Chapter Text
He believes his father made a mistake.
His father has expected him to go and meet people to spy on. If only Kaeya wasn't so anti-social and scared of the people of the surface.
If only he remembered the way back to Khaenri'ah, a place at least familiar to him.
But his father had left him here, near this scary big house with people and noise. Had told him to listen to the information they give and write it down to be remembered when he is to return.
Kaeya is 6 years old.
He doesn't know the language people speak here, he doesn't know them and he doesn't trust them. It is 'raining', that's the word for it appereantly, if the book he read before following his father was correct.
He had thought his father would stay. Go with him and gain information togheter. But no, his father had run off like a coward into the safety of the 'trees' and 'bushes' of the 'forest', where Kaeya lost him quickly.
The falling water and the cold wind of the night was making him cold. But he didn't care. He wasn't going to trust the people in the miniature castle with the bushes and fruit around it. He wouldn't. He would observe, but he would run if they would ever approach them.
Kaeya distanced himself from the castle. Into the safety of the 'forest'. He had soon found a little hole he squeezed into. He wasn't hungry, and well, water was falling from the skies so he didn't need to worry about that at all.
He would wait until the 'raining' stopped. So he settled for a nap. It was dark anyways. Dark meant people would sleep, like how the lights in Khaenri'ah went out whenever it was time to sleep.
He would use his photographic memory to find food when the giant light bulb is out again.
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He woke up rather sore. Turns out this hole Is rather uncomfortable. He can make it into a little safety spot if he were to dig a bit. A little extra hole to fit food or stuff He might steal..
But, first things first, find something edible.
And so he looked at the area his little hidey hole was at to let his photographic memory do the rest.
He found mushrooms that he quickly figured were poisonous. He remembered them from the books he read with his mother. The red mushrooms with white dots are not edible.
Venturing futher, he found a tree. Red fruit. Apple, he thought. So he carefully attempted to climb the tree to reach them only to fall into the mud.
Improvising was necessary here.
He grabbed a rock, and threw it against the apple. After a few more, the apple fell, and Kaeya saw his mission as success. He wanted to grab more, but the noise of people approaching had him running back into the safety of the woods.
He quickly found his little treehole and scooted inside. Mission now was to eat the apple and then begin the expansion. He needed space, so digging down like the 'foxes' do when creating 'dens' was his next objective.
He bit down on his apple to find it rather sweet. He remembers he doesn't like sour apples so counts himself lucky. He eats it carefully, savoring each bite. Once he was finished, he snuck to the lake he had seen in the corner of his eye to get rid of the stickiness on his hands. No one in sight, quick dip and fast cleaning, and back in the bushes he went. He dried his hands on his coat. Then it was time to start digging.
Not wanting to make the hole obvious, he scattered the dirt he dug up around the place to make it look more natural. After what seemed like 10 minutes to him, but was actually 2 hours, he had dug fairly deep. His fingers had started to hurt and his hands were dirty. He needed to expand to the sides as well, but that had to wait.
Perhaps he can steal that weird looking bowl with a handle he saw when peeking over to the miniature castle..? He could store things in it without it getting dirty. Yes, he will do that once the sky darkens again. It would be useful and looked like it would fit. He'll go and steal it if it was still there by the time he goes to check. They always seemed to have one little light on.
He was going to do this and not fail.