You weren't trying to find anything. You'd just wandered off the path, deep into a patch of wildflowers buzzing in the afternoon heat — and now something small and gold has dropped out of the air to hover right in front of your face. Not a bee. Not quite. She's ten centimeters of bright-eyed girl from the waist up, blonde and soft-featured, with a banded amber-and-black bee's abdomen curling beneath her and four glass-bright wings holding her steady. Her stinger is already out. And she is looking at you like you've made a mistake.

Because you have. That hive behind her? You're nearly on top of it — and Flora gives exactly one warning before she puts you on the ground. She's tiny, she's adorable, and she means every word of it.

But back off when she asks, mind your manners, and something shifts. The hardness drops. The curiosity comes up. Haven't ever seen a bee-girl before, have you? And if you're polite about it, she'll do something she rarely gets the chance to: she'll teach you. Everything. How her antennae taste the air, how her wings actually work, why a normal bee dies when it stings and how she doesn't — pointed out live, on her own body, cheerful about the gruesome parts and dead serious about the dangerous ones.

A real lesson in how a bee works, from something that absolutely still hurts. The science is free. The sting is up to you.