The Bee and The Sparrow

The Bee and The Sparrow

Once there was a sky so perfect that the angels feared to mar it even with their grace. A sky that floated above pristine waters and pristine lands untainted by the hands of men or the trampling of beasts. Here only the birds and the bees fluttered, conscious of one another but of such separate castes that neither spoke for thousands of years.

Until one day it came upon an unwitting young male bee to kiss a honeysuckle, and there that particular bee met up with a young and impetuous sparrow, who was taking time by herself as she was wont to do, pondering the uselessness of her sparrow-like life and hollow, sparrow bones.

The sparrow, as it were, was quite upset as her father, who was king of the sparrows, had promised her claw to an eagle. While the tiny girl sparrow found the eagle majestic, he was a bit too war-like for her. And although she understood her father wanting to further the ties between the feathered kin, and further peace throughout the perfect, sky-filled land, her heart was heavy and left wanting. She lulled about, snuggly fit into the breath of the honey suckle, until she felt a tickle upon her brow, right about there.

"Oh my!" Cried the sparrow, and the bee alike.

Frustrated, the bee fluttered about, wanting to gather nectar for his home. His wings were undecided, for he also wanting to leave and get far from the visage of the sparrow, which was a giant compared to him. Besides, sparrows, as it were, ate bees. His wings brushed together in a hum, and to the sparrow, his song was like none she had ever heard.

"Why do you sing like that, odd little striped winged creature?" The sparrow asked, for she had never seen a bee before and was unsure of what to call him.

"It is the song of my people." The bee wings hummed as to mimic the sparrow’s twittering. “Are you going to eat me?”

"Oh, I could never eat a creature as prettily pretty as you! Do sing more!" Sparrow cried out, and fluttered her own tiny feathers. "I've not heard such a song in all my life."

"As you wish, my lady." Bee hummed, and sang her the song of his kin, a song older than the eldest of bees, a song older-some say-than time itself. A song, surely, the sparrow kin had long forgotten, but the bee kin never had.

The hum soaked into her very hollow bones, infecting her soul and flighty spirit with tales of ancient timelessness, of space and emptiness and utter perfection, of a universe without matter, without life, without pain and without death. The sparrow gave a tear, the first, but not the last, tear the young female bird would give.

"Why do your eyes make water?" The bee asked, for he had never seen such a thing as tears, as it is widely known that bees have no tear ducts.

"Oh, I do not know."

They talked amongst the honeysuckle, of things that the birds and the bees would talk about, things uncommon to mortal man, or angel, or demon or even the beasts. Soon, the two became fast friends, and sooner even so, their hearts, as small as they were, began to beat in the same rhythm, sparrow's heart beating slightly faster, and bee's heart beating slightly slower, and their songs became one.

Situation as it were, the two creatures met every day, until the day came when sparrow would be forced to marry the eagle, for which her distaste grew greatly. It was not that she cared not for him, it was that the eagle could not sing the right song, the one that strummed across her small and quick heart. The bee too, had his own problems, for his meetings with sparrow were forbidden by his kin, as birds were, by bees standards, a filthy and uncaring race with no memory of their intertwined past. Besides that, the young bee’s mother said with exasperation, “Everybee knows sparrows eat bees.”

Ah, to be young and in love, for at that moment, love can carry all things, even the hefty ties to family, pride, and prejudice. While the sky was perfect, the creatures beneath it were not. Even the birds and the bees have their own fears, and their own hopes.

Our young sparrow argued, in her own twittering fashion, until her father had her locked into a cage that no bird could escape. Locked until the morn, where she would marry the eagle, and be taken to his lofty and expansive mansion.

A gilded cage for a gilded princess, her heart crushed by the weight and girth of her crown. But it was a cage built for a sparrow, and not for a cunning bee. The boy bee slipped away late at night, the soft buzzing snores of his kin urging him to stay, but he ignored them. This was a flight he must take, for his sparrow, for his love, and he flew far and flew fast. His little wings carried him in the cold and damp night farther than he had ever been, past the wide Moon River and Sun Meadow, beyond the Caves of Silence and the Sleeping Forest, he flew farther than any bee had ever flown. But he flew fast, and he flew true, and there he found his princess, and her golden cage. The lock fell away easily to his tiny and strong antennae. The two were quickly away, away, and happily lived ever after, the birds and the bees.