Whoo, shoutouts! XD Oh, I missed this... Thanks to MegaWallflower, MonMonCandie, DGMSilverAirHead03, Aika08, Cerika13, and Sakura Scout for reviewing the first chapter! :DDD You guys make me so happy...

So, this is just a silly chapter, but I did try to put in some important ideas. I technically started this in May, the day after I got out of school, but I didn't feel any pressure to finish it until last week. As you are now probably aware, I'll update this on Tuesdays—I would say every Tuesday, but you know how school goes, :P—and they won't always be in chronological order. I'll let you know where each chapter lies in the timeline, though. Still appreciate fun prompts/ideas/suggestions... Anyway, enjoy!

Haruki gets told lots of stories.

Uncle Sora tells him most of the ones he knows, probably 'cause he talks the most out of all his friends and siblings. Mama always laughs when Sora is in the middle of a good one and his hands are waving about everywhere, and she likes saying things that, if Haruki had a little sister and she said something mean like that, he'd forget what Dad told him about not hitting girls and smack her in the face. Sora, though, does one of three things, none of which include hitting his sister.

One: he just plain ignores her.

Two: he narrows his eyes at her, hands geld perfectly straight in the air, which makes everyone laugh.

Three: without even looking up or pausing in his speech, he comes up with a decent-to-awesome comeback (or so "Uncle" Axel says—Haruki never gets the funny part of the comeback) and continues his story.

Sora tells Haruki all about the crazy things that happen in the worlds beyond his own tiny Destiny Islands, about white rabbits, men raised by gorillas sliding down jungle trees, experimental creatures that are more funny than scary, girls with fish tails who live underwater, flying pirate ships, non-flying pirate ships, worlds in black and white, lions becoming kings, and so on... He says he's read about them in books, but that doesn't make sense—Dad picks on Sora as bad as Mama does and says he couldn't have read all those books 'cause he's not smart enough, but Mama says it's just 'cause he's impatient.

When Haruki tells Mama that someday, he's going to go to the other worlds to find out if Uncle Sora knows what he's talking about, she halts for a second before saying that she's sure one day he'll get the chance.

Uncle Sora doesn't tell really scary stories; that's the job of Uncle Roxas, with occasional footnotes from Axel. Roxas spins long tales about truly evil people, the bad guys that Roxas describes so wonderfully that Haruki finds it hard sometimes to remember that it's just a story. Axel doesn't help with that, either, especially when he says something funny and shows off a tiny and pale scar that he swears so-and-so gave him.

Roxas never fails to say a mean thing to him, like Mama to Sora, but Axel always clutches his chest and moans about getting killed again.

Axel's personal specialties are humorous stories, like any time Sora fell over his own feet in front of Aunt Kairi, or silly rhymes that get both him and Haruki in trouble if Haruki tells 'em to Dad, or when one of Axel's old friends and he pulled this super awesome pranks on this wimpy guy who spent too much time on his mullet. Roxas occasionally inserts a funny one about Axel, which earns him a dirty glare each and every time.

Aunt Naminé, who is Uncle Roxas's fiancé and a good friend of both Haruki's parents, doesn't tell stories often. When Haruki and Naminé are together, Naminé diligently teaches him how to make his pictures even better than she says they were. When he impatiently throws his pencil on the tables on which they work, she picks it up and scoots closer to him, carefully making a line on the paper in a way that he can see her work, then another line, then another, then asks quietly, "Where do you think the next one goes?" And so it goes until he's satisfied enough to give it to Mama or Dad.

Sometimes, Naminé brings her own sketchpad with her so Haruki can look through it. Some pictures have his parents; some have his aunts and uncles; some have people he's never met. Naminé explains each picture to him, and more often than not the description includes, "Roxas told you this story, didn't he?" Strangely, those pictures have the people he's never met with his relatives, notably Uncle Sora, Uncle Roxas, and Dad.

When he asks Dad about the pictures with him, he says Aunt Naminé uses what she knows as a "reference."

Terra, Aqua, and Ventus (who looks exactly like Uncle Roxas but acts more like Uncle Sora and is between them in talking—Mama says that not all people are made to look differently, so it's not really a big deal) are all very close to Haruki's family. They come only twice a year, though, 'cause their jobs never quit, but that's more than the number of times Haruki has to see the only cousin he knows he has until he's nine (in the summer they go to Dad's family's reunion but never to Mama's, since they see Sora and Roxas practically every day).

Ven, with an identical personality to Sora, also talks about the other worlds beyond the ocean, but he tells different stories he's read about in different books. Terra and Aqua never tell stories, but they play weird games that he's fairly sure they found somewhere far away.

The trio stays on Destiny Islands for two days at the max; the first whole day is spent catching up on what everyone's missed, and on the second day everybody disappears somewhere to talk about grown-up things. The one and only time Haruki tries to eavesdrop, Mama catches him, and while she sticks him in time-out for ten minutes, she doesn't really look all that mad.

Strangely enough, the only connection Haruki has to his parents' past is Aunt Kairi, who looks a lot like Mama and Aunt Naminé at the same time, but she's not Mama's sister 'cause she's married to Uncle Sora, and that would just be weird if she married her brother; anyway, she's more than willing to tell him anything he wants to know about Dad whenever he asks. There's a lot of stories about epic crashes and pranks while he and Uncle Sora were goofing around, but very few stories from when they were older, and Kairi has never told him a thing about his mom.

"Aunt Kairi, tell me a story about Mama."

"Please."

"Please?"

Seven-year-old Haruki's spending that day at Uncle Sora and Aunt Kairi's house while Mama and Dad are off doing something—Sora was elbowing Dad a lot when he dropped Haruki off, but he doesn't know why—and they've just finished having dinner. Haruki definitely prefers eating at Aunt Kairi's house; there's a lot less veggies and Haruki doesn't even have to get something on his plate if he doesn't want to eat it.

Aunt Kairi stands at the sink of their cornflower blue kitchen, and she lays the plate and washrag down and wipes her hands on the towel on the rack to her right. "I don't know a lot of stories about your mother, Haruki," she says, back turned to Haruki. "I didn't meet her until right before she started dating your father."

"Well, that's still been a looong time," he chirps, swinging his legs impatiently. "You gotta know something about Mama."

Kairi hesitates, face upturned and soaking up the sunlight with her eyes closed. "Haruki, do you know what a compromise is?"

"A what?"

"I take it you don't," she chuckles, turning away from the window to sit at the seat to Haruki's left. "A compromise is when two people both want something from the other, but neither of them is going to give exactly what the other wants, so they make a deal."

"Ooookay?"

Kairi smiles warmly. "So, right now, you want me to tell you a story about your mom."

"Yup!"

"But I don't want to talk about your mom."

"Please?"

"So, we're going to make a compromise." Kairi holds out her pinky finger. "Would it be fair if I told you a really good story that wasn't about your mother?"

And that's a really hard question to answer 'cause he really wants to hear about Mama, but it's not nice to make Aunt Kairi tell him something about her—and anyway, if he kept pushing when she said no, he'd probably end up in time-out with no story. He's not as stupid as the other kids his age make him out to be. "That sounds good."

"Alright. Now, long ago, people lived in peace, bathed in the warmth of light..." Kairi begins, and instantly Haruki leans forward, intently focused on this latest tale of legend.

Around Haruki's tenth birthday, a little before or a little after, he stops asking for so many stories—one, they're getting old because he's heard them all a million times, and two, he's getting old enough to read the really good books at the library when he's not busy making up his own stories and playing them out with the pretty, blonde neighbor-girl named Yoshi, the only kid in school who likes him enough to hang out with him, at least for now. Haruki remembers one other little thing from his tenth birthday...

Mama sits him down in the kitchen at the end of the night, after Yoshi's gone home and the leftover cake that hasn't been devoured by Sora and Axel has been covered up. Dad leans against the wall in front of him, looking kinda serious and sad; he has his arms crossed like he's actually antsy about something. It's the first time Haruki's ever seen his dad in a state other than cool and poised or affectionate and relaxed—it's kind of awesome.

Mom pulls up a chair across from him and takes her seat. She clears her throat and smiles reassuringly, then says, "You're growing up so quickly, Haruki, and I just thought..." Mama presses her lip together and looks down; her hands—perpetually warm and calloused, the latter from washing dishes for so many years, as Mama likes to joke—settle on his, and her fingers tickle as she runs them over his knuckles and back again. She doesn't say anything for a few minutes that stretch into hours in Haruki's head, all the while tracing the bones in his hand but not smiling when he squirms at the more sensitive areas.

"Xion?" Just when Haruki was about to start asking Mama what was bugging her 'cause she's been awfully quiet for an awfully long time, Dad breaks the silence as he pushes himself off the wall and takes a step forward.

Mom jerks her head a little, like she does when she wakes up, and grins sheepishly at Haruki. "I just wanted you to know," she says quietly with her kinda mysterious smile, as if she knows something that she's going to tell him but not anytime soon, "that you're growing up so quickly, and we're very proud of you."

Haruki perks up with a warm happy feeling echoing throughout his entire body—who doesn't like making their parents happy, after all? "Thanks, Mama!" he squeaks, pecking her on the cheek and hopping off the chair to hug Dad around his stomach. "Can I go back to my room and play now?"

Dad snorts once in amusement, eyes scrunched up and one lip bitten as he tries to keep from chuckling at Haruki more than he already had. Mama doesn't bother holding her laughter in as much as Dad does and giggles at him when she nods. Haruki laughs, too, 'cause his mom's laugh is infectious, even for him, then takes off for the staircase to his room. "Not too much longer, though, Ruki," she chides, just to get her motherly-presence in there, Haruki thinks.

He turns around as he shouts a "Fiiine" back at Mama, already planning a new game where he'll save Yoshi from another one of Uncle Roxas's bad guys with the new toy sword Sora and Kairi picked out for him, when he catches sight of her blue eyes following him back in the kitchen. She still has that mysterious I-know-something-you-don't-right-now look on, but she's not smiling anymore. It gives Haruki an odd feeling, like there's something really obvious he's missing... He shrugs it off and bounds into his room, already picturing one of Aunt Naminé's characters as the evil man and what horrendous monster he'll throw at Haruki.