Bees on Beach Rocks

There is an island in the world where the dolphins don't come.


Among the rocks there are no tourists laden with fishy treats, nor nutrients or plants to attract fish so far out from the continental shelf to seek them.

There is only a cave, a boy, and the Bees.

Alone among the rocks, the boy tends to the hives, day in, day out, making sure they are perfectly structured, well stocked with glucose, warm and well-swept and safe from the dangers of the outside world--

And in return the bees, on their long seasonal journeys to the Lands where Flowers Grow, pluck for him every year a single lily that grows near to the Fountain of Life.

When I found him there, the boy with no name and a love for the sea, he begged me not to tell of the island and the work that he did.

"People would not understand. The bees have warned me that they would try to take me away, that they would lock me up or put me in a strange home, and that people would hurt each other trying to get to the Nectar of Life which keeps spirit and body joined. They do not know that it is only bees that have the power to attain that nectar and turn it to a palatable form, else it brings Death instead...  It is best for them not to find it at all. Far better to live a normal life and not know such things even exist."

The bees on that island are the last hope for mankind.

The work that they do, the sugars they spin into hexagonal shapes, are a tangible part of the tapestry, the matrix, the coding of the inherent patterns of the universe....

If they were to be discovered, they would likely be destroyed.

Pests.

Then the universe would shift once more- diversity would be lost, in little ways- and the thread would slowly start to unravel...

There are many places like this in the world- mostly underground.
Some are frenzied dens of calculated chaos, others peaceful willow-reeds of continuity, some balanced hives of activity. Together, they keep the realm of imagination intact, so that when one's mind wanders off into ever-expanding territories of thought, it does fall of the edge and into the Abyss.