As Sweet as Honey

As Sweet as Honey
(Tali)

“Remember – a basket of apples. And stay on the path, alright? I don’t want you getting lost!”

“Okay!”

Tali does not, in fact, remember this.

It’s a nice and sunny day, somewhere between a little windy and plenty warm, and that kind of weather means all sorts of foods are growing out of the ground. Tali loves food and papa loves to feed her, but papa also thinks that she’s really small and really not good at doing things like finding food for herself. Tali loves food. Loves finding food a lot too.

All kinds of it. Mushrooms, carrots, roots, those funny little bugs under logs though papa seemed not happy about that one but she liked them plenty. She found something every forest walk they went on, every time she went playing in the open fields surrounding town, wherever she went, and it was good because she was always hungry.

Apples were the best, though.

All kinds of apples. Tali loved them. Papa always told her to slow down when she ate, but she never could. Sweet or sour, or something else – they all tasted good! Even if squishies didn’t like it when she went to buy them.

The best ones, though, were the ones that grew on trees in the forest. Papa took her foraging often, and she ate more than she ever picked to bring back home with them, and found them a lot faster than papa ever could have.

Papa always wanted to stay beside her while she went foraging, though. It was a big forest, he said, and they shouldn’t get lost. But Tali could find food on her own just fine. He said she was too young, but what did being young matter if she could find food anyway? She didn’t get it.

She wants to hunt on her own. She can hunt on her own. Papa just doesn’t know it yet.

But he’s going to!

A basket of apples is what she’s in Kalmari forest for today. Like lots of other times on lots of other days before yesterday, Tali gets to have her pick of the red fruit growing in the depths of forest, and this time she gets to do it alone.

The scent is familiar to her, and with an empty basket swinging in her hands she wanders on through the dirt paths more on sound and smell than any kind of sight. Apples had a funny smell that most things in the forest didn’t, and it was a little dark to be using her eyeballs anyway. Tali loved it.

On she goes, deeper and deeper, following the path like muscle memory to a familiar grove of trees shaded slightly different from the rest. There’s a lot of them this time around – she smells it enough that her little nose almost burns when she’s close enough to catch it. Papa might’ve said something about the warmer months bearing a good crop this year, but Tali didn’t know what that meant and Tali didn’t really care.

Before her, stretching high, high, higher than she, papa, and lots of her family combined, thickets of trees surround her stretching up into the air. She has to crane her neck to see the first leaving branches, and further still to see the first hint of red at the edge of one springy twig.

Tali licks her chops, sets her basket down, brandishes claws frightfully sharp for a girl her age, and sets to climbing the closest tree to her.

The routine, even without her father, is largely the same. The same being that, when Tali reaches the uppermost parts of the apple trees, she sits herself onto the first branch that will hold her weight and reaches up to the hanging boughs above to pick at the closest apples to her, and doesn’t really bother waiting to eat them. It’s her favorite part of apple picking.

The taste is sweet in her mouth, a familiar, sugary, slightly sticky liquid that pops with each crunch and makes her tail slam against the branch enough to make her sway on her perch and for a few apples to fall from the stems.

Tali has no thought about not doing it. Why would she? She can still take plenty back, and it isn’t like anyone else is eating them.

Had anyone else been around, they might’ve freaked out. Who ever saw a child clinging to the canopy of a tree and eating fruit at the same time? Much less thought it was safe?

(Dragato. Although he hardly thought it was safe, but nothing else had stopped Tali before.)

Tali spends a nice time enjoying her new lunch and has not a minute’s more thought to the matter until the apples in her arm’s reach start to thin. She only registers once again that she’s here on a mission when she happens to glance on down to see her basket far below, empty and not at all what her father intended for.

Eating is hard work. Not eating is a lot lot harder. But she can do it. She just doesn’t want to leave so soon. Too many apples around.

It’s about this time, midway through beginning to actually pick fruit in earnest – throwing them into the basket, some (most) of which go splat on the ground but that’s okay – that Tali’s nose picks up a..scent. A something.

It’s not anything she’s ever smelled before. In fact, for awhile Tali doesn’t really register it on her radar, in the face of so many apples in front of her. It lingers instead in her nose like a funny lure, a little tickle. Hovers there and makes her nose twitch, as she plucks as many apples as she can. Makes her lick her chops as she eventually begins her descent back to the forest floor.

It lingers and hovers and makes her stomach growl and still she doesn’t notice, not until she’s grabbed her newly filled basket and taken a few steps from the grove to head back home. Conveniently closer to the smell’s source at the same time.

It’s sweet, is the first thing she thinks.

Apples are sweet. Cake is sweet. Candy. But those are different.

This one...Tali can’t name. It’s just really, really sweet. Sugary in a way that makes her teeth grind.

Her stomach growls.

Tali drops her apple basket unceremoniously into the dirt and points her nose into the air with a good sniff. Her eyes squint with concentration and then eventually squeeze shut all together, trying to focus.

It was something Dragato and her family found a great amused fondness in. Tali’s nose was second to none, he would have joked to his kin. Give her something to scent and she’ll find it no matter where it’s hidden. If she wants to. It was fun for them to watch her work, to see her in action – Tali was full of surprises, even as young as she was.

Scent she does now too. Her nose points her one direction, another, and leads her the right way even if her eyes are closed. She lets her feet carry her off further into the thickets, off of the beaten path and into the shade of the deeper woods.

Ordinarily, a young child wandering the woods was some cause for concern. But then, most people weren’t Tali. She wanders further and further in, heeding nothing but her nose and her ears, and if anything it’s all of the surrounding fauna that avoid her, maybe sensing the fires curdling ever constant in her belly. Skittish prey animals, predators that recognized something that could snap them in half if she wanted.

Tali doesn’t know any of this, of course. She’s just hungry, and something smells sweet, and she’d like to find it very soon.

How much time passes, nobody knows. By the time she navigates her way to a point where the scent is most rich, though, the sound and vibration of a buzzing has started filtering faintly into her ears. Tali hadn’t noticed it before, too caught up in the scent, but now that the smell is so heavy as to clog her nose she can hear it – getting louder and louder with each step she takes.

Tali cracks her eyes open.

In front of her stands a great giant of a tree.

It’s enough to block out most of the sun in the sky when paired with the rest of the forest around her. Larger than any apple tree she’s ever seen, or any tree in general, the branches arch well past her noggin in all directions. It’d take forever to even walk in a circle around it.

The place is, all together, kind of dark, with how large it is and all the rest of the trees around. A cursory glance down shows that the dirt bath is long gone, vanished into the brush, so Tali doesn’t exactly know where she is.

The smell is up top, somewhere in the tree’s trunk. So is the buzzing. Tali cares a lot more about the smell than the sound though, so it’s easy to dig her claws into the bark and start climbing.

Ordinarily even daring children probably found it kind of nerve-wracking. This tree is a lot larger than anything else Tali had seen, and if someone fell they probably would have been falling a long, long ways away.

Tali doesn’t think about any of that though. She doesn’t think much at all, at any point, really. A smart cookie, Tali’s brain leads her on instinct nonetheless. It’s worked out well enough so far.

So she climbs, and there’s no fear at all because her claws dig into the bark, deep into the tree’s innards and hold on as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Muscle more powerful than a hardened warrior’s carry her on up, and up, and up, until eventually she feels the sun’s warmth start to bleed onto her back as the tree line thins and she breaks through the canopy.

It feels nice.

The buzzing in her ears get progressively louder the entire time, but so does the smell in her nose. There’s an itch on her skin as things brush against her – ears, arms, tail. Little tiny things that zoom by with a quick buzz. Bugs. She’s too busy climbing to scratch.

Eventually, she reaches a nice spot that’s as close as she’ll get to where she’s going – a great heavy limb that carries her weight without even a little shake as she plops on down. She thinks she could see the world from here, and Kirby would love it.

There, settled on that heavy limb just above most of the forest canopy, Tali smacks at her arm absently to get rid of a bug and looks closer at the trunk just in front of her.

There’s a hole, she sees. The scent comes from there.

Tali peers in.

It’s dark, but darkness never stopped her. She stares and stares some more, and eventually as her eye adjusts, she sees something that looks...kind of yellow. Lumpy and fully of holes and. Bugs! Lots of bugs, buzzing their wings, crawling all over. Very loud.

Weird, is all she thinks.

Tali reaches a claw in without ceremony. The feeling of it isn’t like the tree when she manages to grasp at it, or anything else she’s really felt. It’s sticky is what it is, sticky and crunchy but also soft, and a chunk of the thing comes out of the opening easily when she pulls at it.

The buzzing around her kicks up into a cacophony. Tali, with little care, examines her new prize with much interest.

Out in the open, the yellow-orange of the strange material is highlighted in much more detail, as well as other things. It’s molded into a pretty zigzagging shape pattern pockmarking the material with angular holes. Each one is filled with a substance that sticks to her hand with ferocity, and curious does she raise a finger to her mouth to lick at it.

Flavor bursts on her tongue near instantly.

Far sweeter than any apple or candy or chocolate she’s ever been allowed to snack on. It practically burns at her mouth it’s so sweet, and the noise she makes in her throat is halfway to a giggling squeal just at the shock of it.

“Good!” She proclaims to nobody in particular. “Good!”

She eats the squishy chunk of sweet in her hand immediately, with frightening ferocity. The whole thing. Chewing wax and sticky goodness both, tearing it apart with sharp teeth that have cut through far tougher. It glues to her mouth slightly, makes her lick her chops to get it all down, but it’s so sweet she doesn’t care.

Her tail give a hard thump against the tree limb she sits on. Feet kick and hit at the bark beneath her, over and over. Something groans a little and she has to grip the tree to keep herself from shaking too much, but otherwise she’s far too absorbed in the snack to care.

What is it? She doesn’t know. Why is it in a tree? She also doesn’t know. And--

Why are there bugs all over her?

Because in the scant few minutes that Tali has taken to her new meal, the buzzing has been loud and annoying and there have been bugs all over her. She can feel them no matter how she grumbles and starts to swat, poking at her arms and legs, buzzing her in the eyes when she reaches for more of the snack in the tree.

It doesn’t hurt, but she’s hungry and these bugs are...bugging her. It’s her snack and not theirs.

But they don’t go away, even when Tali snaps her teeth. They just keep poking and crawling, and it isn’t long before Tali has had quite enough of it.

“I go now,” She huffs, and grabs a huge chunk of sticky wax from within the tree’s hollow. She wants to bite down again, and Tali can’t resist another small nibble, but in a show of foresight she largely keeps her teeth to herself. “Papa will like.”

She wants to show her father her new prize. It tastes a lot better than an apple and she found it all by herself, so she knows he’ll be happy.

So Tali sets off down the tree, the buzzing and poking of bugs following her the whole way and snack tucked under her arm like a plank of wood. Lands on the grass and stomps off back the way she came, through the dark and back onto the dirt path, sure enough that she can find her way back and letting her nose guide her the whole way. An unceremonious end to an exciting adventure.

Her father will be very, very happy to see her.

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Dragato is very, very confused to see his daughter.

Within the forest, but not far from the tree line, Dragato had lingered right where he said he would be if Tali ever needed to run and find him. He’d figured it would be best for him to wait things out where Tali could be at a distance, but not too far out.

He’s not someone who would have let her wander off so easily – far from it. Most might’ve called him the most mother-hen of the bunch, except for maybe Arthur, but when someone had a daughter like his, it was rather necessary.

He’d expected that it would take either maybe fifteen minutes, or a good hour would pass and he would need to wander off and pick her up. She just got distracted so easily, and the poor thing needed course correcting.

But she had just looked so eager to try! And, he figured, there wasn’t anything that could harm Tali of all people.

“She’ll be fine,” His teacher had waved from his place sitting on a fallen old log. “That girl is sturdy. If she takes a bit, well, you know how she is!”

“Children always get up to something,” Was Bate’s idle remark. Bate, who had shown up and happened on them by chance during his routine stroll, had wanted to see how things played out. “They bounce back quite easily! But I understand the concern.”

At least Dragato had them for company. And as a distraction.

He...hadn’t really expected her back soon. Or at all, knowing her proclivity for wandering curiosity as all young children were prone to and the elders had said. He’d expected her to take her time eating, getting her fill. He wouldn’t have minded.

So when he saw her pop out of the distance and make her way towards him with a quickness, Dragato had been quite proud!

“Look!”

Only. Uh.

“Tali… What in NOVA did you find?”

“Snack!”

Well. She wasn’t holding any apples, that was for certain.

Dragato looks at the honeycomb in her arm, held underneath like she’s a little builder going to work. Frankly, it’s the largest honeycomb he’s ever seen, and he has to wonder exactly how Tali had managed to grab it? It’s got to be about as long as she is, half as wide, and how she’s carrying it with such finesse, he does not know.

Tali wags her tail and presents the slab up to him for inspection, her tail slamming the ground and her ears perked up in clear expectation of a job well done, which is sweet but. Where did she find it--

“Dragato? Erh.”

Ramset clears his throat. The tone seems less than pleased. Dragato glances back at him. Tali, only just noticing him for the first time – and Grandfather Bate too, look at that! - grins a toothy grin and shows off her prize to everyone in sight.

“Snack! See!”

“Yes, papa sees,” Dragato murmurs, “It’s very--”

“Dragato, bees.”

Oh.

…

Oh, no.

Dragato hadn’t seen them at first. He’d been too wrapped up in the strange and befuddling sight of Tali lugging a giant hunk of honeycomb like it was a war trophy from the battlefield, but as she gets closer and raises her prize higher, he sees them now. Sees, hears.

Bees.

All over her. Her frills, her arms, shoulders, wherever they can reach, crawling, oh NOVA they’re stinging her--

Dragato really doesn’t think when he reaches out with a curse to snatch her up to – he doesn’t know. Run away?

“Papa?”

Tali, for her part, doesn’t know why her father is now slapping at the bugs that have annoyingly followed her back. They are pretty annoying, and she doesn’t like them, so that makes sense! But his face is turned in a way Tali never likes, all frowns and wide eyes and too-quick breaths. He must really not like bugs, she thinks.

And had Tali herself not been so calm about the whole thing, who knows how far into a panic Dragato would’ve gotten into. Bee stings were no joke – the buzzing against his ears as the riled up things try to stick him for swiping his hands doesn’t bode well, nor does the first sting that hits his arm that makes him wince. Still, he doesn’t let go.

“Are you alright?” He asks quickly, breathless. “Oh you poor thing, you have stingers all over, look at you-”

“Papa okay?”

Dragato looks at her, feels another sting at his head, dangerously close to his eye.

She’s not upset. Not crying, or visibly hurt. A little uncertain by the scrunch to her snout and the furrow to her brow, but…

Dragato watches as, quicker than he can act, a bee stings his girl near the frill.

Tali reaches up absently and gives a quick scratch, and otherwise does nothing more.

…

Okay then.

Okay. He can deal with that.

“You are full of surprises,” Dragato wheezes in one big breath of post-adrenaline relief. He sounds like a deflated balloon and it makes Tali giggle. “And also very, very sticky. I do think my hands are glued to you…!”

Because now he is also noticing that Tali is covered in a lot of honey. Can see it in the shine of her hide, now that he’s got her so close.

NOVA, he thinks. Tali is going to need the mother of baths when they get home.

“Papa!” She barks, and she yanks at an arm and points down to the grass where the honeycomb had fallen in the skirmish. “Snack!”

“Yes, I see!” Dragato acknowledges, and he sure feels it too, by the stinging that makes him swallow a hiss. “You did great, sweetheart! No idea where you got it, but it’s very, very cool!”

“Eat!”

“Soon, sweetheart, soon, just need to…”

Because now that he isn’t feeling his vision tunnel and his heart race in a panic, he is now becoming far too aware of the pain starting to litter various parts of his body, courtesy of some very angry bees. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever felt, but it hurts. Quite a bit!

Dragato shuffles Tali to one arm – painstakingly – and reaches down to pick up the honeycomb, twitching at just how heavy the thing is. And covered in honey. As one does.

He looks over at the other two, the elders off to the side who had deigned to stay out of the conflict for the moment. Ramset, who seemed entirely unsurprised but nonetheless concerned for the wellbeing of his student, and Bate whose furrowed brow and forward-leaning stance were far more obvious. Ramset might’ve been holding him back.

Dragato is glad they showed up in the interim of Tali’s absence. His teacher had probably already known of Tali’s departure, how Dragato did not know. He knew the forest quite well.

Dragato smiles. Even if it looks rather stiff. Hefts the honeycomb for their judgement.

Bate relaxes, and Ramset gives a hearty chortle.

“Leave it to my granddaughter to bring back such a golden find, huh, Bate?” Ramset announces, and knocks Bate gently in the shoulder as they head on over. “I think having a few stray bees in our midst is all worth it, personally.”

“You say that, but what say you when you find yourself with a sore the size of a grape on your cheek?”

“Oh, a bit of a sting never bothered me, psh!”

Dragato lets out a chuckle and glances his gaze down at Tali as his mentors set to helping them out. She grins up at him, all honey-smacked lips and teeth and little stinger-ridden dragonhide that the girl just doesn’t notice.

They had a lot of cleaning up to do.

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It takes time, as things do, to set everything to straights. It’s lucky that Ramset doesn’t live far from where they’re located so that the trip turned out to be rather short. Lucky because Dragato is covered in bee stings and Tali is covered in honey and sorely needs a bath.

Well, all of them are covered in stings as it turns out. Ramset had indeed gotten a little welt, right on his cheek, though granted not as large as a grape. He’d laughed it off, scratching absently – and getting Bate’s hand swatting at his arm to get him to quit.

Bate hadn’t gone unscathed either, maybe a little more than Ramset had, and had Ramset not had a keen an eye as he did, probably nobody might’ve known. Bate had quite the resilience to pain when he wanted, and it had hardly mattered, in his opinion.

“And you’re just going to leave the stinger in there? Not if we have anything to say about it! What would Meta think, you old goofball!” Ramset had been aghast. Dragato echoed the sentiment. Bate, sheepishly, simply hadn’t thought of it.

In the end, they had to spend nearly an hour just taking tweezers to each little stinger – Ramset and Bate first, simply because there weren’t many, and then Dragato by virtue of him being the most put out. The elders had had to take turns patching him up – Bate so Ramset could clean Tali up and pull the stingers from her, and then Ramset after so Bate could set to figuring out what to do with the honeycomb making a mess of the countertop.

Tali had sat there, wrapped in a fresh towel smelling of soap while she’d watched her father at the kitchen table wincing with each stinger pulled and dropped into the bowl. She’d seen them pulled from her own skin, but nothing like this.

“Why hurt?” She had asked.

And Dragato had told her: honey came from honeycomb, and honeycomb came from bees, and she had found a lot of honeycomb and he was very proud of her. It was just that it meant a lot of bees had to make it. And well. Bees stung!

And she had felt terrible, of course, and Dragato couldn’t stand to see that sad little look on her face.

“Come here, dear girl, it’s alright,” With his free arm he’d ushered her on into his lap, letting her nuzzle on in regardless of how much it might’ve burned and hugging her close. “You didn’t know. You’re so strong, no bee could ever bother you! And look what you brought back – a rare treat for everyone!”

A treat that was now currently being chopped up and sectioned off into many, many jars by Bate at the counter. Those talons were ever impressive, even if he’d need to clean them off. He didn’t mind.

“Don’t worry, my girl,” Dragato consoles, giving her back a hearty pat and a squeeze for good measure. “We’ll all be just fine and we can enjoy plenty of honey when we’re done. Hows that? Just--”

He pauses. “...Try not to get caught up in a beehive like that again. We don’t want you getting hurt, do we!”

Not that she would get hurt like that. But it was better safe than sorry.

Tali seems to think about this for a moment, bundled up against him. Dragato feels the way the last of the stingers gets pulled in the meantime and has to put much effort into hiding another wince when a soapy washcloth is deposited over the welts right after. He says nothing.

And then she grins. Bright, pearly, sharp little teeth, and Dragato melts at the sight of it.

“Ya! Okay!”

And, well, that’s about that. Tali didn’t tend to wax poetic about a lot of things.

They had a pleasant evening, all told, in the end. Covered in bee stings, bandaged and healing up, but it was hardly worth worrying over. Bate, who had retrieved Tali’s apples after his honeycomb work was done, if only to collect the stray basket, eventually had had to leave and head home not long after. It was getting late and Meta would worry if he were gone too long.

“Are you sure? I think the couch suits you just fine!” Was Ramset’s quip. Maybe if they’d all been younger, Bate might’ve been annoyed, but he just chuckles.

“With our backs? Not hardly.”

Dragato hands him one of the many, many jars of honey now stacking up in Ramset’s kitchen. “Here,” He says. “For your help. And for happening to visit today. It was nice to see you, teacher Bate!”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Bate waves blithely. “It was nice to see you all too, and I’d hardly miss a chance to see one of the grandchildren!”

Tali barks a pleased noise at him and launches for a quick goodbye hug. Bate does nearly topple over, but he laughs and returns the hug anyhow.

Eventually, he takes his leave, and Dragato gives Tali a wink as they shuffle back to the kitchen.

“Have you ever had honey on apple slices?” He asks. She had not, Dragato already knows. “I think you’re really going to like it.”

And the look on her eyes says that she is, in fact, really, really going to like it. Apples and honey, combined? She hadn’t thought of it.

“Want!”

“Soon, dear-”

“Want!”

He is trying so hard not to laugh.

Ramset sets things up. The apples are already sliced neatly by the time Dragato and Tali sit back down at the table, clean of bee stingers and soap and water. Dragato does offer to help, but Ramset waves it off.

Three small plates are set down, one for each, and each decorated with half an apple cut neatly into four. Each one is drizzled with honey, everything the product of Tali’s determined labor, and Dragato feels something as he looks at it.

Tali, of course, is not so sentimental. She’s a little piranha fish, striking out to grab at the first slice she can reach regardless of whose plate its on, shoveling it into her mouth with a noise rolling heavy in her throat.

“Good! Papa, try!”

Dragato glances at the girl in his lap and at Ramset who sits next to him. Ramset gestures, quirking his brow.

“She got it all by herself; it’d be a waste not to eat it all up!”

Dragato takes a slice, so small in his hand. The honey glistens in the light. It would almost be a shame to ruin the sight.

He pops it into his mouth and bites right down. The flavor bursts in his mouth, almost too sweet for him to handle. The apple and the honey mix into a combination he can hardly describe, and the sigh he lets out is a heavy one.

“Is good!” Tali translates for him. Dragato, heart warm and chest light, mouth full, fights to swallow around the treat and gives her a hearty chuckle, squeezing her close.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” He says.

He means it.

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“Teacher, why do you have bandages on your arms?”

Meta stares at his father with no small amount of incredulity, and well he should.

His teacher had gone off for a walk earlier that day. This was pretty normal, and part of his daily routine, and everyone deserved their privacy. If teacher hadn’t returned as soon as he’d said, Meta hadn’t been worried much over it. Bate could take care of himself.

A fact, Meta is finding, that may not ring as true as he’d thought.

“Oh, just a visit with Ramset and Tali and Dragato. You know how it is. Here! Look what my granddaughter found! Right out of the trees, too! Although not without a fight, I suppose.” Bate brandishes his gifted honey jar, filled with comb, up for his family to see. “Who wants a snack?”

Meta stares.

Kirby, also there, pops up at his side with a squeal that makes his ears ring. “Me! Me! I want some too!”

“Yes, well, if you ask politely…”

The two wander back into the kitchen, and Meta is left there to blink in something of a daze as he processes.

Tali. Somehow accidents always wound up coming back to Tali.

Meta didn’t know her well. Meta and Kirby didn’t get to visit his childhood home but a few times a year, and never for very long. Things always seemed to change faster than he could keep up with, and when it came to the youngsters of the family the fact never rang truer.

Meta didn’t know Tali. But he did know that even from a hatchling, the very first time Meta had ever seen her, she’d had a penchant for destruction that he found in no other but Demon Beasts. Not to speak of the constant rumor mill that followed her where she went.

Bees. How did bees get involved this time? What in NOVA had she done now?

“Meta! Come get a snack!”

Meta sighs and rubs his face. “Coming.”

But still, as he turns to follow his family into the kitchen, his eyes slide across the back door.

There’s a hole in its middle there, from not long ago. An accident caused by a child about Kirby’s size were he a little bit younger. A very strong child, who had run through without much thought, and who hadn’t even noticed the wood break around her.

It’s patched now, of course. But it’s glaringly obvious, and they’ll need to get the door replaced soon, before bugs try to sneak their way in. Before it gets colder.

…

She’d only been a child. A toddler at the time, finding her legs. Still…

Tali was powerful. And power needed control. And as she grew, that power would only grow, and there was only so much Meta could do when could only visit a few times a year.

Meta stares absently at Kirby and Bate, fixing a snack with the honey that Tali had somehow acquired. Not without a fight, as Bate had said.

He really hoped Dragato had the skills to raise his daughter effectively. Because if he couldn’t manage her...for everyone’s safety…

“Meta!”

“Yeah, I’m coming!”

Bee stings were going to be the least of everyone’s worries.

-The End-

Artist Comment:

January 3, 2024

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Wow, this was a fun little piece to draw! It was originally a comic, but I kinda went overboard, and made it a standalone pic. The rest of the comic will be posted later on. x)

Tali finds a honeycomb all on her own! She's not effected by the bee stings, but Dragato and the others didn't know that when she arrived covered in them. =w=;;;;

DRAGATO IS BEST DAD! He's so proud of his daughter~!!! <3333

Also! Fun fact~! I mentioned how much I loved how large the honey tree was to my friend Dogblog (AKA the one who wrote this literature) and she said maybe it could be a special tree or something! So I like to think the tree is incredibly old, and was alive when the first Star Warrior was around! So yes- the tree Tali was in is VERY special. >v<

This story takes place before this piece below. Meta is worried about Tali's power and penchant for mischief after Bate returned with bandages from the bees. I suppose bee stings really were the least of their concerns. =(

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The literature written for this illustration was commissioned by my good friend, Dogblog. (dA- Shadowrealmprincess) ^v^