~It is an old claim, made every two years or son, that everything from their bees to their honey is stolen from the monks at Altorf.~

~The bees are her anchor in this place, in her life where she drifts without a child to keep her steady. They alone - their care, their needs, their inscrutable patterns and wildness - keep her sane. To lose the bees, after so much loss, would be to lose her mind.~

~If you were a mother...
But I am, she tells herself. Many times over. She loves each lost child though they are not here, though all she had of them was blood or else bloodless bodies - is that not enough?~

~The story of her birth is the story of a comet.~

~That you cannot truly keep bees. You can only make them want to stay.~

~They loved their children, and their children died, and now they begin at the beginning. She slides in among them, her [dead] child clasped to her chest, and starts to dance herself back to before.~