#beeeeeees!!!

[darlingknave]

Dear Diary,

The honey made Topsy feel good and dance so well that the Magic Man could dance in her saddle, but then she fell asleep. It’s not good to have bears fall asleep during a show. Nobody likes it when I give anyone the honey. The honey is no good.

No more Bees. I can’t make the Bees go back to being monsters so I’ll take care of them still but I’m going to stop talking about them and I won’t catch any new ones. I don’t want to become the Bee Man if their honey is bad. That’ll make me bad, too. Maybe it’s not too late to read them books about spiders or beetles instead. They still don’t have a queen so there’s hope. 

I think maybe it is too late to change me though. Maybe once something’s been named for too long, it can never really become something else. Like the Bees. Maybe they can’t become real bees because as soon as their eggs were formed the world already decided that they were something else. They were trapped in those eggs for so long that by the time they broke free they were already what they were. No matter how much they try to look like bees and act like bees they’ll always be Bees That Were Monsters.

I look like a person and sound kind of like a person, but I’m not a person any more than my Bees are bees. I’m not someOne, I’m someThing. I’ll keep trying though. Maybe I don’t have to be a bad thing. 

Writing here used to make things easier to understand when I read back over them but now it only makes me feel sad. I should only write down the good things, that way when I read this book I’ll feel better instead. Yes. I will only write what makes things okay. Nothing else is healthy to keep.

Good Things:

Topsy liked my honey potpie and got a good night’s sleep 

Fiz said I did a good job barking

Before Fiz got to the spot I did one round of the rodeo and it went well

I have four more nights of good sleep before we have to leave

Tweed didn’t die and might be okay again in a day or two

Harkre is nice and even stranger than I am

I know how to bake potpies now

This is better. I will try to only write these kinds of things from now on. 

Good night, Diary. 

[darlingknave]

Dear Diary,

People don’t remember how names work. They say that there’s power in a name but they only mean for spells, like for making a thing come to them, curses, like that. They don’t sound like they know why names have power at all.

A name tells everyone about a thing. Sure. It’s like an address that goes everywhere the thing goes. But it’s so much more because it tells that thing what it is. Things change to fit their names, become their names. Things are their names. They’re more their names at the end than at the start but nothing’s constant anyway so why should that matter?

My bees are bees now. They could have been something else, something Terrible, but they will be and are now bees. Forever. I’ve made them bees because that’s what I’ve named them. I found them when they were new, before the world had given them the awful name they could have had, and I gave them something better. They build the honeycomb because they are Bees. They eat the green flowers to make the dark honey because they are Bees. They live in the jar sealed up tight so that they don’t forget, because they’re still too young and new, and it would be too easy for them to lose their name and become something Terrible. They would rather stay Bees, they’ve told me so.

My name is Darling. It could have been something else, something Terrible. It’s important that they keep using this name. I hope they don’t forget.

Love,

Athrivel Darling of the Darkmoon Faire, one of the Finest.