Chapter Four
After hours of walking and a few more one-sided fights with shamblers that ended with more lightning strikes and ice pinning them to trees, Sora stumbles upon a stream. It is small, barely knee-deep in places, but the sight of it fills the boy with such a powerful longing that he is only barely able to stop himself from stripping and jumping in to get clean. He is covered in filth and so much congealed, black blood that any color that had been on his jumpsuit had been completely dyed.
Instead, he looks around to check if there were any more of them walking around. He goes down on his haunches and pokes into the sandy bottom of the creek in a paranoid attempt to check if there are any hidden beneath the water. Only when nothing snaps up at him and nothing comes out to come after him does Sora remove his shoes and then his socks before wading in.
Coolness surrounds him and the island-raised boy can't help but grin in pleasure as he paddles his way through the water and takes a seat in the middle. Water is his element after all. Now only visible from the neck up, Sora's eyes close. He scrubs at his clothes. It's a very poor attempt to clean them even if they had been normal clothes but the fairies' enchantments help the stains swim out easily enough. Unlike the black that had covered him, the water stains brown.
Sitting there in the stream, Sora can almost imagine that he's in the middle of the pool on Destiny Island's children's island. If he pretends really hard, he can almost hear the soft crash of waves on the sand beach that has been the background music for nearly his entire life. Even the tickle of fish across his body as the tiny animals decide he is no threat and to continue on their ordinary swimming is familiar and welcoming.
For the first time since he's even come to Grey Rock, Sora feels better. Not quite happy, the only way he'll be happy with this place was if Riku and the King came early to rescue him, but content.
He dips his head backwards. Cool water soaks the infamous spikes, briefly flattening them down before they spring back to their full glory. He takes a few moments to thoroughly wash his hair. Darkened drops of water splatter against the surface and bits of flesh and strands of Sora's own hair dutifully follow after them.
Having no soap, there is a limit to what Sora can do to clean himself up. Even so, he takes great care of at least washing the Keyblade's shaft and hilt well. More black stains pour from the metal when he summons it, despite how it's been in the alternate space where all Keyblades hide when not in use. He grimaces when he has to manually remove a chunk of one of the creatures' skull from the handle. It seemed that it's only really designed to fight monsters that actually don't linger behind after you kill them.
Flicking the piece of bone off into the distance, Sora spends a good hour or two dozing on and off in the water and casting a few Curaga spells to clean up his wounds and kill off infection before finally, reluctantly, pulling himself out and lighting himself a campfire to dry off.
He strips most of his clothes off, leaving him in little more than his underwear. His eyes close slowly. The boy stretches out in front of the flames and holds his now bare hands over its side. The smoky wood crackles by his fingers, bringing memories of roasting hot dogs and marshmallows with his friends.
The lack of his friends' voices laughing and making jokes near him weighs his heart with misery and a small amount of guilt over wishing that they were here with him. He would give anything to be home or to have either Kairi and Riku or Donald and Goofy with him. Even just one person would make the entire ordeal that much more bearable. He's so lonely he can barely breathe. He's been putting it off, pretending it didn't exist... but now that he was more or less safe...
He wants his mom. He wants to be in bed right now, waking up from a nightmare. He can almost taste the breakfast his mom, after hearing about such a nasty dream, would make for him. He can hear his dad laughing and teasing him not to eat junk food just before bed. He can hear his friends coming in the door. He can... he misses them. He wants to be home. He wants to be home. He just wants to go home.
Wiping the tears off his face, he tucks himself into a ball and sits silently watching the fire consume the greenwood.
The only movement he makes for the next few hours is to dump new twigs into the bonfire and to throw ice magic to any creature that accidentally stumbled upon him, too lost in memories to even bear walking an inch forward. He doesn't want to move. He doesn't dare. The loneliness just might eat him alive if he does.
Night falls all too quickly.
One moment he is staring into the flames listening to the creek bubbling and flowing next to him with sunshine pouring over his bare shoulders, the next he is shivering in the cold and staring upwards to stare at the stars. It is one more night finished. Sora breathes out a sigh of relief as he looks skyward to the worlds that depends on him and on his friends for protection. One more night until he could join them again.
Hunger clenches his stomach, sending it into a needle and pins filled state as he doubles over in pain by the fire. A day without food did that. Sora'd experienced it a number of times when he was with Goofy and Donald on days when they weren't close enough to buy something from venders. Potions, Sora had learned throughout his travels, are great for fixing thirst and stamina. They do nothing to fill your stomach. Ethers, being gummy-like snacks, are better for hunger but only a little bit better. As liquids they only seem to take the edge off and clear his head momentarily.
But with learning comes ways to oppress and so Sora easily manages to conquer most of his hunger with another potion.
He is just sinking the sharp bite of the needle into his arm when he hears a noise coming from some bushes a few feet away on the riverbank. Nearly breaking off the tip into his skin from fright, he is quick to stand and even quicker to draw his weapon. The needle, safely out of his skin, drops harmless to the floor. Blue eyes stare into darkness as he listens desperately for the loud high keening that made up the start of one of their attacks.
Instead, he sees a little girl tiptoe out of the bushes, her bruised gray eyes staring longingly at a potion still clenched tightly in his hand.
With a slight smile and a shy nod towards his hand, she asks Sora if he has any food.
Though she is disappointed to discover that the "soda" was a restorative and not an actual sweet, she is more than happy to sit with him by the fire and warm up some of the bread she had been carrying in a battered duffel-bag on her back. He shares his potions with her, though the child confesses she far prefers juice to the cotton candy sweetness that was a mega-potion.
Over the next few hours and over potions and toast, Sora gets to know the little girl very well.
Her name, oddly enough, is Feralis. With tangled black hair and an untrusting look in her odd eyes, she fit the 'feral' part of her name well. She looks and acts like a wild housecat. It takes a while to even get that little tidbit out of her. But after at least an hour of giving her potions and toasting her bread for her and even a little bit of storytelling, she slowly warms up to him and eventually gives him the name.
("My name's Feralis. F-E-R-A-L-I-S."
"My name's Sora, it's nice to meet you, Feralis!"
"That's a dumb name.")
She soon takes up the conversation herself, pestering the boy with what feels like a hundred questions without stop. Gamely, Sora attempts to answer each one honestly and gives back as good as he gets. He summons his Keyblade for her at one point when she declares that she doesn't believe him after explaining what he's doing here in Gray Rock. Although Feralis can't hold it, she just mildly agrees that he did in fact, have a Keyblade.
("Keyblades aren't real."
"Why not?"
"Cause it's dumb. You're dumb, Sora."
"Okay, so if I can bring it out to show you, you'll believe me?"
"Uh huh. But you can't."
"Why can't I?"
"Cause you're ly-! … Okay, I guess you do have a Keyblade.")
She proceeds to inform him, when he mentions that he knows several princesses, that the Queen has just taken the throne and that she is one of the most beautiful women in Gray Rock. There is an odd look in her eyes as she says this, as if enraged with the unknown woman. Sora finds it strange that when he tries to get the name of the Queen, being interested in the culture of the world, that Feralis spits angrily on the ground and changes the subject to something else.
("You know, I know lots of princesses. I even know a Queen. I saved her with this."
"Oh yeah? Gray Rock has one."
"A princess, Feralis?"
"Tch. No, not anymore. A Queen. Long may the beautiful Queen reign over us with her vast amounts of wisdom. Most fairest of all and all that."
"Uh... wow... she sounds... nice. What's her name?"
"... tell me about your princesses, Sora?")
But when the topic falls onto their families, the girl falls silent. For a long while, they have a very one-sided conversation over Sora's mom and dad and his friends and even the two that practically have raised him since he was fourteen. She says almost nothing during this time. Instead, she just nods and grimaces in the wrong places and mumbles things to herself.
Eventually, long after Sora grows uncomfortable and reluctantly regales her with a story of his dad taking him fishing, she admits that she didn't have a family anymore. That they've turned into monsters, too. Though she uses a very specific word for them, the brief description that she uses to retell how her brother turned and then bit their younger sister is the same as the creatures that Sora had encountered through the last two days.
("I don't got one."
"Huh?"
"My family's gone. They turned into biters."
"Oh... oh, I'm so sorry, Feralis..."
"... My big brother turned first. He... he got bit when he went into the city. Annie was in her crib, sleepin', when he came home. I thought he got a cold. I... I... I went to the doctor to go get 'im medicine and he ate it but one day he just didn' wake up and I kept asking Kieran to wake up and he wouldn't... And then he did and he came back wrong and he bit Annie and then when I pulled her 'way from 'im he screamed at me and... and... and... she got sick too and she died and they both turned... I couldn'... I couldn' help either of 'em, I just... ran... I ran and ran and ran but Kieran kept followin' even after I locked 'im in the bathroom... I was scared... I was so scared I only grabbed the groceries and ran... I-I-I l-left Annie on the floor and he stepped on her and I heard her breaking and I didn' mean to, Sora, I didn' mean to!)
Her voice halters, stutters, and breaks constantly throughout her story, ending with the child weeping on Sora's shoulder after he scoops her up and very gently hugs her. Her tiny body is burning hot. As they sit there together in the firelight, he can feel her shivering into him along with her tears burning down into his shirt.
But he doesn't mind.
All the young Keyblade Master does is pick her up and walk her up and down the riverbank. He isn't too comfortable with having to do this. He really isn't the kind of person that can easily give out this kind of familiar affection. Any time that Kairi cries, he usually runs and leaves Riku behind to talk to her.
But this time there is no Riku. Only Sora as he weakly tells her that she'll be okay and that he's here to talk to if she really wants and um, it's okay if she wants to cry a little longer, really.
All the while he stutters out his apologies and condolences, the child whispers the rest of her story to her new friend. She tells him all about her beloved big brother and sweet baby sister, their triumphs and their flaws. It's clear from her voice that she misses them just as much as Sora misses his own family. He can't help but hug her a little tighter. When she finally dozes off against his shoulder in the middle of a long winded story of her sister's first steps, the fire has long since died and there are increasingly louder moans coming from all around them.
He retrieves his jacket and most of his belts.
With care to not disturb the sleeping girl and with great difficulty, Sora scrambles up the branches of an other tree and straps himself in. He tucks her in a more comfortable spot on his chest and drapes the jacket over them both. Leaning back and wrapping his arms around the child's waist, the boy is finally able to fall asleep himself.
Throughout the night, he barely stirs, not even when he feels a slight pressure to his shoulder, merely twitching as the sensation disappears. He subconsciously dismisses it as an insect bite before falling deeper into dreams.