We cling to the dandelions’ edges west of the basswood stump, the grasses slumped and gone to seed, the dew-wet scraps of late-summer leaf-falls, while the must of petrichor and moss is on the air. For a moment one of us is solitary, joined with the distant clouds and pink-tinged sky, testing subtle pressure and humidity shifts, and then her message returns to us in pure chemical lucidity—a message something like the color blue or an open flower, or a limitless horizon from behind which intoxicating scents float.
Now we are one again, fixed in wanderlust and a compulsive yearning that thrums with our wings, go, go, go, go now, we go now; this is our voice as it swirls below the hex-door, and we swarm out, the tendrils of a great sun at the honeyed heart of the world. How good it is to be among the Searchers.
We rove. Our antennae twitch, gently scraping the air and gathering scent-fragments—dust, soil, peeling bark, swelling fruit, grass, water, animal hair and blood, disease, one another.
And—sweet, holy, inexorable—the flowers. Now, now, now, the ritual-hail burns inside; we fix on our flowers with antennae struck forward ..-.-. alone now.
Joined: the flower and something with yellow fur on its back, something that wears no name. We (the flower and I) approach each other; it shines more violet than violet and speckled in pink. Smell like the deep beat at the wood-heart, the god-heart, the body lurched upwards to a green and wet heaven; yes, this is a dark one, dark and cloyingly sweet. It is the best. It is always my flower that is the best. Drinking, pressing, peeling back, and pollen-heavy stamens brush against legs and leave a holy residue. This is our exchange.
Then we pull away from our flowers and we are together again. Any kind of singular yellow-furred being is forgotten, but the memory of the flowers is fixed and shared with the rest. Each which gave good nectar we mark with a message, so that other Searchers may drink as well. Now the compulsive desire returns, go, go, go now, but it is not for something unknowable and wide-open. It is for the close, clear sweetness of home. An unbearable nostalgia washes through us.
We turn back towards that great sun and hex-heart of the world, the daughter of the still-greater Sun which burns above, who is the mother of the flowers and of us. We will not turn towards that Sun until the end, and then—they say—we must make the journey alone.
1. Worker honeybees secrete Nasonov pheromone to guide other bees to nectar-rich flowers, or back to the hive.
2. Honeybees often return to the hive before storms—it is uncertain how they are able to predict the weather.
3. Honeybees can detect ultraviolet light.
