"She needs a doctor!"
"Hurry!"
"Someone, quick!"
"What can we do?"
A young-looking girl with short brown hair stood in the doorway of the small house, one hand on the doorframe. She clutched her jump rope tight in the other, her blue bracelet moving around on her shaking arm. Her eyes filled with fear, she watched the scene in front of her.
Adults clustered around the bed, each one panicking and yelling and creating a lot of noise that wasn't helping the girl lying underneath the blankets. They kept on mentioning doctors, but everyone knew that there wasn't a doctor on any of the islands, and no one had ever gone beyond Destiny Islands and returned.
"We have to do something!" one woman spoke up. "We don't have a doctor, and we can't get one. So enough about doctors! Whining about it won't make one magically appear. We have to help this girl ourselves." She gestured to the unconscious red-haired girl lying in the bed.
"Now: you! Get a basin and fill it with water. Bring a cloth, too. You! Go and make a broth. Not soup, just the broth." She continued like this, pointing to each person present and telling them to do things, which they quickly rushed off to do.
One by one, every person ran past the girl in the doorway, until only the woman was left. She cast a worried glance at the sleeping girl in the bed, then walked away as well. Halfway out the door, she stopped, and put a hand on the brown-haired girl's shoulder. "Come on, Selphie," the woman murmured. "Kairi will be fine, I promise."
Selphie turned to the woman, her green eyes wide. "Are you sure?" she said in a small voice. The woman nodded, and the teenager reluctantly followed her out the door, glancing back one last time at her friend.
Kairi had fallen ill just two days ago. She and Selphie had been sitting on the dock, chatting and watching Wakka and Tidus fight on the beach. Selphie had said that Wakka's taunts seemed to be getting to Tidus, and Kairi had agreed and laughed. There was a moment of silence, and then Kairi had uttered a little moan.
"What's wrong!" Selphie had asked worriedly, moving closer.
Her friend was clutching her head in pain. "The world…," Kairi groaned softly. "The world… is… spinning… my head hurts… ohh…" She had mumbled something, and collapsed on the dock. Selphie called Wakka and Tidus over, and the three friends discovered that Kairi had a high fever. They had rowed, with Kairi, back over to the Village Island, and immediately told the mayor.
No one knew what Kairi had, but some people with varied knowledge of illnesses had been able to confirm that it was a dangerous disease: one that might take the girl's life if she wasn't cured. Unfortunately, they couldn't say what the needed medicine was.
Shortly after Selphie and the woman had left, Kairi woke up. The ceiling was spinning, and it made her eyes hurt, so she shut them. But she could not find refuge in that; her eyes kept hurting, her head kept hurting, so badly she wanted to just go back to sleep.
"Kairi… you okay?"
That voice! Even in her hazy state of mind, Kairi could still identify that voice. She thought of him every day, the owner of the voice. "So…ra?" she said softly, her throat dry and sore.
"That's right. Hey, you don't look to good… Kairi, you've got to beat this thing, got it? I'm gonna come back soon, I promise, and there's no reason to be here, on the islands, or anywhere, if you're not in this world."
"Tha… that's right… I'm waiting… for you…," Kairi mumbled. She wanted to open her eyes, she wanted to see him. Gradually, her eyelids lifted, and there he was. Sora. Standing at the end of her bed, Sora looked just the same as when she had last seen him. He was worried, she could tell, but still wore a faint smile.
He asked, "So you won't let this disease beat you?"
"Never," she murmured.
Sora reached out his hand, and Kairi weakly lifted hers up. Her hand faltered, but Sora's strong grip grasped it, holding her hand up. He gently squeezed her hand, and she smiled. Then everything went black.
"Kairi… you okay?"
Is that Sora…? Kairi wondered, the thought piercing through her clouded mind. Have I been asleep? What happened to Sora? She felt something wet on her forehead, a damp and cold something. It felt like more blankets had been put on top of her, and an extra pillow added behind her head.
"Kairi?" the speaker asked again.
No, that's not Sora, Kairi realized. "S… Selphie…?"
"That's right!" Kairi slowly opened her eyes, and saw her friend standing beside the bed, looking relieved. "I'm so glad you're okay, Kairi." Selphie said.
"Huh…" Kairi began, puzzled.
A woman stepped up behind Selphie. "You were very ill," she explained. "You had an awful fever, and no one knew how to bring it down. We were worried you would… well… die." She spoke this last word softly, then continued. "Everyone rushed off to do something to help, but when we came back, we found that your fever had gone down considerably.
"You're still a bit sick, mind you, so you'll have to stay in bed a few days. But we can get you back to good health, so don't worry. Strange, though, how you just suddenly got cured." The woman looked down at Kairi as if she might know.
Selphie chose this time to speak up. "Um… after everybody left, I was coming back to check on Kairi, and when I peeked in the door, there was green everywhere."
The woman glanced disbelievingly at Selphie. "Green!"
"Yeah," the teenage girl continued. "There were green lights all over, and I could hear bells, soft and sweet, ringing faintly. It was beautiful. And it seemed to focus around Kairi."
The other people in the room (for there were others there) stared at Selphie. The woman looked down on the girl, but could only find truth written on Selphie's face. The woman sighed, and turned away, saying, "Maybe you've got this fever, too." The others took that to mean the subject was dismissed, and went on with what they had been doing.
Selphie looked a bit annoyed at not being believed by anyone, but Kairi believed her. Sora…, she thought, looking away. … Thank you.