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Sometimes when Sora sleeps, his subconscious thoughts lead him to crazy dream worlds. Some of these worlds contain memories from past adventures; some of them feature more ghoulish ghosts than others, while some are worlds of only the happiest memories. Some are a strange mixture of both at once, and some are altogether different. Like this one, in which Sora finds himself tonight.

Surrounded by a scene of aquamarine and ocean floor, he glances down toward his shoes, only to find they've been transformed into flippers. In fact, half of his normal body has been replaced with a body much akin to that of a dolphin's.

"Am I back in Atlantica?" he asks himself, before jetting out forward into the blue, feeling the water pass by him on either side of his body as he does so. "Huh… 'Guess I am."

Swimming forward a little more, he finds that he can hear a faint melodic sound in the near distance. "What's that?"

Swimming out further, aiming for the direction of wherever the sound was coming from, Sora kicks out harder against the water, propelling himself more quickly through the ocean blue. As he moves further and further along, he notices how the melodic sound grows louder and clearer. He thinks it seems somehow familiar, too.

There's only one song I've ever heard that sounds so beautiful… he thinks to himself as he swims even more closely toward it. Could it be?

As the sound of the song grows more and more clear, Sora wills himself to propell faster and faster toward it, until at long last he sees a familiar sight coming into view. Up just ahead he can see the shape of a mermaid, her back turned to him, a long mane of flowing, red hair blossoming out behind her. The locks are waving back and forth lazily in the water, and Sora finds himself mesmerized by the sight.

"Ariel?" he wonders aloud to himself, just under his breath; of course, he knows already for certain that it is her.

He swims up more closely to her, and finds that he can't be quite sure of the melody she is humming. He feels, at once, as if he's heard it before, yet that it's strange as well; an enigma. He feels, at once, as if he's heard it before, yet that it's also strange somehow, both at the same time. It's this surreal, haunting quality that draws Sora in more and more, until he's floating just behind her, a hand oustretching torward her hair.

Just shy of reaching it, Sora then witholds his hand, watching as Ariel slowly turns around to face him, her song coming to an end as she does so.

"Sora?" she says, looking confused for just a moment, before slowly breaking out into a smile. It's a smile that reaches her eyes, and it is also a sight that makes Sora's breath catch in his chest.

"It's a nice surprise to see you here again," the mermiad says to him; Sora gives her a shy smile of his own in return, then nods slightly, noticing the bubbles beginning to float around the both of them as Ariel moves in just a bit more closely to him. "When did you get here?"

"Just now," he answers her, being as truthful as he can be, considering he hisself actually has no idea how he possibly got here in the first place. "I heard you singing, so I came to find you," he says to her.

"Well then, did you like my song?" Ariel asks him, and he gives her another nod, saying,

"It was beautiful." Even as he says this, he can feel himself blush a bit, and he hopes that Ariel doesn't notice it.

As she begins to giggle quietly, Sora fears that maybe she does notice it, and he turns even redder, before swiftly turning around, placing his back to her.

"What Sora?" Ariel asks him then, swimming around just as quickly so that she's facing him once again. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Sora mumbles quickly; his guise is see-through to Ariel, though, who reaches forward with her hand and taps him playfully on the tip of his nose.

"It's not nothing!" she challenges him. "Come on, what gives? What's making you so red in the face?"

"I - I couldn't really say," Sora answers, and it's at least half-true, because he really doesn't know for absolute certain what's causing him to have such a reaction.

Shrugging slightly, Ariel moves her face in closely to Sora's for a milisecond, before pulling away, saying, "Well, if you're sure you don't know…"

Turning away from Sora then, before beginning to swim away, Ariel manages to move a few feet away from him when it finally occurs to him to call after her, to ask her to come back.

Closing his eyes, he immediately sees a vision of her face close to his, in his mind's eye at least. In this swimming visage, he can see himself leaning forward slowly, bringing his lips to hers, sealing them together with a kiss. Re-opening his eyes, Sora finds himself to be nowhere near Ariel at all; to the contrary, he finds himself to be completely alone in the water. Where Ariel had gone off to, he had no idea, but she couldn't've been gone for too long.

There was a stream of bubbles floating about in the underwater currents in the wake of her recent absence - possibly a sign of where she'd gone of too. "Ariel?" Sora calls out, before closing his eyes as a particularly strong current jets the bubbles right toward his face.

When Sora opens his eyes again, he finds himself to be sitting upright in his bed, his covers and pillow strewn messily onto his bedroom floor. His pulse racing quite quickly, he looks all around himself in the darkness of the room, flashes of Ariel in his mind's eye every time he blinks.

His heart finally slowing down a bit after another moment or two, he finally realizes now exactly how to word how he'd been feeling to Ariel. In the next moment, he sighs, hanging his head as he realizes that -epiphany or no - he was no longer able to tell Ariel anything at all anyway.

The mermaid, the water, the bubbles that night - it had all been fragments of his imagination. Falling back upon the bed then, Sora closes his eyes once more. Maybe, if he could find himself to be so lucky, he'd fall right back to sleep and into another dream.

Maybe he could tell her then.