In which I dreamt I was a bee . . .

I dreamt I was a bee, golden brown and shiny-eyed, my wings strong to bring back loads of pollen to the hive for the nourishment of my queen and the younglings to come. My likeness was drawn on the walls of the ancient caves, deep underground, for my essential place in the scheme of things was known to all. I and my brothers would go out in the dewy morning, to the fields of flowers offering pollen. We would fill our baskets until they would hold no more, and then fly back to the hive, the busy hive humming with blessed activity; we would leave our golden loads and fly out again. Once I discovered a new place, flower-filled, where there was bounty for all, and I flew back to the hive and danced for the others to show them the way; they followed me back and there was enough pollen for us to bring home for days. We prepared for winter, filling the combs with honey to tide us over the cold days when nothing bloomed . . . but they never came. It stayed warm, but the blooming time was over and we found no blossoms, no pollen. Many of us died, but the cold days never came and our lives were disrupted. Our young never emerged, because the seasons were wrong. Our queen emerged, to take us to a new place where things were right, but she found no such place and died, leaving us alone. Finally the cold came, but we had no home now and we died. Flowers bloomed again in the spring, but there were no bees to harvest their golden pollen, no queen to tuck away new small ones for the future, no one to make honey for all to eat, no one to tend the younglings that never emerged. All was laid waste.