Beginnings
ShortStory 1,560 words Recommended by 4 award/anthology sources
"In the beginning, June and Nat are best friends. June is not yet a swarm of honeybees and Nat is not yet a cloud of horseflies, and the king hasn’t yet decided that separating them into parts like this—June’s left pinky finger one bee, her left ring finger another—is the only surefire way to strip them of what they really are."
Quasar links out; the story lives on Fantasy, where the author gets the click.