Radiant Garden was nearing the time of day – or rather, evening – when the sun was low enough in the sky to cast a scheme of beautiful, vegetative colors to harmonize with the plot of flowers upon flowers below. The birds that were still chirping merrily in the trees and on the terraces of the houses in the city would soon retire to the nest to sleep within a protective barrier of twigs and leaves sewn together by the threads of mud. Children were safely tucked in and awaited for their mother's sweet kiss good night. Anyone that chose to stay awake past this time of the evening in Radiant Garden would be treated to a glorious sky filled with the shimmering stars of idling opportunity.
What a marvelous place Radiant Garden was.
It was glimmering. It was peaceful. It was radiant. There was no other place in the entire world that could compare with the beauty and integrity to that of Radiant Garden. This little city – built with tender love and affection above the blue-crested valley – had no worries or cares of its own, because it never faced any significant challenges.
That is… until the Heartless arrived that very night.
They first appeared when a loud crackle of electricity was emitted from the basement of Ansem the Wise's castle. Only those who wavered back and forth from the shelter of deep slumber could hear the shockwave from beneath the ground. Many acknowledged its existence and simply surrendered themselves once more to the weary task of falling asleep – thinking nothing of it. A few gathered up their blankets and rose to gaze out the window, and once they had noted nothing seemed to be at fault, they returned, yawning, already half asleep.
One older woman however, didn't take the oddity for granted. She had fallen asleep in her rocking chair with her knitting needles carefully folded in her lap when a sudden jolt snapped the old woman upward. She cringed, caressing the outburst of goose bumps invading her arms. As she rubbed vigorously at her arms with her wrinkled, calloused hands, the old woman stared at the radio situated on top of the end table nearby. Nothing was coming out of it – not even the routine static she occasionally woke up to after her stubborn neglect to get up and turn it off while she was still conscious. The light bulb on the front was lit brightly, the only glow left in a cozy living room with a fireplace that had long since extinguished itself.
The radio was still on.
But she had remembered turning it off. She could even recall what time it was. As she brought her hand behind the radio to switch it off, the minute hand of the clock clicked into the next position. Eleven. She swore it was eleven o'clock.
The old woman was right. She had turned it off at eleven when the nearby tower went off the air. There would be no comforting news of tomorrow's forecast, trivial talk shows or sweet, blissful music lulling from that device anymore. Once she had taken her finger from the dial, she proceeded back to her chair with her knitting still in hand.
As she sat there, transfixed by the radio, she knew something was terribly wrong in that tiny place.
Quickly, she rose to check on her great-granddaughter. Down the hall she rushed, and without any other thought than her great-granddaughter's safety on her mind, she shoved her hand forth on the door and it flew open to her bedroom. Stricken with panic, knowing all was not right in Radiant Garden that night, she dashed to the girl's bed. With a flick of her hampered wrist, the lamp next to the bed was lit.
Fortunately, the girl was still there, resting with a complexion to that of a child undisturbed, a slick line of drool slowly sliding down her cheek. She did not stir to the dawn of her lamp beside the bed. Relieved, but not out of the sight of lurking danger, the old woman stroked her great-granddaughter's cheek and wiped it clean.
"Kairi…" she whispered, watching confidently as the girl switched positions – from facing her great-grandmother's shriveled hand to calmly confronting the other direction. "I will be here to protect you…"
There was no response from the sleeping damsel. Once she had found a comfortable position facing the other way, she lay immobilized once more, oblivious to the old woman above her.
"Yes, my dear, I will protect you."
As it came to be, those would be her last words to anyone.
Once her lamp was turned off, the old woman moved to the bedroom door in a hasty manner, clawing her nails at the wood as she heard the first of the commotion outside. It seemed far away, as if her memory was merely recollecting the noise that had risen the old woman from her rocking chair just minutes before.
But then it crept closer, bringing with it gruesome and hideous sounds – sounds the old woman had to twist her ears from. These noises were not like the bolts of static and crackling electricity she had heard before.
These sounds were much different.
Hoping the noise would never reach her beloved, she stepped into the hall and closed the bedroom door behind her. It may have shielded the girl, but the old woman wasn't spared in her own attempts to escape the noise of churning fluids outside her door. She couldn't gather her imagination well enough to envision what was beyond the front door. She had no idea what was lurching nearby. The clamor was disgusting and terrifying in its own manner, and yet it brought curiosity to her mind.
She stepped forward from the hallway to her own bedroom door. The old woman had to know what was out there.
Setting aside the worries of her exhausted elderly bones, she slithered up the bedpost like a cat no longer able to land on its own two feet, and hurriedly ripped aside the curtains. To her dismay, as her eyes flickered about the drowsy town under the black sky riddled with white specks of dust, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. The appalling sound kept nagging at her ears, driving her hands to twitch as they desperately clung to the curtains, searching for an unknown cause that produced a well-known effect to her, and to her only.
She decided to take a step outside.
From her own bed, she wearily scampered off to the front door of her home, quivering faintly as the footsteps she made failed to drown out the engulfing appetite waiting on the other side of her door, waiting to flush out the sounds she remembered hearing in Radiant Garden during all of the years the old woman had witnessed it bloom. It wanted to despoil her of the birds chirping in the trees in the morning – when they first woke to greet the day – and in the evening – alike to when she had first sat down that day to begin her knitting – when the chirps began to fade away into the blissful silence of the night. It wanted to strip away the sound of the rain dripping down from the rooftops, enriching the color of the magnificent flowers and greenery thriving from the windowsills and pottery at the homes of so many privileged citizens.
The old woman wondered alertly what could possibly want to ruin the peace of this village as she slipped her fingers over the doorknob.
The door opened… and the darkness swallowed her immediately.
Once they had drained out the final screams from the pale, rumpled corpse on the floor, they headed for the girl.
The old woman disappeared without a trace.