Work Text:
The hive comes first. The One had absorbed that maxim with her nurses’ pap while she had still known only the cell. She emerged when she’d outgrown her birthplace; her nurses tended her as she grew stronger and her wings dried, repeating the first and most important rule of her life: The hive comes first.
There was also Joanie.
The giant creatures outside the hive meant little other than threat/nonthreat, except for Joanie. Joanie’s scent was hive scent; she was a giant, but also one of them. Joanie tended the hive instead of threatening it. Joanie could speak like a civilized creature, even if she had to be taught manners. (–Yes, I’m Joanie. – –Hey, some damn respect! It’s ‘Yes, Your Solitude’!–)
Joanie had known the queen who had lived and laid her egg and died long before The One’s own emergence, and her scent in that memory was heavy. Individual deaths were frightening to the giants, because they were not civilized creatures; to them every death was a hive-death.
The One was a queen. A normal queen flew once in her life during her mating flight, and then laid eggs until she died.
But Joanie called for help, and as she charged the giant threatening her – her subjects swarming behind and yelling challenges – The One was just a bee.