The day had come. The entire insect kingdom had gathered at The Willow for the official Emergence ceremony. The bees buzzed with excitement, their song rising harmoniously under the gently drooping limbs. Dragonflies swooped from branch to branch, their vibrant colors and crystal wings creating quite the show for the waiting audience. Beetles clicked and clacked around the roots, while ants scurried busily about carrying leafy trays full of good things to eat and drink.
Above all of them, the showy Atlas moth and his queen, the delicate Luna, flitted beneath the branches followed by the wise Polyphemus and the feathery Gypsy moth. They perched on the princess’s branch, two on each side of the cocoon, and waited while the undermoths quieted the crowd. When everyone was silent, King Atlas fluttered his crimson and orange wings, the carefully rehearsed pattern telling the story of the Princess’s time in the egg. When he had finished, Queen Luna danced the slow, beautiful story of the child’s days as a caterpillar, of how she had excelled in mulberry leaf eating, growing larger and more lovely than all the other caterpillars.
Prime Minister Gypsy fluffed his feathers to regale the audience with the presumed virtues of the soon to emerge Princess. Owl-marked Counselor Polyphemus waved his eyed wings in a stodgy explanation of the Princess’s royal duties. Finally, the preliminaries dispensed with, the cricket chorus tuned their legs and began the song to signal the Princess to awake.
With bated breath, the entire kingdom watched the strands of the cocoon began to snap. One by one they fell away until the Princess, wet and bedraggled, crawled out into the shaft of sunlight lying across the branch between the king and queen. For several long moments she rested, the circulation reaching every new vein and the bright sunlight drying her iridescent wings. Finally, when the watchers thought they could bear no more waiting, she spread her wings and looked down upon her kingdom.
She was as lovely as Gypsy had foretold. Enormous black eyes slanted upward into points above a pure white face, impossibly long black and white antenna waving gently above them. The tops of her wings gleamed like silver dust, while the bottoms sported delicate black pinpoints on a breathtaking greenish-white. The insect kingdom let out a collective gasp and bowed in awe.
The Princess was just beginning her welcome dance with the king and queen when a commotion on the ground interrupted the ceremony. Around the base of The Willow marched a great army of spiders, their long legs tossing any hapless insect in their path. Above them flew a silent horde of wasps and hornets, stingers at the ready. Horrified insects scrambled aeay from the invaders as ants deposited their refreshment trays and formed ranks against the spiders. Honeybees, bumblebees, and even the slowmoving carpenter bees joined forces against the flying army.
The battle raged fierce on both fronts. The spiders were larger and much better equipped, but the ants had strategy in their side. One after another the eight-eyed monsters fell before the organized defenders. The bees sacrificed themselves with admirable devotion, though only their numbers gave them victory in the end. When it was over, the victors surveyed great carnage, enemies and defenders lying dead alike between the roots.
The beetles rallied themselves and set about removing the bodies of the dead, while the crickets struck up a doleful lament for those who had paid the ultimate price for their sweet Princess. She peered down at them all from the safety of her branch, nodding her head in approval and thanks. When all evidence of the battle had been removed, she fluttered close to the ground, her wings glimmering in the fading light, including every insect in her welcome dance. Then her moth retinue surrounded her and bore her away to the treetops, her Emergence complete.
The Word Worker 
