Epic 12: Life is Still Life, Even if it's the Second.
As predicted it didn't take long for our all too short season of fall to end all too abruptly. I sat in my front room curled up in a blanket watching the snow. It was still dark outside the window, so the tiny points of white looked like stars falling silently to the ground.
They'd done that before you know? A few years ago, there wasn't a night that went by that one star or another didn't wink out of life above me. I even remember that taste of the air on those nights. I wished I didn't but I did. A scary thing about the air is that it is everywhere, even on those worlds so far beyond my atmosphere, and if I concentrated hard enough I could hear it on those worlds too. I had made the mistake to do so when the stars first started to fall from light. I wish to God I hadn't. It still haunted my nightmares some days.
"Ari-nee?" I stirred looking over my shoulder at the sleepy eyed blond. I cocked my head a little at him.
"What's wrong Dem?" For the love of Chocolate! I'm sounding like his mother!
"Is the sky falling?" I stared at him for a long second. If it wasn't so cold out I swear there would have been crickets chirping!
My sudden outbreak of laughter apparently snapped the sleepy water loving blond form his daze. "What?" He pouted.
"Silly, it's snowing." I said deciding not to mention what I had just been thinking. He stared out the window confused. "Don't you know what snow is?"
"Oh I do. I just don't recall it happening till like December?"
"Mmm" I hummed leaning my head against the back of the couch lowering my lashes halfway. "My worlds a little strange this way, the weather is a little less dependent on the scientific and more on the state of the inhabitants."
"This place really is kinda strange, I mean with Axel and me showing up then Roxas…" Dem snuggled down onto the couch opposite me. There was silence for a long time, a kind of still heavy silence that tasted of melancholy thoughts. "You know, I knew." I looked back to him curiously. "The moment I saw Sora in front of me I knew I was a goner. And when it was happening…" He shivered and I swallowed back the figment memories of Axel's death. "I just couldn't get over thinking that it was the end. I wasn't gonna get another shot to be, ya know, real." I shivered burrowing in a little deeper. It was horrible to hear my happy-go-lucky water boy talk so darkly. "Then next thing I know I'm waking up here. And a few month of wandering around wondering if this was some sort of dream, I find you and Axel." He beamed at me, then frowned a little. "I still don't get why. Why I'm here and not, well, nothingness."
I turned my eye's back to the window. "I don't…understand it either. But I have a guess." He lifted his brow in interest. "It has to do with the creation of the world. The legend goes that the world started out a blank lifeless moon of another world. At that time that world was in the midst of a civil war. No one really knows what it was about or anything, but one side of it got the bright idea that instead of killing a young woman suspected of being a traitor, they would banish her to this lifeless moon."
"Harsh." Dem muttered. I giggled but kept going.
"She did the best she could to make the banishment a little more bearable, by painting. But the loneliness was unbearable. After nine months of it when she felt she could no longer bare it, she was paid a visit by the heart of the worlds." I smiled a little at his startled face. "I'm sure you're aware of it. At the core of every world is a heart, and just like people, that heart, defines the surface. However the heart of this world had not created its surface at that time, and after watching the woman's anguish took pity of her and gave her the power to develop its surface, and nature according to her own will. So she painted the world she desired to live on right onto its blank canvas. When she was done, she asked the world, if it could be a place of hope, of second chances, the world agreed and it remained open for the lost souls seeking a second chance, and new start."
I blinked at Dem who was grinning at me like a fool. "What?" I asked.
"So that's why everyone thinks of artists so highly. And why the world is governed more by the inhabitants then the planet itself." I nodded slowly. "I like it. So, do you have a past somewhere out there that you wanted to leave?"
I shook my head. "Nah, I'm a native." He tipped his head a little. I chuckled. "Coming here is really just punching the restart button on your life. Life still follows the coarse it does anywhere else. People come, they meet, they greet, they love, they hate, they make choices, they make regrets, they love, they birth, they grow old, they die." I shrugged. "Life is life. No matter where you are. No matter how many chances at the restart you get."
Dem blinked at me slowly. "So, as a native, what does that mean for you?" I looked at him signaling for him to elaborate. "I mean, this place is where people come for a second shot at life, but you were born here does that mean…"
I smiled at him warmly. "I'll die, and that will be the end." I said calmly. Not what he wanted to hear. "As I said, life is life. And Death is just part of life. Since I've always been here, the world won't register me as someone in line for a second chance. So I just get my one shot." I sighed leaning against my hand smiling as a foggy dawn crept in lightening the sky a tint at a time. "But I'm okay with that."