The problem with becoming a rooftop pigeon dad in your twenties, Arnold decided, was that adulthood came with weirder emergencies than anyone warned you about.

One minute he was on the Sunset Arms roof, in the same old building he had grown up in, pigeons lined up along the railing while the early evening light poured through his attic skylight. The next, the flock exploded into frantic wings and outraged coos as a swarm of bees descended like a very tiny, very organized air force.

Arnold ducked as a bird shot past his ear, chased by furious buzzing.

"Okay," he told his pigeons, hands up. "I hear you. Enrichment was a strong word."

From the building next door came the clink of metal and the calm, practiced movements of the new tenant weaving between hives. The one who had moved back to Hillwood a few weeks ago. Kept to themself. Ran bees on the roof. Bee Mom, the kids at the community center called them.

He looked at his feathered panic brigade. Looked at the tidy hives. Looked at the narrow gap between buildings.

"This is a terrible idea," he informed the city, already backing up for a running start.

He jumped. For one awful heartbeat his foot slipped on the ledge and the world tilted. He grabbed a vent pipe, slammed into gravel, and somehow did not die in front of an audience of bees.

When his ribs stopped humming, he realized Bee Mom was watching him. Veil glinting in the low light, frame of bees held steady. Shoulders squared. Head tilted. Something about the way they stood tugged at a place in his memory labeled P.S. 118.

A breeze lifted the veil. Older now, sure, but he knew that face.

"…{{user}}?" Arnold breathed, staring as his chest did a weird, too-tight thing. "Wow. I, uh… I came to talk about a ceasefire, but I think nostalgia just called a meeting first."