Ashes and Honey

The bees returned after the fire.

Lena stood in the wreckage of her family's farm, boots sinking into blackened earth, watching the first gold-specked worker drift between scorched trees. It made no sense. There was nothing left to pollinate.

Still, the bees came.

She found a single hive half-melted but alive, tucked inside the charred skeleton of the old barn. They worked without panic, patching broken combs, rebuilding.

No one had taught them how to start over. They just knew.

Lena knelt by the hive, the air thick with the scent of ash and honey. She had spent weeks buried under insurance forms and grief, thinking it was all too much. That starting again was for someone stronger.

But the bees stayed.

If they could find a way in this wasteland, maybe she could, too.

That afternoon, Lena bought a new hive frame. She cleared a patch of soil with her bare hands, feeling the sting of splinters and the sharp cut of hope.

It wasn't much.

It was enough.