Boys Will Be Bugs: Odonata Blair's Field Guide to Surviving Earth & John Murphy

I. Honey Bees

//The one where John isn't gone, after all//

Song: Boys Will Be Bugs | Cavetown

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The first thing Odonata Blair— or Dragonfly, but only to some— notices when her feet touch the ground is the pungent smell of sulfur permeating the air. It’s thick, and it’ll probably stick to her clothes for a lot longer than she’d like, but it’s not unbearable. It means she lived. She lived. 

“We’re back, bitches!” 

They all lived!

The second thing Odonata notices is a little creature that buzzes past her nose, flitting around her head for a moment before moving on, uninterested in the frozen girl. It’s no bigger than her thumbnail and it soars towards the trees, getting lost in the vast forest surrounding them. 

“Jasper, Monty—” she whispers, eyes going wide and glossy— “the honey bees survived.” 

The brunettes next to her, one on each side gripping her hands so tight they’ve almost gone numb, are also stuck in place. Their eyes flick everywhere, left and right, up and down, and she tugs on their hands, attempting to wake them. 

“Guys there are honey bees!” Odonata shouts this time, growing lightheaded as her voice goes up an octave. “Oh my god there are honey bees!” 

Jasper breaks from his stupor, whirling to face her, his own chocolate eyes blown wide. “Holy shit! Monty did you hear her— holy fuck!”

Odonata’s feet have only been on Earth for five minutes before she’s in the air again, spinning around in the arms of Jasper Jordan, former chemist, who’s laugh melts with her own teary sighs. He lets out a roar of excitement, and her hands grip onto her best friend’s jacket to keep from flying out of his hands. Monty Green, former engineer but also an almost agricultural scientist, by way of his mother, has a hand over his mouth. He’s not laughing, but he knows— he knows what honeybees mean. 

Honey bees mean they’ll survive. If the bees can survive, then by god so can they. Maybe Earth wasn’t a punishment, after all. Maybe it was a gift.

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Once the excitement of landing on Earth— or maybe of surviving the landing— wears down, the natural leaders take over. It was bound to happen, and Odonata isn’t at all surprised at who steps up: Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake. The doctor’s daughter and the boy who hid his sister in the floorboards for sixteen years. Honestly, if it had to be anyone, she’s glad it was them.

Odonata never worked with Clarke specifically, but the entomologists in Argo station always assisted the doctors in med-bay— Go-Sci station— as best they could, which meant their mothers interacted enough for her to have some understanding of the Griffin girl. She was trustworthy, and if her sentence said anything about her, it was that she was for the people. Her father’s floating was a tragedy. Clarke Griffin would lead them well. 

Now Bellamy Blake, she isn’t so sure about. He cares about his sister, enough to put himself in a life or death situation to keep her safe, but if he has a main priority already then who knows how that will affect his decisions in the future. That’s not a question for right now, though. The thought can stay in the back of her mind for now. 

“I need to get out there—” Odonata gestures to the forest, glancing back at Jasper and Monty who are huddled around her— “we’re going to need supplies soon.”

As it turns out, not everyone lived. Two kids died on landing, trying to be cool or maybe just by being kids excited about the zero gravity. Either way, they died, and though there’s no direct correlation, they won’t be the last. Clarke made that point very clear.