Chapter 20: Belissar's Beehouse
Belissar sawed away as best he could at the piece of wood before him. He was working on one of the beehouse walls at the moment, trying to cut some grooves he could slot the trays into. He looked at it and sighed.
It...was not his finest work, a rough cut that looked more like some creature had taken a bite out of the wood than a detailed woodworker. But that was the limit of his current tools and material. Since he was working with wet wood, he would have to leave room for the wood to bend or shrink or any number of other such things he couldn’t necessarily predict. He just wasn’t going to get it to fit perfectly together. He was just hoping he could get it to fit together, period.
He sighed and put it aside and began working on the next wall. He wanted to make sure all this would actually work before he went and cut a bunch of the grooves. A while later he had a basic three-sided box that fit together...sort of. There were holes and gaps and what not, but at the very least it stood up without collapsing. Belissar then went and cut out a floor piece, seeing if he could get it to fit in. It did...sort of. Again, there were gaps on the edges Belissar would have preferred to do without, so he tried to cut some pieces to line the edges.
Next, he began to cut some thinner long pieces for the frames. Getting the grooves and shapes so the frame parts would fit together was...challenging, but eventually Belissar got one assembled. He placed it down into the box...and it managed to fit into the grooves he had carved in the wall. He heaved a sigh of relief.
With the proof of concept confirmed, he could begin to assemble the rest of it...
It took most of the day, but eventually Belissar finished. He took a step back and beheld the work of his hands.
...it was a rickety thing, leaning to one side where he misjudged the length of one of the legs, and with gaps all over the place. But it was a complete box, with some frames to guide the bees that could be pulled out...with a lot of effort and grunting. Belissar sighed.
And then he heard a chime.
Mission: Build a beehouse completed!