A bee named Bea had one job.
Find flowers. Collect nectar. Come home.
Find flowers. Collect nectar. Come home.
She’d done it a thousand times.
But today she had taken a new path through the forest.
Just to try something different.
And now the meadow was nowhere.
And the flowers were nowhere.
And home was definitely nowhere.
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. 🐝
🌲 Following Clues
Bea stopped and thought.
“I am a bee,” she said. “I am very good at finding things. I just need to think.”
She took a sniff.
Pine. Damp soil. A rabbit. More pine.
No flowers yet. But she would look for clues.
She flew to a butterfly.
“Have you seen flowers?”
“I came from that direction,” said the butterfly, pointing a wing.
Bea went that direction.
She found a patch of sunshine through the trees.
Warmer. That was a clue.
She found a beetle who said the meadow was “sort of that way, I think, I mostly go down.”
Not the most helpful clue. But a clue.
🐝 Nose First
Bea trusted her nose.
A very faint smell.
Sweet. Warm. Like summer concentrated into a single thread of air.
Flowers.
She followed the smell.
Over a root.
Under a low branch.
Past the surprised beetle.
Around a bend in the path.
And there it was.
The meadow.
Full of flowers.
Yellow and purple and white and pink, all the way to the hill.
“OH,” said Bea, and dove straight in.
💛 Benjamin Follows Too
Benjamin had been watching Bea zigzag through the forest, curious where she was going.
And now Benjamin stood at the edge of the meadow.
The same meadow Benjamin had walked past a hundred times.
But seen from the forest path, coming out of the trees —
It looked completely different.
Bigger. Brighter. Like finding something you didn’t know you’d lost.
Benjamin looked at Bea, already deep in a flower, completely content.
“She found her way,” said Benjamin.
Sometimes getting lost is just finding a different way home. 🐝