The shortest night of the year means a Merry International Short Story Day to one and all!  I have written a little story in celebration. it is about a bee.  Sorry, the text on the image is hard to read in places unless you look at it quite closely (I was going to do an illustration rather than a photoshopping but didn’t have time, alas), so I’ve put a transcript after the jump.

Once upon a time
There was a scarlet bee
Who hatched from an egg
In a red chilli tree.

She went on a quest
To find her some jam
Grammatically strange
But easy to scan.

The jam was OK
Not sweet as she’d hoped
So off to a nearby
Chippy she sloped.

There she got haggis
That she could not carry
Bees are too small
And fried meat quite heavy

So she returned
To the red chilli tree
Her tummy a-rumblin’
The poor scarlet bee.