Unusual Day
He felt a slight shot of pain run through his body as he fell onto some stone-tiled ground… Caterpillar’s eyes were clenched shut as he slowly sat up.
He felt different…
Caterpillar’s eyelids opened as he looked down at his hands while sitting on the ground. He saw the black fade and patterns of his arms; he was back in his human form. What happened?
He blinked a couple of times, letting his blank dark green eyes adjust to the abrupt change in scenery. Caterpillar peered around, moving his short white hair away from his face as he analyzed his predicament.
He was sitting in the middle of a stone-tiled alley with ragged houses lining it. The houses seemed to be some kind of stores. It was unlike anything Caterpillar had ever seen- and that was saying a lot considering Caterpillar’s somewhat ancient age.
There were a couple of people in dark cloaks walking around the alley. Suffice to say that the people looked rather ominous with their dark clothes and flowy cloaks… Caterpillar was beginning to think he’d been teleported into some isolated society on the other side of Teyvat.
The few people that roamed the street did not pay any attention to the small boy sitting in the middle of the street, strangely enough. Caterpillar didn’t mind. He wasn’t a huge fan of attention anyway.
The white-haired boy stood up, dusting off his clothes and fixing the ribbon around his neck. He then let his darkened hands fall to his sides and looked around with his usual empty look.
Looking up, Caterpillar noted that the sky looked different. It wasn’t as busy as the sky in Teyvat. It didn’t look fabricated or starry, and Celestia was nowhere in sight.
Caterpillar was not in Teyvat.
Upon coming to this conclusion, Caterpillar blinked, surprised by the strange revelation. How had he been ejected from his world? He frankly did not know what to think of this. What happened to Seymour? Was this perhaps a mishap that’d happened thanks to something that happened with Narzissenkreuz?
Caterpillar got yanked out of his thoughts as some of the cloaked and tall people passed by him, talking to each other. It was a language he was not familiar with. It definitely wasn’t one of Teyvat’s languages.
Caterpillar eyed the people that passed by him, realizing that he was still standing in the dead center of the street. He then quickly hopped off to the side, away from being in the way, even though there weren’t that many people there.
One of the cloaked individuals finally turned their gaze towards Caterpillar. Immediately as of doing so, they looked at the boy up and down, eyeing Caterpillar’s faded black arms.
The cloaked individual then said something to their companion, pointing at Caterpillar’s figure. The two strange people started talking louder and pointing at the white haired boy.
Caterpillar in turn just stood still and analyzed the two’s faces, trying to dissect what they were talking about. In a sense, he felt a bit out in the open because they were very clearly talking about him intently.
Caterpillar instinctively hid his darkened arms behind his back as he glared at the two cloaked people pointing at him while speaking in another language. Frankly, he didn’t need to know the strange language to guess what they were talking about; Caterpillar stood out like a sore thumb with his pale skin, soulless eyes, greenish clothing, white hair and arms that faded to black. Even more so when you consider that his human form was that of a young child…
Then, the two cloaked individuals surrounded him, directly addressing Caterpillar now. Caterpillar could only blink at the two with a confused expression buried under his blank face.
He started feeling like he was being intimidated or interrogated by the two strangers. Though, he stayed neutral as human threats never worked on him that well, plus, he did not know a single word of the language the two spoke. It further proved that he’d been cast out of Teyvat, since Caterpillar did have a good grasp on all of Teyvat’s languages.
Suddenly, a third man cut in, talking to the two cloaked people with a stern and commanding tone. The man had fancier clothes with slit-back hair. Caterpillar figured that he must’ve been some sort of authority figure.
The two cloaked individuals reluctantly left, leaving Caterpillar to stand on the stone-tiled street with the fancy man. The man turned to Caterpillar and looked down at the young-looking boy.
The man started talking, but once again, Caterpillar couldn’t give any type of answer, since he had no idea what anyone was saying thanks to the language barrier.
The man must’ve noticed Caterpillar’s confusion. The man pulled out a stick- no- a wand from his fancy jacket, and swished it in the air a couple of times while saying some word.
Caterpillar felt something change in the air, and then…
“Are you okay, little kid?” the man said, putting his wand away back in his jacket.
Caterpillar stilled, surprised that he could suddenly understand the man’s words. Was this magic? Did the man cast some sort of translation spell?
“Those two witches were clearly bothering you, I can tell.” the man continued, glancing back at the two cloaked individuals, who were currently walking away.
Caterpillar followed the man’s gaze before looking back up at him again, unsure of what to say in this situation.
“You could hardly call that ‘bothering’.” Caterpillar finally answered. He was pretty used to people giving him weird looks, not that he enjoyed it either…
The man laughed slightly before looking around the alley. “So, where are your parents? You’re not a local.” he said, looking back down at the white haired child.
Caterpillar stayed silent for a moment, trying to decide if he should tell the strange man about his current predicament or not.
“I don’t have nor need someone to call a ‘parent’.” Caterpillar ended up saying as he let his arms fall to his sides.
The man blinked, staring at Caterpillar as if he was scrutinizing him with his eyes somehow. “What’s your name, little kid?”
“...My name…” the white haired boy looked right back up at the man, not breaking eye contact to show that he’s not feeling the least bit intimidated. “My name is Caterpillar.”
The man shot into a new burst of laughter, seeming quite amused by his answer. Caterpillar figured that his name was pretty unusual, judging by the man’s reaction. Well, he knew that already; he didn’t have a human name, nor did he deserve it.
“Hmph. Real funny, kid, but you’re gonna have to tell me what your real name is.” the man’s laughter died down as he straightened his clothes slightly. “My name is Myles Moore, a member of the Ministry of Magic.”
Caterpillar had never heard of such a thing. It wasn’t too surprising, since he had already come to the conclusion that he wasn’t in Teyvat anymore.
Moore’s eyes drifted down to Caterpillar’s arms, noting how they faded to black around his elbows and below that. Almost as if Caterpillar was wearing long black gloves with some sort of stylistic fades at the end. It seemed as if Moore was thinking hard about something.
“Tell me, what is your name?” Moore asked again, staring into the ‘child’s’ eyes in a deadpan manner. “Be serious this time.”
Right, humans had multiple names. Surnames and last names if Caterpillar recalled correctly.
He pondered for a moment before answering, never letting his blank eyes wander off the man: “Caterpillar… Narzissenkreuz.”
A lie.
Moore sighed, crossing his arms. “Am I going to have to force the truth out of you, kid? Because I can.”
“My name is Caterpillar.” the white haired boy repeated with a stoic and neutral tone of voice.
“There is no way you were named after a darn caterpillar.” Moore said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Damn kids these days…” he then mumbled under his breath. Caterpillar wasn’t sure whether or not he meant for his mumbles to be heard.
Noticing the man’s annoyance, Caterpillar recognized that he didn’t believe him. Of course, it wasn’t too surprising that Moore didn’t believe him since he’d probably never heard anyone have the name ‘Caterpillar’.
Caterpillar inhaled the slightly dusty air of the alley, still looking at the man intently. “Alright, just call me Cater Narzissenkreuz.” he said, figuring he could just tell the man his nickname and claim it’s his real one.
“Hm, okay. Listen up, Cater, where did you come from?” Moore asked, analyzing Caterpillar’s unnaturally empty gaze.
Oh great…the one question he didn’t know the answer to…
Moore’s eyes felt like daggers trying to pierce an invincible barrier, which was Caterpillar’s cool. The white haired kid hadn’t changed his expression even once this whole time. Mostly because he was constantly on guard in this unfamiliar environment.
“...Where am I?” Caterpillar questioned after a moment of silence, avoiding the man’s question.
“Diagon Alley in London, England.” Moore answered, lowering his hands to his hips as he looked down at the little child. “And you’re a strange orphan with a suspiciously ominous appearance that was just standing in the middle of the street.”
“Sorry?” Caterpillar shrugged, not entirely sure whether he was supposed to apologize for something like that. He also did not recognize the place the man had told him they were in.
“You’re excused.” Moore said, “Just tell me where you came from…I can help.”
Caterpillar sighed, sure that Moore could actually not help his predicament. He still wondered what had caused him to be towed from Teyvat. Caterpillar thought about all his companions that he had in Teyvat, and the scene that had unfolded right before he was teleported…
The way Seymour had shut down underwater, and how he didn’t know what could possibly have happened to the Traveler, Pamon and Ann… Were they alright? Or did something happen in the Primordial sea…
“It’s gonna be okay, kid. Just tell me where you’re from…” Moore’s voice snapped Caterpillar out of his thoughts. The man had probably noticed the child’s blank eyes zone out.
“...Fontaine.” Caterpillar muttered a truthful answer.
Moore raised an eyebrow before pulling out a huge paper from his jacket’s inner pocket, which seemed to be some sort of map. Caterpillar tried to have a peek, but the man was too tall for him to reach and see what the map read.
“‘Fontaine’... Are you sure about that? Such a place doesn’t exist…not even in the wizarding world.” Moore huffed while reading the map he still held in his hands, out of Caterpillar’s reach. “It’s pretty worrying seeing a ten year old kid alone in the street without any parents or a sense of direction, who claims their name is ‘Caterpillar’ and that they’re from some unknown place.”
Caterpillar understood the man’s dilemma. He also noted that Moore mentioned something about the wizarding world. Caterpillar figured that this world had a different sort of magic system than Teyvat.
He also noted one other thing Moore had said… Caterpillar slightly raised his eyebrows as Moore said he was ten. “‘Ten years old’? Me?” Caterpillar mumbled before shaking his head, deciding to leave it be for now.
He wasn’t a child.
Moore’s assumption was far off, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Hm. Now that I think about it, ‘Fontaine’ sounds like a French name…so you’re from France? Now it makes sense how you didn’t understand English... How did you even get all the way here?” the man mumbled as he folded the map back up and put it away in the inside of his black jacket.
“Mind if I see that map?” Caterpillar asked as Moore had already put the map away.
The man sighed before pulling it out again, mildly annoyed that he had to go back and forth, wasting energy.
Caterpillar tugged and took the map from Moore’s hands, unfolding it and looking it over. It was a pretty sizable map; a little too big for Caterpillar’s small child-like figure.
He let his eyes skim the map. Yep, this was definitely not Teyvat. More and more hints of that were being thrown at his face time and time again in these past tens of minutes.
The map had shapes and notes of different landmarks. It was titled ‘Great Britain’. Different cities and important places were marked and written on it. Caterpillar noted that the place, ‘Diagon Alley’, was located in London, just like Moore had previously said.
“Hm. Do you like maps, Cater?” Moore asked with a hum, looking down at the white haired child with curious and scrutinizing eyes. His eyes drifted down to Caterpillar’s small black hands, which were holding the map. Suspicion flashed across the man’s features.
“Not in particular, no.” Caterpillar simply answered before folding the map back up and handing it out to Moore. He didn’t miss the brief flash of suspicion on the man’s face.
Moore took the map back, but before Caterpillar could withdraw his darkened hand, Moore suddenly grabbed it. The white haired boy stilled.
The man had a firm grip on Caterpillar’s arm now. He stared at it intensely, noticing how the boy’s arm faded to black and how there were strange patterns on his hands as well. almost like they were some sort of seals. Moore also noted that Caterpillar’s legs likely also faded to black the same way his arms did.
Moore’s eyebrows pinched.
“What are you?”