#4 Honey, Honey

Oscar narrowed his eyes as he heard a faint buzzing but could not spot the culprits. He turned his head this way and that, attempting to spot them, before he decided to just follow the noise as best he could. That involved much stopping and starting on his part as he checked that he was going in the right direction.

Finally he spotted a hive up rather high in a tree. That really was very high actually. But at least the tree looked sturdy?

He reached out a finger to poke the tree.

Yup, sturdy. Because a single finger would definitely have sent it swaying otherwise.

Up the tree he had to go then, unless he wanted to change his mind about what to collect. Which he didn’t. Honey would probably be useful to have lying about.

He shuffled his bag around to make sure that the jars he had inside were easier to access, and then he went hunting around the tree for a good place to start to climb. If he was going to climb then he was going to find the best route up that he could.

He picked his target eventually and then up he went. He reached up to grab a thick branch and then, his foot braced against a handy knot in the trunk, hauled himself up off the ground.

From there it was a case of shimmying around the trunk, twisting this way and that between various branches as he used the sturdiest looking ones to slowly crawl higher. The higher he went though, the harder it was to find sturdy branches to use.

Still, even with the lower number of useable branches, he managed to reach the height of the hive. If he could just reach out a tiny bit further from the trunk, then the honey would be his.

First though he took a chance to take a breather as he hugged the trunk. He used that time to keep an eye on the bees that were buzzing around. They did not seem too bothered so far, but he knew that could change when he started to steal their honey. He just really hoped that they did not try to sting him.

Knowing that he should not hang around too long, even to catch his breath, Oscar shuffled along the branch that he was sat on to inch closer to the hive. Once it was in reach he pulled an empty jar out of his bag and unscrewed the top.

He held the jar under the overflow of honey that the hive held, letting the sticky substance drip into his container. Aware of how long that was taking though, and that the bees were beginning to take notice, Oscar stuck the lid between his teeth to hold and freed up his other hand to encourage the honey into his jar.

That went much faster. Even if the sticky fingers were a bit annoying.

He screwed the lid back on and stuffed it back into his bag. Then he hesitated, there was still plenty of honey left and he had another jar…

Oscar decided to chance it and pulled out a second jar. He repeated the process with filling that jar, though that time he started to push the honey about straight away rather than waiting for the drip.

He was very aware that the bees did not seem the best impressed as they took notice of him. And since he still did not want to be stung, Oscar thought it best to fill the jar as fast as he could.

As the buzzing noise started to pick up in volume, he decided to speed things up further and threw caution to the wind to scoop up whole handfuls of honey into the jar. The bees had already very much noticed him, so being careful was not doing anything to prevent that.

All being careful was doing was keeping him with the bees for longer. He wanted away before the bees got fed up with his intruding and stung him. For their own sake he wanted to avoid that happening.

Just a bit more and he could escape to safety.

“Ahh,” he hissed out around the jar lid. Because of course that was when they got him, when he was moments away from leaving.

Oscar had just about finished filling his jar when two little pricks of sharp burning pain burst to life on his hand. He jerked his hand away instinctively and nearly dropped the jar that he had been there for.

Not wanting to chance more stings by sitting around and wallowing, Oscar managed to screw the lid on his jar and stuffed it in his bag with the first. Then he shuffled back away from the hive and began to scrambled back down the branches away from the hive.

Thankfully the bees did not seem interested in following him now that they had seen him off, so once he was over half way back down, he paused on a branch to look his battle wounds over.

Two red welts met him and they were already beginning to swell. Fantastic.

“Oh little buzzies,” he sighed, sad for the bees that had stung him. He had hoped not to aggravate them that much, but obviously he had not succeeded.

Slower than the first half of his climb while he had been escaping the bees, Oscar made his way back down to the ground. He landed back on solid ground with an ‘oof’.

No longer in danger of falling from a height, he looked back down at his sore hand.

The red did look angry, but he did not want to waste Madam Pomfrey’s time over a couple of bee stings. She probably had much more important things to deal with than him, right? Right.

Oscar decided that he would rinse the area off and then just keep an eye on it himself. He was sure the stings were nothing though.

“Aguamenti,” he directed his wand at the sleeve of his robe. Once that was nice and damp he dabbed at his hand with it, wiping off the sticky splodges of honey that remained and the odd bit of dirt that had transferred from the tree.

There. That would do. Hopefully.

Oscar cast a slightly unsure look at the red welts. He hoped that cleaning it would be enough. He really did not fancy running to the hospital wing for two little bee stings.

His battle wounds dealt with, Oscar cast a look around the path that he was on. He was already there so he may as well see what else he could find. Maybe there was some Gakhood about? If he remembered correctly, then that should be fairly easy to spot.

His next hunt decided, Oscar began to walk along the path again. He was on the lookout for large, black leaves.