Chapter Text
It was a sunny day in the neighborhood, meanwhile, a nice caterpillar restocked the shop in the middle of the afternoon, no one was shopping at this time so it wasn't a problem if someone walked in.
Howdy walked into the familiar storage room, where the products magically appeared out of thin air. The shopkeeper always wondered where they came from, but he never dared to ask himself any further, after all, there was no one to answer. He looked at the large crates of cigars stacked on the corner, as he walked to investigate he remembered he was out of stock some days ago. “How nice of the neighborhood!” he thought with a smile.
as he approached the boxes, a strange feeling settled in his gut, like a hand crawling inside him. something was… wrong. something he couldn’t put his hand on. He shook his head, how silly of him, how could something be wrong?
Howdy put four of his hands in the first box but was startled when a few rats escaped the corner where the box was placed. rats? That was new. There were no rats in the neighborhood. Howdy was quick to grab an off hand broom and shoo them away. a sound escaped from the corner of the storage room, a kind of weird snore.
“wha–?” said the caterpillar, peeking his tall figure into the corner where the sound originated to see what was happening. “oh, great heavens!” escaped his mouth as he quickly made his way deeper into the corner by removing the boxes in his way.
…
you woke up feeling ever so light, your skin felt soft like feathers and your teeth were nowhere to be found, it was horrifying. you dared to open your eyes and found a magnifying glass right above your face, you were laying down on some kind of sofa.
“interesting specimen, no doubt, all tho not my specialty.” an accented voice said from above you. “ah! It woke up!”
“oh frank! don’t call it “it”!” a feminine voice said beside the gray man, “you’ll hurt his feelings!”
“hello? storage room creature? Can you hear me?”
you sat down on the sofa quickly, convinced this was all just a bad trip, it had to be! Why were you a puppet? Why were you in some kind of brightly decorated living room? Why were other humanized puppets talking to you? Bad trip? Bad trip…
but… who were you? you hardly remember anything about… well, anything. you remember how to talk and move of course, but you don’t remember how you got here, less about your past.
“who am i?”
The two looked at eachother, confused as to how could you ask such a question.
“Well, stranger, the thing is, we have no idea who you are, where you came from or what are you doing here.” said the girl in red. “the best we can do is what we do with newcomers everytime”
you shook a little at that statement. “What do you do with newcomers?”
“Well we usually welcome them, give them gifts, and usually a new house kinda poofs out of existence” she said with a kind of odd tone, like she was doubtful that even happened. “but, you’re kinda different, you didn't came from the forest or the mountain, you came from howdy’s place”
“who's howdy?”
…
the next thing you knew was that you were walking down the street from Frank's house to this supposed “howdy’s place” as Julie said. You passed a colorful blue house with an equally colorful blue dog smoking a pipe on the front porch. “hi barnaby!” said julie. the giant dog peeked to see his neighbors but choked on smoke at the sight of you, apparently the residents weren’t used to newcomers.
you finally reached the end of the street to a shop that resembled a bodega. you, frank and julie entered, ringing the bell in the door frame inside. a small and humbly sized amount of products were displayed on the few ailes along the store, you eyed some of them, eggs, flour, most of the basics. but you were more interested in the person behind the counter tending the shelves in the walls. you were surprised at four different arms doing four different things at the same time. as your companions got closer to the counter you did too as well and got just an actual sense of scale, he was much, much taller than you, you reached his stomach at best. you gulped, THIS was the guy that found you? What could he possibly say to you now if he was angry?
“Howdy, we have a newcomer!” said julie. you flinched at that, since where did you decide you wanted to live there?
no response from howdy.
“howdy…” said julie
“howdy, goshly dang it! we have an emergency!'' Frank snapped, and you were surprised at how quickly he lost his temper, knowing from Julie he was actually stressed by the situation.
a little “ah!” escaped the shopkeeper’s mouth as he turned around and faced the newcomers of the store. you were immediately drawn to his face, his facetures were soft, a crude contrast to his big body, his appearance was complete and took a new meaning, a friendly look you couldn't see before. his face turned into worry when he noticed you, a little “oh…” escaped his mouth.
“Well hello, little storage creature, I'm Howdy, the local shopkeeper, pleasure to meet you.” he leaned over the counter to offer one of his hands. you were immediately intimidated again by the way he towered over you, but reluctantly agreed to shake his hand. “You know, I thought you were dead stuff when I found you in between the cigarette boxes in the bodega, but it looks like you are quite alive!”
“You see, new neighbor, howdy took time out of his day to carry you to my house when he found you.” Frank explained to you while howdy let go of your hand and nodded with a smile.
“t-thank you” you said doubtfully , not really sure if it was the correct thing to say.
“oh, no problem. Now, I think it’s time we get you started on decorating your new home!” said the caterpillar with a smile. “I have quite the selection of furniture, you see. from sofas to tables.”
“um, howdy.” Julie tried to stop him.
“you name it, i have it!” The shopkeeper didn’t seem to catch what she said and stepped outside the counter, probably to the furniture section of the store.
“howdy…” said Frank this time.
“I mean your new house is not gonna decorate itself. And because you're new, screw it, 100% off!”
“howdy!” The duo finally grabbed the attention of the caterpillar by raising their voices a little.
“uh? what?” said the shopkeeper sheepishly
“You see, he… doesn’t have a house.”
“what?” said Howdy, you could see his antennas lowering in confusion. “don’t be silly, every neighbor has a house.”
“Well, he doesn't.” Frank sharply remarked. “That's what we are trying to figure out.”
Through all of this, you were standing there silently listening to these three bickering about a supposed house, when you looked into the window. A thought creeped into your head.
“It's getting late,” you said to the trio.
They stopped talking and immediately looked out the window. it was getting late, the crimson sun setting thru the horizon into the neighborhood.
“so, where is he staying?” said julie. “what?” said the other two, “you know, to sleep” she said placing her hand on her cheek like a pillow.
Frank and Howdy looked at eachother, Frank gave him the “if you let him into my place, he will ruin my butterfly collection!” look and howdy knew what he had to do.
the caterpillar got close to you and proceeded to talk.
“so, new neighbor, since we don’t have much space for you to stay, why don’t you stay at my place?” you glanced at him, then at the place, you thought there was no other place to go from what you saw, so you decided to stay and say yes.
“I mean, yeah, why not? I can sleep on the floor if it ain’t much trouble.”
“Good, good, goly, I thought it’ll be so much trouble,” said the caterpillar with a smile.
As the sun set and the night crept in, Julie and Frank said their respective goodbyes and went to their homes. Meanwhile, you were helping Howdy to bring a mattress to the storage room with its corresponding blankets and some pillows, everything Howdy insisted will make you more comfortable.
“Okay, i think that’s all.” he said when the mattress fell to the surprisingly clean storage room floor.
“...thank you.” you said shyly
“oh, no problem, really, I should say sorry, I made you sleep in a dirty storage room.”
you let out a chuckle, “i guess so.”
“also.” said the caterpillar scratching his neck in a little shame. “i… never caught your name.”
“oh… of course! sorry, i’m…” you struggled. “my name is…umm…” you fought it even more.
Howdy could see you were troubled and quickly dropped the question. “don’t worry neighbor, it can wait until tomorrow. After all, tomorrow’s another day!”
you looked at him and your eyes unconsciously filled with hope.
“Good night, neighbor.” said the shopkeeper as he closed the storage room door.
you were left alone in the dim light of the lamp, you didn’t feel like dimming it, you didn’t want to be left alone in the dark. you wrapped yourself in the blankets and placed your head in the comfortable pillow.
“Tomorrow is another day.” you whispered, to no one more than to yourself, hoping everything will eventually go away and go back to normal, even if you didn’t remember what normal was.