Lost and Found: an A Bug's Life story
Chapter Four: The Council
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The bang of Atta’s gavel echoed throughout the council chamber. It was a sound rarely heard these days, similar to the almost forgotten bellow of snail horns that had once warned Ant Island of Hopper’s impending arrival. There was no need for those horns now that the grasshoppers were gone.
In fact, there was hardly even a need for council meetings anymore.
These days, Flik and Atta made most of the major decisions affecting the colony between the two of them, behind closed doors. Once they came to an agreement, they then brought their proposal to the individual council members for their signatures of approval. In addition to the queen, the royal council consisted of five members: Thorny, Cornelius, Soil, Flora, and—as of almost four seasons ago now, shortly after the Queen’s passing—Manny.
It was a system that worked well for everyone. No one missed those chaotic meetings of the past, when everyone talked over everyone else for two hours straight only to end up with almost nothing to show for it.
Today Atta had called an emergency council meeting, the first one held since Flik himself stood on trial for upsetting Hopper’s offering (and subsequently upsetting Hopper himself) two springs ago. Today the six insects were gathered beneath the achingly bright mushroom that served as the chamber’s light source, and their purpose was not to discuss agricultural policies or trade agreements or fund allocation.
Boring as those topics were, Flik would have preferred any of them over the reason this meeting had actually been called.
Thorny’s gruff voice broke through his reverie.
“So what happened to her?” he demanded, his tone almost implying that Atta herself had something to do with Dot’s disappearance. “Where on the Island could she have gone?”
A long pause followed the engineer’s question. For the first time since the meeting started about twenty minutes ago—when Atta uttered the words “missing princess” and the room devolved into mayhem—the council chamber was silent.
All eyes were on the queen.
Flik knew with one glance at his wife’s pale face that she was doing everything in her power not to cry. Her lips were pressed together as she stared down at the gavel in her hand, her chest rising and falling with measured breaths. All he wanted was to stand up, march across the room, and wrap her in a hug.
But he couldn’t. As prince consort, his job was to sit on the former queen’s throne, try not to think too hard about how much he wished it was his mother-in-law still sitting here instead of him, and give a thoughtful hum every so often as he watched the council proceedings unfold.
Oh, and to hold Aphie. Since the aphid’s former owner wasn’t here to do it herself.
Flik watched his wife’s pregnant belly grow even bigger as she took another deep breath. Her hand was splayed over it, like she was trying to shield the baby inside from the news she was about to deliver.
“We have reason to believe that Dot was taken captive by an enemy kingdom.”
image credits linked in comments
vaporwave
areudirty
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
