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Busy as a Bee
🕑 Added 2021-11-02 12:34:19 +0000 UTCWoman with permission of Ironwolves
Bee: Wikimedia: DohDuhDah
Naomi was always doing something. If she wasn't rushing about fixing something about the house or in the yard, she was baking something. At work, it was no different. Naomi was always doing something. She'd help with carrying out a customer's purchases, she'd stock the shelves (even if they weren't in her own aisle), she'd be first on the spot if a cleanup were called. In short, Naomi was a bundle of energy and applied it to everything. This endeared her to the management of the store but her fellow employees were less impressed. They considered her a "keener" or worse a "brown-noser". Neither term was complimentary, of course, but Naomi didn't mind. She couldn't help it. She had to be doing things, doing anything. Standing around, just chatting drove her crazy. She knew everyone disliked her for her relentlessness but she couldn't help it. Ever since she could remember, she'd been that way.
Of course, having an entire store full of fellow employees that disliked or even hated you, wasn't a good thing. Naomi had tried the "go to the company picnic" route in an attempt to fit in but it hadn't worked out. When there was nothing happening, she fidgeted. It drove her crazy just to sit and do nothing. When the competitions start, she was in any of them she could enter. She won several of them but it wasn't the winning that mattered. It was the doing something. Her fellow employees, though, saw it differently. Especially those who had won a particular race ever year before Naomi had joined the staff.
At first, they'd merely grumbled. The corporate grapevine is ignored at your own peril in many businesses. This store was no different. Naomi was vilified and put down by many a disgruntled employee adding to the rumour mill's collection of partly-true stories. Naomi, of course, couldn't care. She didn't have time to sit and chat and hear the latest gossip even on breaks or at lunch. That wasn't doing anything.
Things would have continued to limp along without much change had one of the cashiers not had to clean out an aunt's attic. The aunt, ignored for much of her life, had been a spinstress. But she'd been a lot more, too. She'd been a collector of arcana. In that attic were many strange books. Books in all kinds of strange languages. Trudy, who'd lost one too many cashier of the week and month awards to Naomi, found the books fascinating nonetheless. One in particular showed a magic rite of some sort that transformed a person into an insect. Of course, Trudy didn't believe in magic and, what's more, couldn't read the book anyway. But it was fascinating. She wondered what filthy bug she could transform Naomi into if she could just read the spell.
As it happened, such things tend to fester. Trudy had never been interested in books. In high school, she'd been far more interested in boys than boring stuff that the teachers were going on about. The book gnawed at the edges of her mind. She tried to find some kind of book in her aunt's collection that would interpret the strange tome. She was no linguist, though, but a friend of hers was. He recognized the language as some kind of eastern language he was familiar with as part of his studies. A little persuasion using her not inconsiderable feminine charms result in him agreeing to attempt to translate the page in question.
Several weeks passed before Juan got back to her. It turned out that the page in question didn't mean a lot without the five or so pages ahead of it in the book. He'd translated those, too. Presenting the result to her, she lavished praise on him. She gave him her undivided attention, too, that weekend. It was a weekend Juan would not soon forget. Trudy would make sure of that.
Translation in hand, she visited store after store. It seemed you had to create a potion of some sort. It required some materials that she found at some out of the way health food stores, some at a local Chinese grocery store, and the final (and very expensive) ingredient at a small shop run by a small Pakistani immigrant. She retired to her basement to mix the ingredients according to the book. Once the potion, in its glass jar, was completed, Trudy began the required incantation. Nothing much seems to happen. The potion didn't stir, it didn't bubble, it didn't do anything. Trudy was annoyed. Those ingredients had cost a fortune (well nearly $150) and now all she had for her trouble was a brownish tea in a glass bottle.
Juan, after a few drinks, was coerced into revealing the reason. He thought (through his alcohol-hazed brain) that the curse had to be read in its original language not in English. Trudy, of course, was more than willing to try but Juan wanted other things. She obliged him, of course. Finally, though, a combination of wheedling (Trudy was good at that skill) and alcohol (Juan had had a few too many) got him to agree to read the curse in the original.
Setting up the glass bottle on the table, Juan read the curse. The language was strange and Juan had trouble in many places (mostly, truth be told, from the effects of the alcohol). Finally though, he'd defogged his head enough to read the curse through. The potion suddenly turned blue and then cleared. All the ingredients had just vanished. Well that was more than had happened when she'd tried the curse in English. Trudy wondered whether the potion would work but she wasn't the type to inflict it on anyone except Naomi. She decided, as Juan finally passed out on the couch, that she'd use it on Monday. If it worked, it did. If not, it was probably just another of these old superstitions.
On Monday, she enlisted the aide of another clerk to distract Naomi while she poured a small amount of the contents into her mid-morning coffee. Then she waited. Nothing happened. At lunch, she poured even more into Naomi's beverage. Still nothing happened. Trudy was getting annoyed. There was only a few millilitres left in her glass bottle. Damn stuff probably didn't work. She carefully poured the last into Naomi's afternoon coffee. Shift change came and Naomi and Trudy left for home. Damn stuff hadn't worked. $150 down the drain. It hadn't even made Naomi sick. Trudy was angry at the fraud who'd sold her deceased Aunt the book. Damn curse was a fake.
Naomi, though, was having other thoughts. Everything had tasted funny all day long. Starting at lunch, everything tasted flat. She'd ordered a sweet soda pop instead of her usual coffee and even it had tasted bland somehow. It was as if she were craving sugars and sweets. Naomi had never really been one for excess sweets but now her desire for chocolate and candy was intense. She stopped on the way home to pick up something she’d never thought to buy: a full kilogram of bulk chocolate.
She munched the chocolate as she bustled about her apartment cleaning and fixing her supper. After she'd eaten the meal (which tasted flat despite it being a favourite), she felt odd. Getting up from the table, Naomi felt dizzy and decided she'd best sit down. She might be coming down with something, a flu or a cold or worse. She never made it to her armchair though. Halfway there, she doubled over, her stomach churning. The dizziness increased to the point that Naomi dropped to the floor rather than fall over. Once there, she quickly passed out.
Some time later, when she awoke, she found herself completely covered in great folds of heavy cloth. Where it had come from, she had not the slightest idea. She fought her way out through the folds to freedom. Everything looked and smelled strange. Her favourite red lap blanket was now nearly black and the lights overhead had a strange purplish tinge to them. She rested on the pile of cloth and looked about. Everything was the wrong colour and her fresh bouquet of flowers had a truly overwhelming aroma to them. It was a most compelling aroma, too, and Naomi found herself wanting to fly to its source. And fly she did, for she now had wings! And insect legs! And a bee's abdomen! Her breasts and torso were bright green and furry.
She paused as she passed the mirror as she caught sight of what could only be her own reflection. She was now some kind of cross between an bee and a woman. The odour of the blooms soon overcame the shock of her discovery. She had to get to those blooms. She was surprised to discover that the flowers had strange patterns on them. Those patterns looked like some kind of signal that pointed at the centre of each flower. Naomi couldn’t resist and soon discovered a tiny pool of absolute heaven at the base of each flower. Nectar of the Gods!
She was feeling a bit tired though and, since the sun was going down, Naomi flew to a safe place and folded her wings for the night. The next morning, as she flew towards the brilliant light of the rising sun, she made an unwelcome discovery. There was a hard clear surface in the way. Her transformation fuddled mind eventually produced an answer, though. She remembered, too, that she always left the upstairs window open a crack so that she could have fresh air. It took only a few minutes for Naomi to find the window and push past the damaged corner of the screen into freedom.
She looked about. There were so many flowers and so much to do! It was perfect! Now she could be busy and productive. Literally busy as a bee.
