Difference between revisions of "Wandering in Darkness: Part 1"

Latest revision as of 23:54, 9 October 2012

“Good morning sweetie.”

Riku woke up with a start, stomach churning with that sickening lurch that comes from falling. He was five years old and his mother sat on the edge of the bed with a hand on his forehead, gently stroking his hair. He was tangled in blankets and struggled to rise. She let him do so, asking once he’s more or less sitting upright in bed. “Bad dreams again?”

And he couldn’t remember. A few stilted images without sound. The feeling of being lost. The howl of a terrible storm. A few stilted images without color. Places that were more fairy tale than reality. Cities full of lights and noise and machines. A lonely castle, beautiful but empty.

“Yeah, I guess so...” Riku flops back down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling while his mother smiles softly. The entire ceiling was painted deep blue, glittering paint making the echoes of stars sparkle even when the lights were turned off. “Well, it’s in the past now.” She gives him a quick kiss on the forehead, sliding off the bed and retreating to the doorway. “It can’t hurt you anymore. Your father’s got breakfast downstairs. It’s ready when you are.”

“Okay mom. Thanks.” Riku continues to stare up at the ceiling as his mother leaves the room, eyes glazed and unfocused as he listens to the comfortable hush of quiet noises coming from his partially open window and door. A warm breeze trickles into the room while the smell of oatmeal and pancakes wafts from the door.

He’d halfway fallen asleep again when he decided to get up before Sora got all the good stuff. They often had breakfast at each other’s houses and knew to an inch of blueberry chocolate chip pancake how much his friend was a bottomless pit. Nobody was in the kitchen downstairs. The stove was cold.

“Mom? Dad?”

There were no pancakes on the table. There was no juice on the counter. There was nobody in the house at all. His cries got a little more desperate. Panic crept into his voice as he burst out of the house to look for them outside and nearly slammed into the railing.

The little railing curled around three old wooden steps that let out onto bare rock. A long, dark tunnel consumed the front of his house with a wooden door banded with metal set into the rock wall a little distance away. Familiar and unfamiliar scribbles of white chalk adorned the walls as Riku descended the small stairway. He wandered down the tunnel, wind echoing mournfully through the holes in the ceiling. It sounded like singing and he could almost make out the words, almost recognize the voice. The door at the end of the tunnel was open just enough for Riku to slip through it, once again calling for his parents and his friends to no answer.

The tunnel opened out onto the beach at nighttime. Strange silver light made the world visible. Riku craned his head upwards only to see a solid curtain of black stretched across the sky. There were no stars. The sea and the sand were as black as the sky, the world muted and colorless as he trudged across it. There were no shadows here; each object, each tree and flower and rock standing out like individual elements of a painting.

He spotted his parents in the gloom and ran towards them, slowing a few feet away as he realized they were wrong. They were wrong like the beach and the sky were wrong. They fixed yellow eyes on him and seemed so glad to see him, though the words were wrong too.

They had looked for him for so long.

They had been so worried.

They just wanted him to come home.

“Come with us, Riku.” was the voice of the first. “Come home sweetie.” was the voice of the other, but they weren’t his parents. They couldn’t be. He couldn’t stand for them to be. Riku shook his head, backing up a step.

He didn’t have to fight anymore.

They didn’t blame him.

They just wanted to be together.

They— Riku backed up one step at a time until his sneakers were drenched by the movements of the black ocean behind him. He had to escape. He couldn’t stand to be here one more second. “No.” They didn’t follow him, the first staring at him sadly while the one that used his mother’s voice slowly collapsed to the black sand. It wept as he turned and fled, calling out to him as he dived into the water. They called his name long after the black water should have stopped up his ears. The water was so dark he couldn’t know where he was going except that it was dragging him downwards.

He was falling.

Ever since the storm, he had been falling, as though the sand and the ocean had turned into the starless sky.