work of guardianship does not end. Two doors remain. Two routes home. And the space between them still has to be kept.