One thing I know how to do is ride a twig.

Not just any old twig! You gotta find the right one. Like dowsing.

You stick that twig between your legs and you’re off!

So I was up in the air, flying on my twig, taking a little looksie down over the newly renovated New Student Lounge building and its environs.

The campus landscaping seems a bit overgrown when you’re on the ground, but from above you get a sense for the original design.

The whole place is designed on a giant hexagram, which has smaller hexagrams inside it, and so on.

But if you connect the dots on all the hexagrams then you see it’s all hexagons! A fractal honeycomb!

No wonder it’s so confusing to walk around camps. From now on I’m stickin’ to my twig.

I just arrived. I don´t know what this place is, but i´m here.

You should consider the New Student Committee, @Lilax! We've been waiting for you. In fact, the New Student Committee was created JUST for YOU!

Soon there will be the Selection of the Queen... and do you happen to know the Waggle Dance?

Oooops! I probably shouldn't have had that second ayahuasca boba tea at the Spoonbender... but that delightful @Seketus Reed can be so entertaining!

Oh also!! Though not a student per se, @Mr. Blume could be an important resource, as flowers are instrumental in the Invocation.

Sincerely,

A. Hazeltine
Student Activities Coordinator

Okay nice! It sounds like we have a plan or at least the start of one! I'm not much of a dancer personally but I'd be happy to bring snacks and DJ if we need music for the dance. (What type of music do bees like?) If we need any other supplies I think I could do some digging, so just let me know!

If this initiation dance is anything like at the other schools I’ve visited through the intersectional reality rifts that pass through my hometown on Venus Sands, @Terra Diggs, then it’s bound to be some kind of set up involving human sacrifice. They pick a “queen” and there’s a dance and a feast and when it’s all over there’s a bonfire or something and nobody ever sees the “queen” again. Like the Straw Baby of Hektar, or the Grand Oyster of Memik-Bob, or that business with the giant eels on Moosemorf.

Pretty standard in primate dominant hybrid realities like this one. I’m sure it will be very exciting, as well as an excellent subject for my trans-reality ethnography paper!

hi so i'm a new student, just kind of lurking in the back

but i made a discovery that is important to share with the new student committee

SECRET PASSAGE

today i was spending time at the new student longue house, with nobody else there

i thought i'd get some homework done, but got bored and started to explore

in the library room, it's like a half moon of shelves, around a circle of big flagstone tiles, right?

hexagonal flagstone tiles

i was thinking, and pacing, and walking in circles. and then i walked a figure eight.

and one of the bookshelves opened like a door

THE BEE PEOPLE

there are bee people and i met them. i walked down the secret passageway behind the shelf and there they were. very busy people but very nice. very buzzing. very wax.

they gave me this honey would you like a taste here you are

no i do not know where they get this honey. because they are big bee people just like you and me, and if they were flying around on campus believe me i think we would notice.

so i thought i should probably tell the committee

In light of @lois hanshakee's extraordinary discovery, I started spending some serious time with the books in the New Student Lounge library. And guess what? I ran across a big old book called "Sentient Bee Cultures and their Identification" on the tippy-top shelf. It was dusty and had a wax seal.

So I'm reading it and it says that the only sentient bees that make hives underground are MASONIC BEES! Which fits right in with the fact the school gardens are built on a giant hexagram, and scaled to the 47th Problem of Euclid.

Believe me, I know about this kind of thing. My parents made me do both Rainbow Girls AND Job's Daughters. I was running from one meeting to another for years.

now i am friends with one of the bee people she is a worker her name is Merz

we walk in the halls of her masonic bee temple

"how do you make all this honey?" i ask Merz

"where are the flower fields?" i ask Merz

"how big are the flowers?" i ask Merz

my words bounce through the hive and through the wax and through the honeycomb temple until it buzzes in bee language

Merz's buzzes bounce back through the hive and through the wax and through the honeycomb temple until it speaks in human language

HOW THE HONEY IS MADE

"you are our flowers!" answers Merz

"your minds are our fields!" answers Merz

"your energy is golden!" answers Merz

Merz gave me more honey would you like a taste here you are

Heyy uhhh, I don't exactly know where I am right now. I think one of the portals are playing up? I'm think I'm in a maze, idk the floor is wet and it's just the same room repeating. The wallpaper is like super old, and sorta yellow? I don't see an exit, I think I'm stuck.

It sounds like you may be in the New Student Lounge, @Trinity. Or at least the vast beeswax tunnel system beneath it! Feel free to join the others in the sitting room, where I'm sure they'll offer you a soda or whatever it is you kids drink these days. @Seketus Reed is fond of Sentient Mycelium Vinegar Rickeys.

Anyway, I know they've got a load of snacks because they charged it to the New Student Committee credit card. And I believe they are watching a compelling documentary on the Waggle Dance on a VHS tape that the school recently acquired.

Just don't spend too much time with the bee people down there! They're so eager they can get quite anxious. Their warm buzzing sound may put you at ease, but it's best we all move cautiously around them.

Sincerely,

A. Hazeltine
Student Activities Coordinator