A few miles away, in the woods outside the city limits…
The moonlight shone brightly upon the small capsule that was lodged in the dirt right next to a riverbank. A single tree grew above it, positioned in such a way that caused no obstruction from the brilliant full moon that night.
The young girl in the capsule roused slowly, the moonbeams giving her only just enough energy to attempt the movement, not able to wake up any faster. Pushing against the front of the pod, it popped open, and she sat up, rubbing her eyes as she waited for things to become clearer.
Where was she, anyway?
Who was she?
She moved her hands away from her eyes, blinking, waiting for the answer to come. Because it had to come.
But nothing.
She was aware of some things—that she was a girl, and she was in the woods, and it was nighttime, and the moon was a comforting presence to her. But it was information that was all seemingly just dumped into her brain, as she had no memory of anything from earlier than a minute ago when she had woken up, and she knew that that made no sense.
The girl's hands slid along the sides of the capsule, touching something smooth and metallic at her side. She picked it up, hoping that it would offer some sort of explanation to her existence, but instead it raised even more questions. At least the other things around her she knew what they were. But she had no idea what this was. It was crescent shaped, with an orb in the center, and fit comfortably in her grasp.
"Ooooo….kay," the girl said aloud, hearing her voice for the first time and shuddering a bit at how odd and harsh it sounded against the night air.
Quickly, she scrambled out of her pod (she wasn't quite sure what that was either; it couldn't be her home, could it?), nearly tripping on another metallic object. Once her feet were firmly planted on the ground she hoisted it out to examine it. It was flat and in a half moon shape, much larger than the first trinket she had discovered with her. Again, she was clueless as to what it was and thus, it offered no hints as to her identity.
The girl leaned back over the capsule to look for any other objects, but there was nothing. She groaned, trying not to panic. What was she supposed to do now?
Taking a few deep breaths, the girl tried to calm herself, one fist clenched against her smaller trinket and the other first tight at her side. She had obviously lost her memories somehow, so she'd just have to find her family and have them tell her who she was, and where she was, and what had happened.
If only she could remember anything about her family, either…
"Hello?" she called out tentatively, looking around at the seemingly empty forest. "Is… is anyone looking for me?"
Silence.
"Hello?!" she cried out again, her voice rising sharply with fright. "Isn't there someone out there?"
She took a few terrified steps backwards and stumbled over an unseen log, falling over on her back. "Aaah!" she screamed.
A startled chirping sound answered her, and the girl drew in her breath, hardly daring to believe that she'd finally gotten at least some kind of response.
A swarm of moths billowed out of the stump, giving the girl what seemed to be curious, confused expressions.
The girl bit her lip. Moths wouldn't be able to actually answer her, would they? They were just mindless insects. (And why did she seem to know so much about moths and forests and how things should be and yet knew nothing of herself?!) "Do… do you know who I am?" she asked them.
The moths exchanged glances amongst themselves before chirping in the negative, shaking their tiny heads "no".
"Ugh!" the girl cried out angrily. "You're no help at all!"
The moths chirped apologetically and sympathetically, but the girl paid them no mind, furiously stomping off to the edge of the riverbank and kicking a rock into the water. It was looking more and more that she wasn't going to get any answers, and she let that thought anger her, because the alternative was to let it terrify her.
The ripples from the rock slowly smoothed out, gradually revealing the girl's reflection, and even that gave her pause. For how little she knew about everything, she was still aware on some level that she looked… off. Her hair was white as snow and seemed to literally shimmer in the moonlight. She seemed to be wearing something that looked like a uniform or a costume, with cape-like flares past her torso.
She studied her reflection, watching her expression morph to one of sad realization as she pieced together what little information she had about herself.
"I'm a freak, aren't I?"
The moths chirped a comforting reply, causing the girl to jump a bit as she had almost forgotten they were still there. We don't think so, they seemed to answer her.
And the girl's brow knitted, their answer only confirming the opposite.
"I look different, I have these weird gadgets, and I can apparently talk to moths. I'm a total freak. That must be why I was abandoned here." She looked back at her reflection, her bitter, dejected expression seeming to agree with her conclusion.
The moths all looked at each other before "speaking" to the girl again, as if one large entity rather than dozens of tiny small ones.
We don't know any more than you do, dear girl. But we do know that it's not good for anyone to be alone. We'll stay with you. You are now an honorary moth.
The girl finally felt the strange sensation of one corner of her mouth tugging upwards into a half smile. "That's better than nothing, I guess… Thanks, guys."
The moths twittered comfortingly, swirling around the girl's face and brushing the tip of her nose, and she giggled at the sensation.
"Alright, alright, enough with the mushy stuff," she snickered, lightly waving them away from her face. "I'm still gonna find out who I am." She lifted her right arm, the corresponding hand still clutching her mysterious device, and despite still not knowing anything regarding what it was or where it came from, she still felt herself smile more genuinely, knowing at the very least that she liked the way it fit in her palm.
"Now let's see what this thing can do…"
…
Unbeknownst to the girl once called Soroly and her newfound moth companions, the twin to her own escape pod had landed quite a few miles away from her own, yet still within reasonable walking distance to the same town—simply from the opposite side. The landing was a rough one, and the force of the impact caused the Zigli to pop out of the pod wildly. Their screeches filled the air as they dexterously righted themselves and desperately tried to assess their new situation.
"Are you alright?"
"Are we alright?"
"Where exactly are we?"
"This planet's called Earth, right?"
"The prince! IS THE PRINCE ALRIGHT?!"
This last one caused all of the Zigli to shriek in alarm and race back to the pod, for after all, serving their prince was their main purpose in life. And never had that been the case more than now, when they were literally all that he had.
They circled the pod and desperately begged their prince to wake up, their high-pitched voices a frenzied, muddled roar of noise.
Now, the Zigli had been mostly ignorant to the specifics of Bihsuni's memory wiping and replacing spell to begin with—and even then, the fact that the spell had been interrupted and likely hadn't been one hundred percent effective was knowledge that they didn't possess. If they had, they would have known to be extra cautious and diligent with their young prince, for it was really anyone's guess as to what he would and would not remember upon waking up.
And much to the Zigli's relief, the boy did stir, his bright teal eyes fluttering open before snapping wide open in shock.
"WHO THE HECK ARE YOU PEOPLE?!"
He shot out of the pod, flipping and leaping through the air before landing deftly on a single foot, and the Zigli cheered, glad that he at least seemed to remember all of his royal acrobatics training.
The prince, despite his shock at where he was, seemed pleased at the approval of his diminutive audience, and grinned smugly at the attention. A second later, however, the reminder that he had no idea who they were, or where he was, or who he was, slammed right back into him, roughly tossing his ego aside once more. "Wait, who are you guys? Who am I?" His hands shot up to his head and gripped his shimmering snow-white hair. "I don't remember anything!"
The Zigli, worriedly, shot questioning glances amongst themselves.
"Should we tell him?"
"She said to only tell him when the time was right!"
"But when WILL the time be right? That's a really vague order!"
"'The time is right'? What are you talking about?" the prince demanded.
Surprised, the Zigli shot off even more questions to themselves.
"How can he understand us? I thought his memory—"
"The question is, how can WE understand HIM? He's speaking the language that the Earthlings speak in this area—"
"Would you shut up already, he knows what we're saying!"
"Shut UP! ALL of you!" the boy screamed in frustration, and his posse dutifully complied. Pointing to a single Zigli, he demanded. "You obviously know things that I don't—and I can't remember anything! Tell me—do you even know who I am?!"
The Zigli looked back and forth at its compatriots, unsure of whether or not this was information their queen allowed them to disclose. It seemed obvious that it was far from the time to reveal to him that his mother had just been killed by his father, after all, but surely there had to be something they could divulge to their young charge. Upon receiving no response from anyone else regarding what could and could not be revealed, it finally responded to its prince in a small voice, "Your name is Trokim."
"Trokim?" The boy's face scrunched up in disapproval. "That's dumb! I need to come up with a new name."
The Zigli all exchanged confused glances.
"I already get the feeling that you're not going to tell me much," the boy continued, lifting his nose in the air haughtily, "but whatever! If someone dumped us here and said that we couldn't ever know about it, then they're obviously not worth our time anyway. I can make my own identity. My own legacy!" He stood up straighter and clapped his hands together authoritatively. "And you're going to help me! Come on, let's go figure out what I need to do to be the most awesome person around here!"
His servants continued to stare stupidly at each other.
The boy sighed impatiently. "Come on, it can't be that hard." He tugged at his royal robes, flanked with his family's insignia. "For starters, I'll need better clothes than these." Turning his attentions to the side of the escape pod he had emerged from, he leaned in closer to examine the bright orange adhesive on the side. "And what's this?" He touched it with a finger, and yelped when he had trouble pulling it away. "Man, that's sticky! Good thing it's just on this weird pod thing, because otherwise it would make a mess!"
And slowly, surely, his face light up, as if with a clever, sinister idea.
The Zigli, again, weren't sure what to make of this. All they knew was that never in their wildest dreams had they thought that the industrial strength adhesive they'd used for repairs on the spaceship would ever elicit such a response… especially from their prince of all people.
Finally able to pull his finger away, the boy glanced at his loyal subjects. "What are you waiting for? Let's go… find out whatever it is we're gonna do!"
The Zigli shrugged amongst themselves one more time before gladly following their prince. After all, of course, they were made to serve him, now more than ever. They weren't slaves by any means—any one of them could have abandoned him at any time.
But that thought wasn't on any of their minds, for after all, where else would they go?