Epic of Bee

Miasma and Leah stayed close to me, but I had taken hold of Miasma's hand as we walked. The Village Chief didn't come, but there was no reason for him to come just to show me this thing.

"I really hope you can help figure out our problem. Your right that what we are doing isn't fair, but seeing this will help you understand a bit more. We don't do this because we want to," Miasma explained.

"I will try my best to figure out what I can do to help. Do you know why the SugaBees were visiting the village? The black Bees?" I asked.

"Yes! That's one of the reasons that I went there! I was trying to smell out the truth of the mystery!" Miasma said, turning to me as she did. "The SugaBees are having a problem with Mountain Trolls. They are taking the same nectar that they collect, and then they use it to brew powerful, clear alcohol that would leave us completely Skunked or dead from poison."

"Is this something new? Didn't the Trolls have their own mountains that they cultivate the flowers on?" Leah asked from the other side of me.

"The SugaBee said that there was a boom in the goblin population, and they are holding up a large portion of the southwest Fountain Pique Mountains. They also use the plant, but they treat them as holy objects because they think that ingesting the fluid from the plant will turn them into Hobgoblins, but everyone knows that they just have to ingest enough of anything to evolve" Miasma explained.

Bah! Wasn't there a single race that didn't need some form of attention?

SugaBees were running out of food and building material because the Trolls were running out of booze. That was because the Goblins were spreading out. After all, they are big green, hairless rabbits.

"Alright, then who is fucking with the Goblins?!" I asked in exasperation, but I felt terrible when I saw Miasma's cute ears droop. "Sorry, it's not your fault, but it just seems like everywhere I turn, there is a new problem. Then those problems have problems with problems."

I reached my upper arm over to give her a hug, but I was surprised when she melted into me. Miasma put her head on my shoulder as we walked, but I started to notice that the landscape around us was changing.

It was like walking into a wasteland, everything was dead, and the ground was cracked earth. It was a massive circle that had been cut out like someone had put a vacuum cleaner nozzle here and sucked all life out of this one place.

"Your waste caused this? Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but did you spread it around or?" I asked, trying to exude something other than stupidity with my emotions.

I was a master of putting my foot in my mouth, but I needed to know these things. If they had just poured this in a single spot, I could see why they stopped with this much damage.

"This isn't the place where the damage was done, but this is where we poured it in. This damage you see was done over many years, but you will see what happened up ahead," Miasma said as we got closer to the hole, and now I could smell the pungent odor that was still present.

I tried not to screw up my face, but then I saw Miasma screw up her face at the smell. That was my signal to put a hand over my nose and mouth to try and filter some of the air.

I was always worried that if I breathed a rotten smell through my mouth, I would taste it. Probably wouldn't happen, but I wasn't about to test the theory out any time soon.

Though I was a Queen, maybe I could ask someone else like Leah to try it? She was tough, but no, that was to mean a thing to ask, and I was just trying to distract myself from the smell.

"It's just up ahead, but it is pretty bad, so don't get mad at us; we didn't know that it was going this. It wasn't until a young male came as a joke to spray over here, and when they saw this," Miasma said with worry in her voice as we crested the rig.

"Woah, what happened?" Leah asked, which was probably the nicest way to react to the devastation that lay before us.

The hole must have turned west to here and then sprayed like a waterfall to carry out across a sea of what must have been a once vibrant forest. Now, the place was nothing more than a wasteland of dead trees, and nothing moved down there.

I turned to look at Miasma, and she had tears in her eyes, and she was shaking.

"We didn't know that it was doing this, and we destroyed miles of other people's homes, even killing some. We should be punished for what we did, but we didn't know! Now, we are doing it all over again because it is the less of the two great evils!" Miasma said, crying now, and I reached out and pulled her into my Tom-Toms.

"I know, mistakes have been made, but there is nothing we can do about them right now. All we can do is work to fix the present problem, but now I understand the effects. So the SugaBees want the waste to keep the Trolls away, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, but the problem is transporting it all there. The SugaBees are not strong, and it would need to be flown up to be poured on the lower parts on the cliffs where the Trolls come up," Miasma explained while resting her head on my knockers.

Another thing to add to the ever-growing list of things to do, but it was a good point that I would have to figure out how to get around.

"Okay, let's go back to your hut, and then we can see what your skills are, and maybe you might Bee able to help with the problem," I told Miasma as we pulled apart and then turned back from the edge of the cliff and headed back.