The Butterfly Effect

A fan fiction by Tarashima

Chapter 1 – Once upon a time there was a caterpillar…

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It's funny how your life can change in matter of just seconds. My own seconds of change were the result of my clumsiness and anxious mind, and a few moments without awareness of my surroundings. The snowy world I normally live in with my weasel family can occasionally be treacherous, but I've always thought that the ice under the snow laid perfectible stabile on the ground. A pretty vague allusion, as I became aware of as a consequence of when I stumbled over some roots, and tumbled down a tiny foothill. I crushed through the ice and found myself falling into cold air darkness. My first horrifying thought was that I'd discovered an underground lake. Since I'm afraid of deep water, I started to panic. But then the air around me became warmer, and before I could react more on the atmosphere, I landed and bounced in something I'd never felt before. The fresh smell of something spring-like tickled my nose, and the feeling against my fingers felt softer yet rougher then the pines of the family tree. Where the heck was I?

I was regretting the decision I've made the same day, about go fishing instead of my older sister Rosie. Counting us both out, my family also consisted my little twin brothers Roll and Rock, my aunt Luna, her daughters Mimi and Maggie, and my dad and family leader Ender. All of them have beautiful shades of light brown and beige fur, and they all have wonderful brown eyes. Rosie has also inherited my father's long eyelashes, which on her made an attractive impression, instead of the serious gaze it gave my father. In fact, all in our family is good-looking and handsome, even my little brothers are cute despite their youth.

Except for me.

I'm a perfect copy of my now dead mother, with some inherited disturbing features from my father. My mother wasn't ugly, but she wasn't as good-looking as Luna am or as handsome as my father. In fact, she were a good-looking with a few disturbing features. Sadly for me, I got all of hers, and along with the features from my father, I'm one ugly weasel.

My fur looks like it's almost pitched black, even if it's just very dark brown. On my head, the hair has grown so long it reaches me over the shoulder, and even if I collect it in a tail with ropes just to keep it out of the way, it still causes me troubles. Like being pulled in it by the weasel boys Rosie use to see.

My face and stomach on the other hand is some sort of grey, and don't contain the slightest shade of beige or umber. It's almost as fate didn't want me to have real colors. Except for my eyes of course, the worst feature of all I got.

I was born blue eyed, but one of them grew browner during my childhood. Now, as a young adult, I've got a blue and a brown eye, something that has always been the target of mean remarks from other weasels, friends as well as strangers.

From friends of the family, I often receive the comment: "You must've been adopted". Sounds harsh, but you have the reason to think I'm nothing but an exchanged kid if you knew our family better. I'm not as neat as Rosie are, I can't climb or run half as good as my younger twin brothers can and I am definitively not a good hunter as Maggie or Mimi. I don't have the natural authority of my father, and I'm not equally creative as Luna. The only two things I'm good at, is being clumsy and in the way of others.

My self-esteem and confidence is at a bottom of a deep sea, and no matter how hard I try, I never seem to change. Also my family doesn't believe in me or supports me either.

But something always pushes me to try again and again. And today, I really wanted to do the fishing for a change. Rosie tried to stop me but I persuade her to let me try. I wanted to show off for my dad, even if he only gave me an unsmiling face and told me that he didn't expect anything, except of staying out of trouble. But I didn't care about him, as I walked away to the fishing lake, located an hour away from our home tree.

I stood up and tried to look around in the pitching black world I'd fallen into. The only light source I had was from the hole I'd caused by crushing into the ice, and it wasn't enough to give me a full view of my surroundings. Slowly, I realized that I was in some sort of a cave. I looked up to the hole, and saw that it was too high and badly positioned to climb up to. I tried to yell, but my voice drowned in the darkness around me. And I realized that I had to make another way to the surface. The thought scared me; I had never been in a position where I was totally on my own. That was yet nothing compared to the frustration I felt about my clumsiness and what it had put me into. With a sigh, and a serious try to ignore the creepiness of the darkness, I started to walk towards no particularly direction. I was sure that I was about to get lost in this dark cave.

But after a while, I saw a small light somewhere in front of me, and it made the cave lighter the closer I came. I began to feel delighted; soon I would be out and on my way back to the lake and finally make a try of fishing. So I started to run as fast as I could, and that isn't fast at all. But since I didn't have anyone else to compare my speed with, I didn't care or think about it.

The light struck me as I reached the gap of the cave. Blended by it, it took a while for my eyes to get used to the brightness. I was surprised; the sun never shone this bright. When I finally could see again, I couldn't believe what I saw. This was definitively not my home; there weren't any snow or ice to be found anywhere. Instead, I was facing a never ending world of green plants and trees in all kind of sizes, huge stone pillars that reached the roof of this world and waterfall bigger than anything I've ever seen.

I gasped, we had been living above this entire world, and we didn't even know it? How come that this world could exist, and below the ice? The thought of it were too absurd, so I shook my head, blinked a couple of times and smacked myself in the face to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I wasn't, the world were still there when I took another gaze.

And now, I made another terrifying insight; this world were domesticated by reptile creatures I'd never seen before, but knew what they were; dinosaurs. I swallowed hard as despair started to rise within. So now, I had two big problems to solve:

1. Find a way back home to the surface, the icy world where I belonged

2. Survive all this reptiles, which would for sure try to eat me.

I looked around and saw that I was standing on some sort of a cliff, so I walked to the edge and glanced down. It wasn't a deadly high cliff, but definitively too high to jump from, and without climb-friendly walls. But beside me, a trail with large bushes on each side of it seemed to lead down. I didn't have anything left to go after, so I started walking down it.

Meanwhile, I thought of my family at home, and if they'd start to miss me. Surely not, I couldn't possibly been down here for more than half an hour. And no one would for sure come to look for me through the hole. Well, if anyone was about to come to look for me. I wasn't sure of that, and felt tears pushing from behind my eyelids, but I wiped them away with the backside of my hand. I didn't have time to cry, not now.

Suddenly, I'd come to a dead end; this was almost like the cliff I'd come from, but from here, you couldn't climb or jump. Disheartened I sat down, and looked to no avail after another way, when I abruptly heard a cracking sound from behind. I turned around and saw a dinosaur big enough to swallow me whole. Gasping of horror, I rose quickly on to my feet. The dinosaur gave up a grin in his face and with a furiously shriek, showed me the lines of sharp teeth in his mouth. I cried in panic and tried to run back the same way I'd come from, but the dinosaur blocked the way for me with his big feet and let out another shriek at me. Without any more opportunities left, I ran in dread to the edge of the cliff and jumped. As I heard the dinosaur give up a third shriek behind me, I was falling helpless through the air.

Failing to grasp the boughs and twigs I was falling through, I landed in a huge bush and bounced out on the ground, covered in dust. A struck of pain went through my body, beginning in my right leg. I looked down and saw that I'd got a bleeding wound on the right knee, making it impossible to move the leg. I started to panic, and it was getting worse when I saw the dinosaur climbing down the cliff using its jagged claws on the feet. Horrified I tried to crawl away but realized the small chances of succeeding with that; how could you possibly crawl away from a dinosaur that you couldn't run from, even with a non-injured leg?

My life started to pass by in front of my eyes and the raising fear inside made me so ill that I wanted to throw up. Once again, I gave up a panicky cry and saw the dinosaur move closer to me. The thought of how many times this scene repeated itself down here made me almost pass out and it struck me that I almost wanted to be eaten so I could get rid of this anxious feeling.

The dinosaur was now so close I almost felt his breath. I turned away and put up an arm as some sort of useless defense. But unexpectedly, the dinosaur snorted in surprise and I turned my face towards it again. Its face was covered in some sort of green spore-gas which made the dino sneezing and snorting out of control. Remainder of a red fruit in the face and on the ground revealed that someone or something had thrown a fruit on the dino.

But I never got the chance to look for the thrower, when without warning two arms lifted me up and swung me onto the back of what looked like another weasel running of.

It became too much for me, and I passed out.

When I woke up, I found myself lying on the shore to a small lake at another cliff then the one I'd jumped from. A waterfall ran down its walls, and I could see small flying reptiles in the air above. I rose to a sitting position and saw that the wound on my knee was considerately taking care of with a leaf and some green ointment that smelled like the butt of a skunk, but it eased the pain and made me able to move my leg.

Then I saw what I guessed was my rescuer. It was indeed another weasel, a male, with a browner color on his fur than the fur of my family. He sat on a stone nearby the water, carving on a piece of wood with a pointy object that I presumed once were a tooth of an enormous dinosaur. The most conspicuous feature though were the green patch he'd put over his right eye, and the bright color of blue in his left one.

Suddenly he stopped his carving and turned his head towards my position, fixing his eye on me. And with one single smooth move, he threw the sharp thing in the ground, left the wooden figure on the stone and ran on all four rights onto me. He sniffed on me with his large nose and with a suspicious look in his face. Scared I hold my breath. This weasel may have come to my rescue, but what were the odds of him being just a psychopath that would love to harm me instead of a dinosaur?

He took my right arm and examined it very carefully.

"Not much on that bone"

It was the first time I heard his voice. And since it felt as he was nothing but curious of me, I relaxed a bit.

He slide around me one lap, and then started to inspect my hair with his fingers, but that's where I drew the line.

"Whoa, hold it!" I said, and put both my hands on my head, protecting my hair.

He came up in front of me, holding up both his hands.

"Okay, sorry mate" he said, but the undertone of irritation revealed that he didn't really mean it.

Yet I wanted him to know how rude he'd been. I'm very huffy about my hair, and don't want anyone but me to touch it.

"You can't just start fingering around someone's hair like that!" I said in an upset tone. "It's not polite!"

He gave me a skeptical look.

"And I guess saving ya isn't polite either?"

Angry, I tried to come up with something to say, but failed. And what made me even angrier, he was right. He didn't have to save me, but he did and I couldn't even thank him for that. All I was thinking about was my hair, which he didn't know a thing about. In the end, I'd been the one impolite.

"Sorry" I said, and tried to swallow my pride.

He smiled and now I saw that he also had a protruding jaw with two noticeable teeth sticking up before his upper lip.

"Nah, its okay" he said. Then he turned and started to walk away.

It surprised me, didn't he even wanted a thank you?

"Wait, where you going?" I said to his back.

"To whatever I was doing before ya needed my help. I can't remember what that was, but I'll figure it out for sure!" he said in a cheery way.

"Don't you want me to say thank you or something?"

He turned around towards me, looking very surprised.

"Haven't ya done that already?"

"No?" I said suspiciously.

"Hm, oh well then, if ya must so please let me hear it"

I stared at him and started to feel a bit skeptical for my rescuer. This weasel must have been a few sandwiches short for a picnic!

"Eh, thanks for saving me?" I said.

"See? Now we're all happy and satisfied! Now, eh, go home!"

He turned around and once again he started to walk away, but I'd become rather annoyed.

"You're polite enough to save me but not to tell me your name?" I said in a raised voice.

He sighed, apparently frustrated.

"What in asparagus' name is your problem?" he asked in a displeased tone, not looking at me.

When the question had left his mouth, I exploded. The frightening feelings over this unknown place and the shame over this whole situation was overwhelming me. I didn't think or care about what I was saying; I just had to let all the confused thoughts leave my head.

"My problem is that I'm lost in an unknown world with a wounded knee and no idea where I'm supposed to go to find my way home, and I don't have any sort of courage or self-confident to speak of and I definitively don't got any talents, and my family's probably not missing me and I could use a little help 'cause I'm so stupid and clumsy and…"

I had almost begun to cry when he cut me off.

"Alright ma'am, don't get so upset, I get the point" he said, but now more with a kind voice. All of a sudden, he stood right next to me.

"Well, the name's Buckminster, but ya can call me just Buck. And if ya tell me your name, I can help you home"

I looked up in his face; he smiled a genuine kind of smile. I washed away the tears in the corners of my eyes with the back of my hand.

"Mirja" I said.

"Nice to meet ya Mirja" Buck said and then helped me up. "Now, just follow me, do exactly what I tell ya to do and then you'll see that everything will work out just fine. Now, chop-chop!"

He started to walk off for the third time. But now, I followed him into the jungle, still feeling rather skeptical. Yet I had this feeling that this weasel was going to make me feel a lot safer now and that was truly comforting.

End of chapter 1

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