Just like with Sweet Shoppe, when I get ideas or inklings about Bella Mariposa, I'll be writing about them so I can get a working world for these critters...one that's consistent and maintains its flow. These are notes about the butterfly villages and its people.
Bella Mariposa
Butterflies
Butterflies are free spirits. They live as they please and for the moment. They enjoy life and celebrate it every day. Although they have an elected leader, their social structure is pretty much non-existent apart from this.
Butterflies, like all insects, are hatched from eggs. A female will usually lay a pair at a time which she tends to in a nursery within a home she shares with her mate. Together, they tend to the eggs for about a week before they hatch. The hatchlings are caterpillars. They move about the nursery for a further two weeks, munching on assorted vegetation and drinking leaf juice until the time comes when the natural instinct urges the youngsters to spin cocoons and undergo their amazing metamorphosis. Mother and father won’t see their offspring again for another four months, but the next time they do, they will be fully realized butterflies…just babies.
Butterfly babies are curious and sweet and mirror their parents’ love for life and relish for joy. Their laughter is a constant in butterfly villages. They emerge from their chrysalises with a pair of wings, but do not have the instinct and knowledge of how to use them. They are likened to baby birds learning how to fly. They gain this instruction from their parents.
Once they reach adulthood, they take their place in butterfly community. They seek out mates and begin to build lives with the lovers they’ve found and the cycle starts again.
A butterfly’s diet consists primarily of nectar, fruit and fruit juices. In the winter, though, they will eat winter berries and leaves until spring arrives and more succulent foodstuffs are available.
Butterflies are typically vain creatures, valuing their beauty in pretty high regard. They choose their mates based on their physical attributes and the prediction of how their offspring will turn out with the combination of parentage. The most beautiful butterflies are usually mated to…the most beautiful butterflies and thus produce the most beautiful children. Yet, despite their vanity, they’re surprisingly tender and devoted lovers as well as doting and loving parents.
The elected leaders of the butterfly people are referred to as reys (male) and reinas (female). They govern the health and welfare of their kind and are the primary source for interspecies diplomacy. For example, when the winter is difficult and the food rations waning, it is the responsibility of the elected leaders to negotiate trade between other insects willing to barter with them.
The elected leaders remain in power until they are ready to retire and find someone who they deem worthy of succeeding them. Unlike a monarchy, the children of the elected do not inherit the title borne by their parents. Once the leaders find someone worthy, they present them to the rest of the colony and hold a vote. If the people approve, then the nominee becomes the new elected leader. If they have a mate, then they also become an elected leader. If they are unmated, then whomever the elected takes to mate becomes an elected as well.
Mari: Mari is the main character of this series. She is headstrong and honest as well as compassionate and kind. Her best friend is Miele, the honeybee. She admires her friend’s wings and marvels at the feats that Miele can perform in the way of flight. Mari is something of an oddball in the butterfly world. She is of an age to take a mate, but does not want to choose a mate based on his appearances. She’s learned that the best looking males are usually hopelessly arrogant and value her for simply for her beauty. She knows that this attitude tends to change with mating, but even so, she doesn’t want her mate to desire her for her looks, even if she is an extraordinary beauty. She is courted by many a suitor, but she has yet to find the special someone just for her. For Mari, the search for her perfect mate continues.
Mari lives with her parents, as all unmated females do. They love their daughter, especially since her twin sister died within the confines of her chrysalis. It would be akin to a stillbirth in human pregnancy. It is a happening that’s not wholly uncommon to the butterfly people. As she is their only child, Mari’s parents are especially protective of her and want for her happiness and wellbeing. They know that she will be better off if she is happily mated to someone who will take care of her. They urge her to choose a mate because they fear she will not find one if she waits too long. They do not understand why she is so oppositional when it comes to simply selecting a partner. They chose each other for their respective attractiveness and found happiness in each other’s hearts and their shared home and cannot see why their daughter is so adamant about not doing the same.
Apart from Miele, Mari’s closest friends are Sheenah, Chitta(butterflies) and Salto (a grasshopper).
Chitta: Chitta is a spirited and spunky girl who enjoys testing the limits of her own body. She is a born athlete that can fly farther, longer and faster than any other butterfly. She’s also the most versatile and nimble. Chitta can outmaneuver just about any predator that would seek to make a meal out of her and has used her abilities to help her friends out of more than an occasional dangerous situation. Her biggest aim is to beat Miele in distance, speed and maneuvering flying, a goal she has not yet been able to reach.
Like Mari, Chitta has little interest in the males that court her. However, unlike Mari, the number of suitors that call upon her aren’t as numerous as those that desire Mari. But, her perfect mate has yet to be found. For Chitta, the male that wi
ll win her has to be able to best her in her outstanding feats of athleticism. She decided for herself that the male who manages to out fly and out maneuver her will be the one she will take as her mate.
Sheenah: Sheenah is the daughter of the current rey and reina. She is refined and demure as well as intelligent and caring. Sheenah is the only one of the girls who has a brother. Her twin was born male and shares a number of his sister’s better attributes. He looks out for his younger (by a few hours) sibling and helps guide her through difficult choices see cannot see through on her own. In truth, Sheenah's brother is her best friend.
Sheenah is also the only one to have a steady partner. It is anticipated that the pair will take each other to mate in the near future. She foresees that she and her lover will produce outstandingly beautiful children together.
Sheenah is a constant source of council, not only to her friends but also to her people. She helps to assuage fears and provides guidance in times of uncertainty. She’s fair and levelheaded and very slow to anger. Like her parents, she interacts heavily with other insect species and helps to forge lasting bridges between the cultures.
Honeybees
Apart from ants, termites, hornets and wasps, bees are the most structured and organized of the eusocial groups of insects. As in real life, bees live in a hive where there is a queen who is mother to all in the hive.
The queen usually has a pair of drones which she takes to mate, although some queens have taken only one while others have taken as many as a dozen. The drones a queen takes for her mates are always brothers or half brothers from the same hive. This helps to maintain genetic order and prevents inbreeding.
Nearly all the bees born into the hive are female. In a hive of 500, not even 5% are male and of that 5%, less than 1% are likely to reach adulthood and go on to help produce new hives of their own. When drones are of breeding age, they journey together in search of hives with breeding females ready to mate. Once it’s established that the males are from a hive with no genetic ties to the hive in they’ve located and the physical health of the males is found to be desirable, a breeding female is surrendered and the mates head off with approximately 35 of the new queen’s sisters who will serve as her court and helping hands to erect the new hive. They are also a great source of support and wells of wisdom and knowledge to her fledgling majesty. Along with the drones, these females are the only members of the hive not born of the queen and her mates.
Queen bees are determined at birth. Infants that display certain traits in the larval state are removed from the nursery and tended by the queen directly. Only the queen knows, by instinct, the traits to look for in her young that determine who can grow to become a queen. Under her care, the young daughters are fed high quantities of royal jelly, the key to their progression in developing into queens. She is also groomed in the ways of leading and governing her family and coached in the ways of ruling with fairness, yet while always putting the needs of the hive before all others.
In truth, any female can become a queen if she consumes enough royal jelly. In an emergency situation, such as the untimely death of the queen where no budding queens are present, an elected sister is given large doses of royal jelly until she becomes fertile. The former mates of the queen adopt new roles, usually advisors to new males, and the new queen advertises the need for new mates.
Although every bee has had royal jelly in the early stages of life, only queens and potential queens consume it throughout their entire lives. Royal jelly helps females undergo the necessary changes to become a queen, but they continue to consume it throughout their lives to maintain their fertility. When the hive has enough bees and times are well, the queen will stop eating the jelly to stop producing eggs. When the need for more members of the hive arises, the queen resumes a diet that includes her royal jelly to restore the capacity to lay eggs within her.
Drones, like queens, are born at random. Drones are larger and stronger than their sister siblings and serve in the capacity of defense when the need arises, but apart from that, they serve their hive in no other way. They exist to serve not their birth hive, but rather the one they will seek to create with the queen they find once they reach adulthood.
Worker bees are the heart of every hive, even if they do not realize their worth. They are as loyal as they are hard working. Workers work in day shifts of four days at a time followed by three days of resting. Their work schedule is set for life at their moment of life. They are assigned their working shifts and positions once they emerge from their combs as young honeybee children. They don’t begin working until adolescence. In their youth, they attend school within the hive where they learn everything they need to know about their society. They learn to fly, how to mark routes to bountiful flowering fields, how to harvest and cultivate pollen and how to make honey and how to defend the hive. These are some of the basics of honeybee education. Bees that are assigned to tend infants or to become teachers or other specialized jobs are given additional instruction, but most simply learn the basics as the majority of the bees of the hive will become pollinators.
Miele: Miele is a common pollinator. She tends flowers and collects and distributes the pollen she gathers for her family and amongst the blossoms to help ensure a healthy ecosystem and a stable food source for her people. Like all pollinators, Miele is also a defender of the hive and so is a skilled fighter. As naïve and honest as she can be is how aggressively she can become when danger arises to threaten those nearest to her heart.
Miele is honest to a fault and sees the world with practical eyes. Like many worker bees, Miele doesn’t know her own worth nor does she see herself as special in any way. Although she has the gifts and talents exclusive to honeybees, she doesn’t view her abilities as anything extraordinary. To her, Miele is just a face among her many sisters, a small part of a greater whole. She is devoted to her family and selflessly strives to ensure their wellbeing.
Although an adult, Miele is very naïve. All that she knows she has learned from her family. She sees the world with the innocence of a child. Things are either right or wrong and to her, everything she’s learned from the hive is right. It was an odd happening that she befriended Mari, as bees and don’t generally socialize heavily with other insects, or at least not enough to call one another, best friend. With Mari’s companionship, though, Miele is learning more now than she would have ever learned by hive knowledge alone.
