It has been four days of looking after my kids. They haven’t done much more than eat and sleep. They are not very entertaining. At least now they are cocooning. I have a feeling the lazy girl took much longer than them.

  But that time back then was so murky, mostly pain, a little fear, and a lot of anger. I know she is somewhat slow, but she is the sweetest. She tries so hard. I’m proud of her. I really did a good job with her.

  Now these little ones have done nothing! Just eating and sleeping and squeaking cutely, like that would work on me. I invented the cute squeak. Not cute. Not fun at all.

  I felt so impatient for my plan. I was supposed to wait for the little ones, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. The process takes almost two days, and it has only just started. I’m not waiting any longer than this. I’m leaving when the lazy girl is back.

  I have had to wait for too long, and I can’t calm down at all. I started to buzz with impatient energy.

  So when she eventually got back to the hive, she smelled of concern. She looked at me and was about to ask a question, but I interrupted.

  “Stay. Protect sisters.”

  “No. Protect. Queen stay. Protect queen.”

  “Important thing. Do outside.”

  “Go with. With queen.”

  I could smell her worry and sadness. She knew she couldn’t convince me. I bumped her with my head and tried to send out calming pheromones. I wanted to believe it helped, but I smelled no difference.

  “Protect hive. Be back. No worries.”

  As I felt her agree to stay, I flew out. But for the first time in my life, I felt a clump in my stomach that I had never felt before. As if I was doing something wrong. As if something might be more important than my own feelings, and I might not always be right.

  I flew without noticing things around me, even as I picked up the glowing stone and flew toward the undead.

  It was much heavier than I had thought it would be. It wasn’t even the stone that was the problem. I had held heavier, and I had gained even more strength than before. No, it was me. My post-birthing body was the problem.

  I had no stamina. I could feel it running out faster than I expected, but still within what should be manageable.

  I was some distance away from the undead, but I could still see it. It was one I had found with the lazy girl before the larvae. Thinking about her made me uncomfortable, so I stopped and concentrated on the undead.

  It was shuffling, but it had all its limbs. It wasn’t the closest to the nest, but it was still nearby. It was also the healthiest-looking one, if you could say a dead thing could be healthy. It was the one that smelled the least like rot.

  I thought it would ease when I started, but I felt even more stressed and impatient than before leaving.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Shit. I need to get back to the hive. What am I doing out here?

  It was hard to differentiate what was instinct and if it was me feeling this.

  The moment I felt rested enough, I flew again. This was the start of getting back at those shitty wasps. This was me getting my revenge.

  The beat of my wings was getting heavier. It wasn’t going precisely as planned, but that wasn’t necessarily bad.

  It was running much faster than any of the others had. I didn’t need to drive it into a frenzy to make it chase me faster. The problem was that I couldn’t stop to rest for more than a second.

  Every time I tried, it started climbing too fast, so I had to keep flying.

  As I began seeing the shitty nest, I felt my wings pulsing with pain. I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to flee after I crashed into the nest.

  As I hadn’t thought about it, I could never see what would happen to the nest.

  I landed on a branch to get at least some rest, but had to flee again after only a second or two.

  I was so focused on the nest, trying to figure out what to do and work out what might happen, that I didn’t see anything else.

  I wasn’t ready when something swooped in from behind and took the stone from me.

  I realized it too late.

  I smelled my daughter and saw her from afar. She was too fast to keep up with or stop, and I couldn’t communicate with her from here.

  Shit. Shit. No no no, Not again. I can’t lose her too.

  My mind was spiraling, and I couldn’t gather my thoughts to do anything. I was just a spectator to this event.

  The undead kept up with her as she flew toward the shitty nest, and I just stood there, unable to do anything, regretting that I hadn’t included her in the plan or made sure she couldn’t follow me.

  As she went faster, the undead started to jump after her in a way that made me nervous. She was going even faster, but that only made it more aggressive.

  That had been part of the original plan, but that was before I had seen how fast this one was. Its normal speed had already been enough.

  She was close to the nest now, and I had no idea what she was going to do.

  I broke through my paralyzing mind and started flying after them. I couldn’t do anything from where I was, and I had been staring for too long.

  Then I saw how she planned to solve the problem of leaving the stone.

  She flew straight into the nest.

  My stomach sank. I felt sick.

  I sped up, not knowing what I would do, but my little dumb, lazy girl had just put her life in danger in a way that was unacceptable.

  Why. Why did it come to this?

  I should have known this was possible, with how she sometimes ignored my orders, and how protective she was of me.

  I saw her fly out from the side. I couldn’t see any glow, but she was too far away.

  If I hadn’t been frozen for so long.

  There were three others behind her, but unlike me, she could keep the distance. Then the undead jumped through the nest.

  I had almost forgotten about it, and it was almost as big as the nest. I hadn’t realized how big the nest truly was until I saw it beside the human form.

  It landed on top of the pieces of the nest and scrambled to the ground, but whatever it was trying to do was interrupted by the angry wasps.

  They started to attack it, and it fought back.

  And I didn’t care at that moment.

  I saw two of the wasps chasing my little one turn back, but one of them was still after her, and she was flying in the opposite direction from me.

  Then she did something strange.

  She started moving like a bird.

  She made an unnatural turn up, then left, then down to the wasp’s level and swooped toward it. It seemed to have a hard time reacting to her.

  Just as she was beside it, without it fully reacting to her, she changed her trajectory again and stabbed through its wing.

  By that point it had been able to shift a little.

  So it hadn’t lost its ability to fly, but it seemed more troubled in the air.

  Then my little girl disappeared in the opposite direction from me.

  Shit. What am I going to do?

  Something drew me back to the fighting undead and wasps.

  There were probably a hundred of them, and they were winning.

  But it seemed to have found what it was looking for.

  It was holding the stone.

  I had a bad feeling about this.

  It ignored the attacks, lifted the stone toward its open jaw, and then bit down on it.