"Perhaps it releases its very body, all to reach the stars and the sky above.'

Note before we begin.

This story is still undergoing revisions and writing as we speak, and what’s presented here may or may not be exactly the same as the ‘final version’.

This story is about tree fairies. They don’t have genders, not even the concept of genders. They use fae/faer/faerself pronouns (‘fay’, ‘fair’, ‘fair-self’). I’m aware this takes getting used to. Using they/them if you have issues is perfectly fine.

This story has trigger warnings. Depictions of blood, distress, and animal (insect) death are present, viewer discretion is advised.

Many thanks to you, dear reader. This story has been a ‘labor of love’ (as they say) for the past eight years and it means the world to me that you’re reading it.

I hope you find it wondrous.

Two Moons before the Battle of the Fates.

The bumblebee raises its wings, struggling to dissolve itself in flight’s tase, that blissful oblivion, to drink the abyss and sew boundlessness into its lungs while it drinks the bee’s earthly body in return. But alas, this tragic bumble-y-est bee is a fool. How could it swallow the empty sky with its body drenched in death’s scent?

The bee’s wings droop and it squirms. It reaches a single weakening limb towards clouds and flower-nectar breeze, wishing, hoping, denying the fate it knows it deserves, and the sky, chuckling to itself, rejects it.

My world has known all that you are and all you will ever be. The sky sings. We have nothing more for you or your existence.

The bee chokes. It falls backward and fills my arms with golden striped fluff. I bonk its head with my muzzle. Silly bee. Doesn’t it know that flightless characters are bound to die off? Stories don’t like useless characters, especially not those who trap themselves on an indifferent earth.

Snuggling the bumblebee close to my chest, I burry my chin in its soft fuzz, and lower my voice to a storyteller’s tone. “Fear not, dear bumbly bee, for your final moments shall be sweetened with stories, softened with the spoken word, lulled with the cadence of an unsung song! How wondrous is that?”

The bumblebee doesn’t so much as buzz in reply as it flutters, wings flapping against my face. I shift my hold to rub its tummy, and the bee’s wings lower. Alas, a creature of lazy yet impassioned joy, who meanders across flowers of gold and fluffs itself with yellow speckles, drinking the world with savoring sips, leaves life just as slow. It’ll lick the last drops of nectar from the flower’s center and still nibble the petals until even the hint of sweetness fades from memory.

The perfect candidate to regale with a tale of adventure!

I adjust my grip on the bee, and buzz my wings, soaking both the bee and myself in sky, hovering for a second before half-tripping and falling.

The bee buzzes. Good. It didn’t notice. (By the time I’d finish explaining that my flightlessness doesn’t count, that narrators are bound to fly eventually, the bee would be dead and dust).

I clear my throat, flicking my ears with a dramatic flourish. “This is the tale of Kamari, the protagonist.”

The bee reaches a limb past my arms, waves it, excited (and dying, but mostly excited).

I nod. “Far from this tree and the tether’s bounds, Kamari embarks on countless quests, from saving baby squirrels to eradicating caterpillars… or eradicating baby squirrels and saving caterpillars if the situation requires it. But no matter the ask, Kamari completes the quest with a bow and a flourish, and fae returns with trinkets, tokens of faer exploits, if you will.”

I snuggle beside Kamaris tree. “But the greatest of adventures? That was Kamari’s battle to free a bird, trapped in the overseer’s clutches.”

The bee’s limb goes limp. The equivalent of a gasp!

“The overseers are like wanderers, bipedal and gargantuan, thumping around the forest, stealing both the silence and the creatures within it… and this time, they snatched a baby bird and chained it in their nest where it cannot sing, cannot leave, cannot fly or dream of a sky. So, Kamari’s off to free the bird from the overseers’ evil lair!”

The bee flops over, its upper half dangling from my arms, limbs wriggling frantically.

“Quite dire indeed! And the result of this battle, you ask, dear bumblebee?”

The bee slows, suspended over the earth, limp and worn to nothing.

“We’re in the midst of it, but want to know a secret?” I gently lift it back into a hug, whispering where its ears should be. “When Kamari sings, fae sews the stars and sky into faer voice, and places them in the hands that carry your fluffy puff of a body. Fae’s the best protagonist a story could ask for.

“When fae returns, I’ll tell you how fae’s freed the bird in a dramatic battle, okay?”

Wholly and entirely still.

I pat the dead bee’s fuzzy head and place it beside the others, nestled between Kamari’s tree’s branches. Moss blankets the notch between a branch and the bark, and the dead bumblebees snuggle within it, all neat lines and blackened yellow fluff. I’ve told each one a story, spun a dream to lose themselves within, so they might wander in that moment between waking and sleep, in the space between a breath and losing it, in tales of adventure and devastation and triumph and a lovely amount of cannibalism (for emphasis).

Of course, I can never tell them the ending. Kamari never returns before the bee dies.

I itch my scalp, at the tether strands knotted around the base of my curly roots, yanking against the earth. I tell stories, weave together dreams even as I’m stuck in this waking world, where I scrape a breath inside only to lose it, where I spin tales of dreaming and adventure and devastation and triumph and a lonely amount of waiting for the protagonist to bring about a happy ending.

Kamari isn’t here. The bee dies. And I’m alone.

Once the moon rises and a slight cold nips at my fingertips, Kamari returns from the forest beyond, stumbles across the rustling grass blades blanketing the hill between Kamari’s tree and the others, and ducks beneath faer tree’s branches, a trail of red splotches adorning the leaves that brushed against faer back.

I hover-hop to faer, wings stuttering to a stop the moment I leave the ground. Red droplets trickle and purple splotches litter Kamari’s brown tinted skin. New ones this time, patches across faer shoulder, streams trickling down faer leg, whispering stories of grand battles fought in a far off forest. Final battles fought. Won. Happy endings ensue!

On me, such a torn apart body would hurt, but Kamari simply reaches my spot beside faer tree, pats my head, and sits, staring while the blood pools around faer feet. It seeps between my toes as I lean against Kamari’s side. I squeak, tapping my fingers along Kamari’s hand. Kamari limply hangs a wing atop my head, nodding off before fae jolts faerself awake. Aha! The transition period where a protagonist faces their pain. Surpasses it. A momentary weakness before the ultimate triumph!

Now to wait for the reveal, a Kamari song to embellish the happy ending!

Kamari hums, hiding faer face in faer hands. One note. Two. The second pitched higher than the first.

One. Two. One. Two. One…

Kamari doesn’t so much as cry as whine. Repetitive hums. Two notes cycling. Like cicada wails. Over and over and over. No beginning. No end in sight. The world entraps itself in spiraling. Nothing outside of it holds any meaning. All of existence distills. Those two notes. Over and over and over-

Kamari shudders a gasp, digging faer claws into faer forehead.

I itch my scalp. That’s not right.

The bumblebees wait, silent and snuggled, for confirmation of their happy ending, for the protagonist to smile and free the others from their misery, wrenching the story from the villains’ grasp and soaking it in sunset pinks and drowsy oranges, casting something brittle and sharp edged in the wonder of the moon’s rising light.

I tap Kamari’s leg, “You have to sing a happy ending. Something akin to birdsong, otherwise this story falls apart.”

Kamari turns to me. Stares. Red droplets stream between faer eyes. Drenches the scar on faer cheek.

“You defeated the villains and freed the baby bird. Your song must encapsulate the-” I twirl my hands “- wonder of freedom.”

Kamari blinks. Burries faer head in faer arms. Leans on faer knees.

Sings.

A winding melody. Tentative. A baby bird trapped aground. A nest not belonging to itself or species. There’s not a way to escape, not for flightless birds. Better it shed wings too heavy. Perhaps it releases its very body, all to reach the stars and the sky above.

There. That’s a happy ending.