The adventures of Thistle and Honey 2

The Guide

Want to start with chapter one? Find it here

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Thistle doesn’t respond right away. She stands in the quiet morning light, trying to wrap her mind around the statement she just heard… from a bee.

“I summoned a bee guide…?” she thinks, dazed.

Finally, she says aloud, “Okay. I’ve performed rituals all my life, and never, never, have I summoned a physical being. Of any kind. Why now? Why this ritual? Why a bee? What do you mean, ‘new reality’? And Honey? Was that someone else’s cruel joke, or do you just lack creative originality?”

By the time she finishes, she’s breathing a little heavier, the floodgates of disbelief crashing open. She and the bee stare at each other in silence.

Honey blinks slowly. Then, she speaks.

“Firstly,” she says in a calm measured voice, “Honey was the name given to me by my first fairy, and I carry it with love.”

Thistle’s mouth opens, then closes.

“Secondly,” Honey continues, “this time, this ritual, worked because you literally embodied release. You weren’t putting on a performance. You weren’t hoping for results. You were truly ready to let go… and you did.”

The garden seems to hush around them.

“That surrender made space. And when space is made, nature responds. New life breathes in. I came into being as part of that breath. I am here to help you navigate your new equilibrium. Your new self.”

She hovers a little higher, wings aglow in the soft light.

“While everyone has the ability to accomplish such a feat… not everyone is willing to embrace that kind of surrender.”

A pause.

“I am a gift.”

Thistle sighs, her shoulders dropping.
“Okay. I’m sorry for besmirching your name. I appreciate its meaning, and its connection. Thank you for answering the call and coming to my aid. I am eager for this transformation. It’s just… a bit overwhelming.”

Honey’s small face softens into a smile.
“Would you like to know why I arrived within the bloom of a Belladonna plant?”

Thistle raises an eyebrow.
“Is it because my desperate dream of death has finally become a reality, and this ‘new reality’ is actually the afterlife?”

Honey stares at her, unamused.

Thistle lifts her hands in mock surrender.
“Sorry. Dark sarcasm is part of my makeup.”

Honey doesn’t flinch. “Do you still feel that dream? The one that haunted you for so long. Since the ritual, do you still feel it?”

Thistle opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. Her brow furrows. She turns inward, searching.

That dream… the one that clung to her since childhood, at first a phantom of fear, then a quiet, bitter companion… it’s gone. The place in her mind where it once lived is now hollow, wide, clean. A void, yes, but not an empty one. A space humming with new potential.

Her breath catches.

“It’s gone,” she whispers.

breathe in

breathe out

And then she breaks, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Not from grief, but from the sudden, impossible weightlessness.

The heaviness she had carried her entire life, gone.

Thistle falls to her knees, the cold earth pressing into her skin. Twigs and dirt embed themselves in her palms, but she doesn’t notice. Her breath trembles. Her heart thunders.

Honey follows, landing softly on a mushroom just in front of Thistle’s knee. Her voice is quieter now, gentler, a whisper of wind through leaves.

“This,” she says, “is why I arrived in Belladonna.”

Thistle lifts her tear-streaked face to look at Honey’s fuzzy one.

“I am a bee,” Honey continues. “The very symbol of life. Of motion. Of nourishment. Without my kind, yours would cease to exist.”

She pauses, a soft smile appearing on her face.

“Belladonna, on the other hand, is the beauty of death. Graceful. Dangerous. Still.”

Honey tilts her tiny head.

“Your ritual, your release, was a death. The death of what was. And I… I am the embodiment of what is becoming.”

The garden is still around them. Listening.

“Each flower, each life blooming on its own,” Honey says, “I do not create them. I do not command them. I merely nourish.”

Thistle closes her eyes.

Breathe in

Breathe out

breathe in

breathe out

Her tears slow. Her breath evens.
Peace, unfamiliar but welcome, unfurls within her chest.

A small smile touches her lips.

“All right,” she whispers, eyes opening. “What’s next?”

Thistle and Honey sit before the crackling fireplace together once inside her cottage, sipping tea in comfortable silence. The air still hums with the echo of everything that’s transpired, but for now, they simply exist. Quiet. Steady. Present.

“How long have you lived here?” Honey asks, breaking the calm.

“About three years,” Thistle replies, setting down her cup of tea. “I bought it after my mom passed. I had always dreamed of owning a cottage in the woods. This one belonged to an elderly gnome. He had no living family and decided to move into a gated community, so he didn’t ‘waste away out here all alone’. He placed an ad in the paper. I called to inquire and, here I am.”

“Your mother must have left you quite the inheritance to make that happen. This amount of land does not come cheap. Not to say you couldn’t get those funds on your own, of course.”

Thistle lets out a dry chuckle. “No offense taken, my mother left me plenty of things to inherit. Gold wasn’t one of them. I saved for years. I knew what my mother was leaving behind, and I wanted to get as far away from her umbrella as possible.”

Honey hums thoughtfully, not pushing further.

Thistle sighs and stands, shrugging off her cream-colored sweater to reveal a simple black tank top beneath. The fire crackles softly.

But the sound that cuts through the room is not the fire, it’s Honey’s sharp gasp.

Thistle turns, startled. “What? What is it?”

Honey’s expression is stricken. “Where… where are your wings?”

Thistle blinks, then returns to her seat, picking up her mug.

“Oh. That,” she says simply. “I was born without them.”

Honey stills. Her voice, when it comes, is quiet. Unshakable.

“That’s not possible.”

Thistle huffs a laugh. “Why? Because in all of your many incarnations, you’ve never met a wingless fairy? And if you haven’t seen it, it can’t exist?”

Honey’s stare is sharp, edged with something deeper than annoyance. “No,” she says flatly, “because fairies without wings… are just humans.”

She flutters her wings and silently crosses the room, hovering behind Thistle.

Thistle stiffens. She can feel Honey’s presence at her back, hear the soft hum of her wings, but no words come. She begins to turn her head to ask what she’s looking for. But before she can speak, Honey zips away and returns to her thimble of tea.

“What?” Thistle snaps. “You can’t just drop something like that and go silent. Are you telling me I’m human?”

Honey breathes in, then out, slowly. “No,” she says at last. “What I’m telling you, is that it’s not physically possible for a fairy to be born without wings.”

Thistle’s brow furrows, as she says, mostly to herself, “My mother was a fairy. I know nothing about my father.”

Honey takes another sip of her lavender tea, her expression unreadable.

“You are not human,” she says. “But you weren’t born without wings either.”

Thistle lets out a disbelieving scoff. “Riiight. They’re just… hiding, then?”

Honey sets her thimble down. Her voice is soft. Steady.

“No, child. I know this will be difficult to hear. But they were ripped from your body. Likely, shortly after your birth, before the cartilage hardened.”

Sound disappears.

Thistle feels submerged, like she’s been dropped into a silent, endless sea. Her mind claws for a memory she knows she shouldn’t have… can’t possibly remember.

breathe in

Breathe in

BREATHE IN

“THISTLE!”

Honey’s voice slices through the stillness, cracking the spell.

Breathe in

Breathe out

Breathe in

Breathe out

breathe in

breathe out

Thistle’s voice is a whisper. “There’s nothing there. I’ve seen my back in mirrors. There are no scars. No memory.”

“There wouldn’t be,” Honey replies gently. “Not one your conscious mind could access. But it’s there, in the echoes. Whispering lies. Telling you that you were born broken.” She softens, her gaze unwavering. “I see things your eyes cannot. You had wings. And now… you do not.”

Thistle stares into her tea, tears clinging to her lashes. “How do I grieve something I didn’t know I lost?”

“You acknowledge what was. Accept what is. And you move forward.” Honey yawns and nestles herself into a little divot in the napkin beside her thimble. “Besides,” she adds, settling like it’s the perfect time for a nap, “nothing says you can’t grow new ones.”

Thistle blinks.

She stares at Honey.

Silence.

“Wait… what?”

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Thanks for reading! You can find part 3 below!