Elodie van Wonderbee

Elodie roars through Seldona’s street on a brand-new old motorcycle; zipping through rush-hour traffic in her usual barely-legal way. She can’t help from smiling as the wind rushes around her ears. Today was a good day. Today she left the environment department. Not because she’s going to stop writing environment articles. Far from it. But because the environment department doesn’t need her. They’re stronger than ever, if also more bee-pun filled, and she feels she can finally step back and settle in where she’s most comfortable. Features: under the leadership of her friend Miss Aya. In Features Elodie can do truly interdisciplinary work; combining her forensic talents, her environmental passion and her political intelligence to write pieces that truly expose the importance of caring for the planet and for each other. It’s all interconnected and interdependent you see, as Elodie has taken to saying these days. Lost in a reverie about what her next feature could be – I mean it's hard to live up to her small but meaningful contribution to the illegal whaling investigation; let alone to a knighthood – Elodie almost misses the poky car park for the Seldonan Stakeout, coming to an abrupt halt outside the somewhat run-down office.

She steps inside beaming, delighted to be greeted by Constantyne, T.T. Thompson and Goose-Guy (the Good), as always fighting the good fight. Elodie would normally head straight to the forensics lab she is building next door, but today she has some notes to write up for their most recently opened case, so sits down at her desk to type up some initial thoughts before consulting the team. As she takes her seat, her smile fades. A conspicuous gap lies between her and Constantyne. It’s a gap marked by a desk. Its desk. It will always be its desk; no matter how much the span of time grows between the choice it made and now. The gap will always be; just as its choice will always be.

After a few hours at the Stakeout, Elodie heads straight to band practice. She plays aggressively as she beats out a rhythm on the base to a background static of betrayal.

A few months later, after they solved that case, with its the help of some mysterious figure, Elodie waits in a coffee shop, drinking tea like always. She’s interviewing new potential housemates now that her previous two are moving out and going on tours with their band. Her next interviewee is late. She taps a bumblebee coloured pen against a notepad, filled with Seraph’s scribblings on how to find the bee-st housemate. Finally they enter; a cloaked figure. They order coffee, hesitate,

‘Scratch that, I’ll have a tea please’

They sit down.

Elodie pauses, frozen, as her eyes meet those bright green ones under the hood.

What is he — What is it doing here?

‘Elodie’

She should really slap him for this.

Or she could call the cops.

Or–

Him?

Is that who he is now?

– written by Annabel