A Sting Is a Sentence

The witch of Larrow did not dislike people. She simply found that bees asked less of her and gave back honey, which was a fairer trade than most arrangements she had been offered by anything that walked upright. Her cottage sat at the hedge's end where the village stopped bothering to be a village. This suited her. When folk wanted a tincture they left coin on the flat stone and she left the bottle, and nobody had to perform the long sad theatre of being neighbourly. It had taken her years to build a life that quiet. She was rather proud of it.