Chapter Text
“Let me go! Sora, help me! SORA!”
The boy in question sat up fast, head twisting from side to side, straining to hear the cries still echoing in his head. He placed his hands into the ground, expecting to feel the hot sands of Destiny Islands. Instead, soft blades of grass brushed against his fingers. The only noises came from Donald and Goofy snoring in a heap nearby. Right, he realized, as his heartbeat slowed down to normal, This isn’t Destiny Islands. This is...I have no idea where we are.
Sora got up and stretched. He and his friends had fallen asleep in an empty field near a lone dirt path. They’d been traveling down that same road for days. Every so often, they saw a cluster of trees and bushes, but no people. No road signs to tell them where to go, or landmarks of any kind. And they definitely hadn’t heard or seen the girl from the nightmare that had woken him up.
Something about her voice felt so familiar, yet the details of the dream had already faded away, like waves returning to the ocean. Sora screwed his eyes shut. The memory was right there, lurking just out of his reach. Where had he heard that voice before? Why did she need his help so badly, and had he been able to help her? He’d been on one of the beaches in Destiny Islands- the play island- and...who else had been there? Riku and Kairi? He reopened his eyes and shook his head. This wasn’t the time to ponder over a mystery girl from a nightmare. Riku was the friend who needed his help right now, and Kairi was waiting for them to come home.
He reached into one of his pockets until he felt the sharp edges of Kairi’s good-luck charm: a collection of thalassa shells stitched together in the shape of a star. Its painted face smiled up at him just like Kairi would have. C’mon, lazy bum! Stop slacking off!
Sora grinned back. I’m not. Don’t worry, he promised. He walked down the path for a bit to see where it would take them the next day, eventually reaching a crossroads. Huh. That’s different. I wonder which way we’ll go tomorrow? Donald and I will probably get into an argument about it.
“Along the road ahead lies something you need.”
A man’s voice whispered to him from the darkness. Sora jumped, spun around, and spotted a figure standing behind him. He wore a black coat that trailed down to his boots; his face covered by a hood. The moment Sora laid eyes on him, he vanished.
“Continue onward, and you shall reunite with someone who is dear to you.”
The man reappeared farther down one of the paths that Sora and his friends had yet to explore. “Someone dear to me…?” Sora repeated. With Kairi safe at home, that could only mean one person. “Are you talking about Riku?!”
Instead of giving a straight answer, the man beckoned to him and disappeared for good, leaving behind a single sheet of paper. Sora rushed over and caught it before it hit the ground. There wasn’t any kind of written message, just a drawing of a yellow star attached to a chain. Wait a second… Sora reached into a different pocket and pulled out another keychain, exactly like the one in the drawing. How did…?
A sudden yawn interrupted his thoughts and a little cricket crawled out his hood, dressed in a top hat and a waistcoat. “What’s going on, Sora?” he asked. “Where are Donald and Goofy?”
“Oh! Hi, Jiminy. They’re still asleep back at the campsite. I wanted to check out the path some more and I saw this weird guy who left me this drawing…” Sora held up the picture and his own keychain for Jiminy to see better. “I can’t figure out what this means. How did he know I had this? I forgot that I had this.”
“Hmm.” Jiminy held up a monocle to better examine the two. “It’s a nice little charm. Did Kairi give it to you?”
“No, I have Kairi’s right here.” Sora brought it out and held the charms side by side. “I don’t remember how I got this other one or why I still have it.” He felt a strange ache building up inside his chest. “But...it can’t be that important, can it?” he asked Jiminy, his voice rising to a desperate pitch. “I mean…I wouldn’t have forgotten who gave it to me if it was really important, right?”
Inexplicably, his thoughts returned to the voice of the girl from his nightmares.
“Sora, help me! SORA!”
He gripped the star keychain so tightly that it pricked his hand.
Jiminy clucked his tongue. “Hmm. So this stranger knew all about a keepsake that you don’t remember having before? I wonder what it all means?”
Sora placed the plastic star back into his pocket. “I’m not sure, but I think we’d better wake up Donald and Goofy.” He smiled down at Jiminy. “If that guy wasn’t lying to me, we might be one step closer to finding our friends!”
He grasped Kairi’s good-luck charm in his other hand. It wouldn’t be long before he could give it back to her, once they were all safe at home on the Islands.
Or so he hoped.
Back on Destiny Islands, Kairi couldn’t sleep either. She tossed and turned under a thin blanket, finally throwing it aside and rolling out of bed. A refreshing ocean breeze blew through her bedroom windows, but it wasn’t enough to lull her back to sleep. So Kairi slipped into her large white shoes and climbed out of one of her bedroom windows, dropping down smoothly onto the path that led to the beach where she used to play with her best friends.
Destiny Islands felt wrong without Sora and Riku. Every day, she caught herself heading over to one of their houses to see if they wanted to work on the raft. Or she would find a strange-looking seashell on the beach and turn around to show it to them. Or hear a joke that would have made them laugh if they could hear it. Or open her mouth to ask what flavor ice cream they wanted- and they weren’t there.
At times like that, Kairi could never make up her mind on what to do instead. If she stood by the shoreline and waited for Sora, she would soon start making indents with her feet, watch the flight patterns of the sea gulls overhead, anything that didn’t involve looking at the empty horizon. Yet if she chose to spend time with Selphie, Tidus, and Wakka, her attention inevitably drifted towards the empty horizon.
Kairi kicked at the sand and settled herself down amidst a cluster of palm trees. The waves stretched out to greet her before retreating back to the rest of the ocean, the place where she’d last seen Sora. He’d told her why she couldn’t come with him to help Riku and it made sense. She didn’t know how to wield a sword, much less a magical weapon like a Keyblade, so there wasn’t much that she could do. Still, there had to be something. The raft still waited for the three of them on the play island, the one that they’d built together and should have used to go on an adventure together.
Just the...three of us.
Kairi pressed her hands against her eyes; these thoughts were not helping her get to sleep. Eventually, as she kept her eyes closed and focused on the sound of the waves, she felt herself drifting off.
At least in her dreams, she could return to the days that she’d spent with Sora and Riku as little kids, playing together on their island. Under the bright sunlight, Kairi skipped up and down the shoreline collecting seashells, while the boys worked hard on constructing “the BIGGEST sandcastle EVER!”
“Here!” She held out her bucket for them to inspect. “These’ll make the castle look pretty!”
Riku rolled his eyes. “It’s not supposed to be pretty, Kairi. The bad guys won’t be scared of a pretty castle.”
“No, it could still work,” Sora piped up. “Kairi’s being smart. See, Riku, we’ll put the seashells all over the wall, and the bad guys’ll laugh ‘cause they’ll think the pretty castle is silly, and they’ll think we’re a bunch of pushovers. And that’s when we’ll jump out and GET ‘EM!””
“Ha!” said Kairi, sticking her tongue out at Riku. “See? It was smart for us to get seashells!”
“Okay, fine. Give ‘em to us,” said Riku.
“Can we help build the castle too?” she asked.
“Of course you can!” Sora scooted over so that she could sit down next to him. Riku handed a shovel to- her? He wasn’t quite looking in Kairi’s direction; somewhere off to her left instead. She shook it off so that she could help Sora arrange the seashells along the castle wall.
As the afternoon wore on, Sora and Riku got bored with their creation and raced each other out to the ocean instead. Kairi sat down by the partially finished sandcastle to watch them. They jumped in and out of the waves, sometimes diving underwater, sometimes getting into splash fights, but always smiling and laughing.
They’d invited her to join them in the ocean so many times, to teach her how to swim, and she’d always turned them down. It looked like fun, but Kairi couldn’t ignore the way the waves rose up and dragged anything lying on the sand into its depths. The ocean brought her to the Islands, and if she stepped back into the water, it would surely take her away again.
“Um, Kairi?”
Sora sat next to her, keeping her company like he always did. “I know you said you didn’t want to go in the water, but could we go swimming today too?
Kairi drew a sharp gasp and pulled her legs farther away from the waves. “No! I don’t wanna!”
“Why not?” he pleaded.
“Cause I don’t. Why can’t we just draw pictures or something like we always do?”
He tugged at his t-shirt, which was starting to stick to his skin. “Cause it’s really hot and I want to go swimming.”
Kairi couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Sora had always been so patient with her, staying by her side while everyone else went swimming. Sometimes they colored pictures together, or sometimes they talked and laughed about silly things, or pretended to be butterflies, or chased crabs. Why did he have to insist on changing things now?
“No,” she insisted. “I’m not going…” But then she stopped. Something wasn’t right, and it had nothing to do with her friend’s request.
Sora sat next to her, pleading with her to come swimming with him. And yet…Sora was already swimming in the ocean with Riku. They were running around having a splash fight.
“Hey…who are you?” she asked, studying the face of the boy at her side.
“What d’you mean? You don’t remember me?”
His voice sounded different too- softer, almost like a girl’s. “Kairi…?” And his eyes were a different shade of blue. “Kairi, please remember…” Her chest tightened. The child next to her reached out to take her hand, but she found herself backing away from whoever it was. Her head whipped around- she needed to get help- but for what, she couldn’t remember. When she looked out at the ocean, Sora and Riku had vanished.
Suddenly, she heard them screaming on the other side of the play island. “SORA? RIKU?” Kairi scrambled to her feet, barely noticing that the other child had disappeared as well.
Sora and Riku didn’t call back to her.
But someone else did.
“Kairi! HELP! ”
It was a girl’s voice. Whoever it was didn’t sound like Selphie, and it wasn’t Kairi’s own voice. There weren’t any other girls who used to play with them, yet she could hear the girl now, screaming for her as if they’d known each other their whole lives: “KAIRI! ”
She ran towards the wooden door that led to the other side of the island, tears pouring down her face. Not again, not again, not again… But when Kairi got to the door, it had been replaced by a much more elaborate one, carved out of marble with jewels encrusted over the arch. It looked exactly like the door that appeared over the entrance to the Secret Place on the night that the Heartless invaded Destiny Islands.
But this time, Kairi couldn’t open it. Thick, heavy, shimmering chains covered the door. No matter how hard she pulled at them, they wouldn’t budge, and each time she pulled, she felt a sharp pain through her heart.
“Let me in!” she screamed. “I have to help them this time!”
She yanked at the chains one last time, and the force of the effort knocked her over. Everything went black.
When Kairi opened her eyes, she felt the sand underneath her body. But it was cool, not warm, and as she got back to her feet, she remembered that she’d fallen asleep at the beach near her house. She shuddered. Her hands felt clammy and her stomach nauseous. She dropped down to her knees and took deep, even breaths. Nobody was screaming. All she could hear were the sounds of the waves and the wind. Sora and Riku were okay, as far as she knew…
Kairi waited to get up until her breathing slowed to normal and her legs stopped trembling. The details of her nightmare had already started to slip away. Why had her friends been screaming? Something to do with the ocean?
“No wonder Sora wouldn’t bring me with him,” Kairi said with a sigh. “I can’t even handle my own nightmares.”
She cast one last look at the horizon before heading home. Still no sign of her best friends. “I just hope that nightmare wasn’t a bad omen.”