(A/N: This story is purely for practicing writing, so sorry if it's not what you were expecting. I haven't written in a while (and have actually been suffering from some pretty severe writer's block, a.k.a everything's been done before) so I figured a fanfiction was a good way to get back into it. As for background, another disappointment is that I'm obviously writing this before "Dream Drop Distance" is being released in North America, so I have no idea if what I'm using in my narratives is still factually correct, or if it's been negated with this new installment. I'll try my best to not "tread on the feet" of this new game, but no guarantees. Again, sorry if it wasn't what you were expecting, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless! A final p.s., I'll begin each chapter with a set of song lyrics; I swear it adds to the reading experience if you listen to that particular song while reading. Also, the lyrics will almost always reflect the chapter in some way. Plus, I just like showing off my awesome music tastes, as I'm sure most, if not all, of you do, too. Enjoy!)
Chapter I
Watch it rise up where you hide your pearl.
Feel the tide low where you cast those stones you wear
When no one's home. Do they feel cold on your bones,
All the years I've missed your warmth?
Young the Giant, "Islands"
Fluid circulated through his lungs only to spew back out again through flared nostrils, like two tiny rivers in the ocean. That is where I am, he thought, right? The ocean?
He floated aimlessly still, a single beam of light resting gently upon him from the surface of the water, and as he blinked his eyes slowly open, he wasn't surprised to see they didn't sting from the salt. This was a dream, after all; his step brother taught him about lucid dreaming, once. He said if you could master the skill, every night you could be swimming in a pool of sex, drugs and junk food. Lyle would spend his time on useless shit like that.
His body was feeling heavier, and water rushed from every side of him up to heaven, endlessly darting without ever breaking the surface. Dorian reached his arms out and paddled, desperate, for reasons even he couldn't rationalize, to stay buoyant. Still he sunk and as he opened his mouth to scream, not a sound came out. The ocean floor expanded beneath him and fissured down the center, a crack in old wall paint. As the crack spread, the water seemed to vacuum even more strongly now, and Dorian felt the light leaving his eyes as he slipped through the opening.
The tension on his body seemed to ease, and his arms, fighting and flailing fruitlessly, were welcomed with a kind sort of lightness, the absence of the water's resistance. In the pitch darkness, resting on something feathery and soft, he brought a hand to his arm; he was totally dry.
It didn't take long for Dorian's eyes to adjust to see the wire net of his brother's bed above his own, his bright blue comforter enveloping his body and the trashed, small room of his father's house, littered with Lyle's potato chip bags and Dorian's programming books and summer school assignments. Every piece of rubbish in its right place, with barely an inch of purple carpet or desktop visible, it occurred to Dorian that there was no way he could still be dreaming.
"Lyle," he whispered to the bed above him, "you up?"
"Yeah," he answered. He didn't sound tired.
"I think I just had one of those lucid dreams you were telling me about. It was short, but I was swimming—"
"There are holes in the world," muttered Lyle.
"—in the ocean, and sunk—what?"
"There are holes in the world, Dorian."
Dorian flipped to his left side so he was staring at the wall, papered with magazine cutouts of models in bikinis and video game imaginations of fantastical terrains made entirely of crystal, of lava, of water. "What? Wake up, man," said Dorian, deciding his brother was only still half-asleep.
"There are holes in the world, all waiting to be filled." Dorian opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it, and his brother continued. "Where did everything come from? Where are our inventors, our scientists, our authors? We're on an island, and that's all there is, but something can't come from nothing."
Lyle must have been high again. Of course these questions needed answering, but nobody knew where to find the answers, so very few asked the questions. Usually Lyle didn't, either. "I don't think they're gone," he kept on, "I think they're lost. The inventors, scientists, authors… they're not gone. They're somewhere else. They're not across the ocean, because the ocean just brings us back here. Right? They've tried that. They found another way out. The inventors, I mean. And scientists."
"Why are you thinking about this?" Dorian didn't feel bad. It had to be asked.
"I can't just leave it alone. I don't know why everyone else on this island can."
Lyle. Sometimes, Dorian thought, his heart was too big for his body. He buried his head deeper into his down pillow in with a sigh. "Remember that old fairy tale Mom told us before going to bed?"
"No," he lied. "Tell me again."
"Years ago," began Dorian, still in a whisper, "The world was much bigger. Infinite, even. There were mountains, farms, deserts and jungles. There were miniature oceans called lakes which had no salt, and snowy tundras with glaciers the size of skyscrapers. Light and darkness lived in peace together here, in…" he searched for the words his mom used to use, "completion. Though the dark was alluring, it was dangerous. The light was safe and pleasant, and so people became greedy over it. Eventually this greed only amplified the darkness, and it seemed all light was lost. But it wasn't. A single sliver of light lived on in the hearts of children, who weren't corrupted with greed, who understood that the light could not be kept in a vacuum, no matter how brilliant. It needed the darkness.
"The world was beginning to crumble. It was separating, and each separate piece was dying. But one child with light still in her heart saved our world from falling; she locked her light away in the heart of the world, a light no human or darkness could take or destroy. Because of this little girl, we live safely in our thriving world, balanced in light and darkness, and we can only hope all the others have survived and someday we'll be reunited again."
"That's all we could come up with?" asked Lyle. "Light, dark… they're too… not concrete. Abstract, yeah. What do they mean? A war between good and evil? Still abstract. I can't think of anything else."
"Maybe you're not supposed to." Dorian flipped over again onto his back. "Maybe we're supposed to just wait. And stop asking questions."
"I'm sick of waiting."
"You're eighteen. You've got a whole lifetime of waiting ahead of you."
Lyle fell silent, and the weight of the evening pressed down on Dorian's eyes until he dropped into a quiet, dreamless sleep.
For the middle of the summer, the afternoon was uncomfortably dim. The sun was shadowed with a thick cover of clouds, and to make things drearier, Dorian's satchel full of books was pulling down heavily on his shoulder and his black sneakers dragged in the beach's sand. The tide was high today, threatening to lick at his feet and swallowing bits of the beach up with every slurp.
"Leave me the fuck alone, alright?"
Dorian wasn't surprised, as he turned around to the source of the noise, that he never heard the girl's voice before.
She was in his summer school class, this girl, but she never raised her hand. The girl sat, always, with her head down, hiding behind a curtain of straight-cut, strawberry blond bangs. Her eyes, makeup-less and oddly-colored, were burning holes in the girl she was walking next to (but seemed to be attempting to make an escape from). This second girl was noticeably thinner and taller. Additionally, she looked like a runway model with her high heels, short, floral skirt and black tank top with a single, felt red rose on the left breast, especially in comparison to the blond girl's lazy one-shoulder-off shirt and denim shorts, all coupled with worn-looking white and blue sneakers.
"I'm just trying to help you," the other girl seemed to howl, that way that girls like her always did when they were complaining, ending the last word of the sentence with a too audible "a" sound. "You probably just, like, don't get girl advice that often, you know? I mean, everyone knows about your mom—"
"Shut up!" the quiet blond screamed at the other girl, to the paralyzing point of her voice cracking and jumping three octaves.
The taller girl's mouth formed an "o" of surprise as she stood, unmoving, for a moment in her tracks. Then, she buried one heel into the sand and brought both hands up to one of her long strands of violet-brown hair and tugged gently on it. "I didn't mean it like that, okay? I'm just trying to say that I can help—"
"I don't need your help."
"You do, though. You obviously can't do any makeup or you'd be playing up your cheekbones, first of all. And you missed a couple sections straightening your hair."
"That was purposeful. Please, leave me alone. Who the fuck are you?"
The girl wasn't leaving. "I'm Sadie. I really didn't mean to be a bitch. I just wanted to help you."
"I don't need help."
"Hey, leave her alone, all right?" Dorian commanded, walking slowly up to the two of them. The brunette girl, Sadie, looked him up and down once before crossing her arms over her chest. She seemed to puff her torso out, trying, like an agitated cat, to make herself look bigger (which really wasn't necessary, seeing as how she was nearly Dorian's height already).
"You don't get it. I was trying to help—"
"I do get it, and she said she didn't need your help. Now leave her alone."
Sadie just rolled her eyes, perfectly rung with blue eyeliner, and pulled her pink backpack higher up her shoulder before walking, deliberately, it seemed, slowly away. Dorian watched her disappear into the distance, never once looking behind her, and turned back to the other girl, whose brow was wrinkled and big eyes narrowed up at him. Dorian's smile disappeared off his face.
"She'll probably leave you alone from now on," he said.
"Fuck off." The blond girl shouldered past him and began walking in the same direction Sadie went off to.
"Hey, wait!" Dorian jogged up to her and walked faster than he had in weeks just to keep pace. She refused to look to her right at him, and kept her gaze glued to the sand she trudged through, kicking hundreds of grains with every angry step. "Why am I the bad guy? I'm not the one trying to tell you that you style your hair wrong."
She stopped and turned toward him, and Dorian only had a second to crack a smile before the blond girl's palm slapped hard across his face. With a hiss, he brought his hand up to his left cheek and cupped it for a second.
"I do style my hair wrong, and I don't need your help, either. Who are you? I can fight my own battles."
She didn't wait for an answer and kept walking, but at this point, Dorian had given up on pursuing her any further. "Dorian," he answered in a grumble, rubbing his face for another moment. There was a splashing sound, and his head snapped to the side to look at the sea. Barely a few drops of water remained suspended in the air by the time he looked over, and concentric rings of undulation spread from where they dropped back into the ocean. Something about that particular patch of water looked brighter than the rest, like the last remaining rays of sunshine from behind the dark blanket of clouds shone exactly there.
There was nothing, moments later—just still, grey water. Dorian fingered the strap of his satchel and headed back home, deciding he shouldn't have thrown himself into that girl's business and maybe, sometimes, he was just as bad as Lyle and his heart was too big for his body.
"Can we get going?"
Dorian was busy adjusting the belt of his jeans. He shook his head slowly, prepared to get Lyle back for pressuring him into something so stupid. "We'll wait 'til I'm ready," he said.
Lyle muttered something foul and leaned back on their shared computer chair. "Lighten up," he suggested. "It's just a get-together. A small one. There'll be booze and girls and music. You like music, right?"
"I like… all of the above. I don't like being a wingman."
"What's not to like? You help me get laid and you get introduced to the girl's slightly less attractive friend."
"Yeah, sounds like fun." Dorian grabbed his house keys and shoved them into a pocket of his jeans. "Look, I don't even know how, so—"
"It's easy. You compliment me and make me look good."
"Doesn't sound easy."
"Ha, ha." He was grabbing his wallet and cramming it into the seat of his own jeans, which were significantly tighter than the relaxed pair Dorian picked out, and black in color. Dorian always felt that Lyle's darker sense of fashion didn't quite fit him the right way; his clothes were a pentagram on a puppy, something to doll him up in a way that his heaven-blue eyes and wavy, pale brown hair rejected. His skin was too sun-kissed and his cheeks too pink. He was not who he dressed himself up to be.
Perhaps, Dorian allowed, this is why he got girls, and he didn't think about it again. The two boys headed downstairs, dodging their sleepy father (who laid, reclined on the white leather couch in front of a muted game show) and closing the front door gently behind them.
Dorian had heard of something called "cars." They were on television, in video games, in books. Cars were these fictional things that people drove around in, propelled by gas. The idea was quite realistic, actually, and someone in the northern half of Ma'ema'e Island had written an award-winning article about how cars were quite possible. Combined with the select number of studies released by the select number of anthropologists on the island, this was only further proof that the inhabitants of Ma'ema'e were not alone in the world.
Who needed cars on the island, however? Nothing was more than a couple of hours walking-distance away. The world was small. Everyone knew almost everyone and nobody gave directions. Everyone knew almost everywhere.
It is for that reason that Dorian and Lyle could walk in silence the half-hour to Lucinda's house without double-checking directions. However, even a stranger could tell whose house was Cindy's; the flashing, colored lights emitting from the open windows and the booming, floor-shaking bass of the music gave enough away. Without even knocking, Dorian and Lyle made their way through the powder blue front door, as they had since they were children. Being in the same preschool class meant everyone was welcome, always.
Cindy expected no strangers. Barely looking at the brothers, she ran up to them both, black hair flying behind her, and hugged them as a singularity around the neck. She was warm and smelled of liquor, her sweat sticking slightly to the boys' shirts, but they didn't mind. "You're here!" she squealed.
"We are!" Lyle shouted back, only half-mockingly, and twice as nice as he usually was. Lyle could never be in a bad mood with free booze.
"Finally, Lyle can get a party started!" she laughed, letting go of the two and struggling to stay upright in her three-inch, black sequined heels. "And Dorian, you're nice."
"Cool, Cindy."
"You know I'm kidding!" She gave another sloppy hug, this one dedicated solely to Dorian (which he couldn't complain about; Cindy's breasts seemed to be growing every day and served as a wonderful, cushiony barrier between the two teenagers), and departed from the brothers, telling them to make themselves at home, make a few drinks and for the love of God, get people to start dancing because Claudia looks like an idiot out there, all on her own.
Lyle smirked back at Dorian, rolling his eyes, and gestured for his brother to follow. "I'm not telling anyone to dance," he told Dorian, who just nodded. He knew. They were heading to the kitchen, of course, to make Lyle's favorite drink (a Cuba Libre), of course, and for Dorian to search for beer which, of course, would not be there.
Thankfully, the rum wasn't gone yet, and Dorian fixed himself two cups of suspiciously strong drinks in plastic red cups while Dorian dug for one of the few remaining beer cans. "I don't see her," shouted Lyle into Dorian's ear as he popped the tab open.
Dorian picked up the can opener, and popped a tiny hole into the top of the can. "Not here yet," he suggested, then took a swig. His mouth twisted into a sort of disgust; the beer was warm.
"Guess not. I'll go scout her out, just in case. Stay somewhere I can find you?"
Dorian shrugged. It was getting warm in there, and he was tired of the obese boy with the sweat-greased curly mane who stood next to him with his belly knocking him into the table. He'd almost stabbed his hand with the can opener. "I'll be outside."
If it wasn't so goddamn windy outside, maybe the flame atop her little pink lighter would stay alive for more than two seconds.
She finally managed to ignite the tip of her cigarette, and, in the process, inhaled far too much. Letting out a small cough, Keani quickly covered her mouth with the crook of her elbow, and looked (not suspiciously in the slightest) around the backyard to make sure nobody had seen. It was one thing to get chastised for not doing her hair properly, but something completely different to be laughed at for not being able to hold her fucking tobacco.
It may as well have been the case, she realized herself as she flicked a bit of ash onto the concrete patio. It took her a month to finish a pack, on average. While cost-effective, it wasn't necessarily the level of addiction she was looking for. Her eyes were straining in the dark, so she whipped off her glasses and set them next to her on the concrete.
And there they are, thought Keani as she craned her neck backwards to look inside the house, through the glass back door. Tens of beautiful girls in short skirts, high heels and tank tops, half with faces needlessly caked with powder and the other half with an annoyingly natural beauty with hardly any makeup at all, given to them by the gods of Island Sun and Endless Walk-On-The-Beach Free Pedicures. Beautiful, loose beach waves, ironed-straight hair and glittery eyelids, these girls must have been best friends with that Sadie girl from earlier.
Never would she admit it out loud, but yes, these girls had some kind of talent or some kind of instruction she didn't have. Thank you very much, absentee mother of mine, she thought, but of course no part of her genuinely gave a crap about that bit. Some nights, at parties like these, where she sat, alone, in the backyard, smoking, she wondered what it would be like to be one of the beautiful girls, hit on left and right and effortlessly garnering attention. Perhaps, she thought, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to let herself be taken under Sadie's wing. She wasn't rude in the slightest; she actually seemed quite basically nice, just ignorant and annoyingly persistent.
Persistence, that's it, Keani pondered, sucking in another lungful of smoke. She hated the persistence of her. She hated the persistence of everything, and in the back of her mind waited for something wonderful and beautiful to come out of this growing thunderstorm that would change everything. Fuck persistence.
The door opened to the backyard, and Keani twisted her head back forward, pretending she didn't notice. For a split second, she could have sworn she saw two bright yellow dots in the distance, somewhere in the shadows of Lucinda's parents' shrubbery, but when she blinked twice and threw her glasses on, they were gone.
(A/N: I know, it's not the greatest first chapter, but it's not the worst, either, not with my history. I hope you're seeing a bit of a pattern in the names; not every character follows this (like Lyle and Sadie), but a lot of them have island-based names. Lucinda's a common name in Brazilian, which is one of the many indigenous languages in the Caribbean. Dorian's Greek, and though Greece isn't necessarily an island, it has many. And then, clearly, there's Keani, which is Hawaiian. The name of the island is Hawaiian, as well. I even considered making the milk ten dollars a gallon here (that was a joke). :D
Anyway, I know it's not too Kingdom Hearts-ish yet, but my first chapters never are. It'll get there by the next or the one afterwards. Also, I'm aware that the games would never have its characters blatantly drinking or smoking or cussing. That's why it's a fucking fanfiction, haha. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!)