SquidBaggerofWoomyandNgyesness: Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

Enamis09: Aw, you're so sweet! I don't know whether I'll ever actually publish a book or not, but if I do I'll let you know! I do think I might try to post some original work (non fanfiction) online at some point (maybe over on Wattpad). Whenever I run out of Kingdom Hearts ideas, that is! :) But anyway...I promise I'm trying to get you the sequel as soon as I possibly can! This week I'm at my parents house sewing like crazy to get ready for ComiCon on Saturday, and next week I'll be getting ready for my daughter's birthday party. After that, it's writing, writing, and more writing!

RenInWonderlandd: (did you change your username, or is yours just really similar to someone else's?) I love the idea! I'll have to keep brainstorming on it, because at this point I can't decide if there's a way I could do it well without including spoilers for the sequel. If I can come up with a good way to do it, I definitely will. If not, I will save it for later, okay?

Coolmegan123: It might be worth checking out! It may not be as dark as I made it out to be ha. I believe the main story is called something like "Armageddon", and includes several OCs. There are a lot of oneshots that go along with it, also. I actually wasn't able to find the first part of the story, so if you (or anyone else) are interested, you might want to message SquidBaggerofWoomyandNgyesness about it.

Request #2 is another from Enamis09! She wanted to see a scene from Meli's childhood. This was pretty fun to write! You'll get a little bigger glimpse of a couple of characters that have just been mentioned in passing up until now.

Obviously, this takes before the beginning of Sorrow's Promise – about four years prior, to be exact.

Bonus Chapter 2

Meli's Perspective

The book that I had been burying my nose in was suddenly ripped out of my hands and went flying across the yard. I didn't even have to look up to know who would be glaring down at me, it was always the same boy.

"What do you want, Dustin?" I scowled up at him, trying my best to look tough.

"I wanna know when you're gonna stop being such a baby," he sneered. "Why do you still read that fairy-tale crap? You're what, eleven years old now? Time to grow up."

I pushed myself up off the grass and to my feet. Dustin may have had two years on me, but we were almost exactly the same height, and I used that to my advantage, looking him straight in the eyes. "Just because it's got romance in it doesn't make it a fairy tale. Fairy tales have princesses, and knights in shining armor fighting off monsters and dragons. I'm plenty old enough not to believe in that stuff."

"Oh, yeah? Well you're not old enough not to believe that you've got secret friends who only visit you in your dreams!" This jab came from Miles, Dustin's constant shadow. The two boys fist-bumped like it was the greatest insult ever thought up, despite the fact that I had heard some version of it dozens of times from them over the past year.

I flipped my waist-length auburn ponytail over my shoulder and crossed my arms. "You're just jealous because you're not special enough to have friends like that."

"You're such an idiot." Dustin shoved my shoulders hard, and I stumbled back a few steps. "Only an idiot would believe something so stupid. I thought maybe one of these days we'd knock some sense into you, but it's not working so far."

Miles stepped up beside Dustin with a smirk. "Guess we'll just have to keep trying."

I knew what was coming. Turning, I darted away across the yard, trying to reach the safety of the house before they caught me. Even troublemakers like those two wouldn't dare start a fight inside Ms. Young's house, not unless they were looking to spend the week in their rooms, or miss dinner.

Unfortunately, their legs were just a bit longer than mine. Someone slammed into my back full force, sending me sprawling onto the ground, and I heard a sound like a stick being snapped in two. It took several seconds before the pain hit. I howled, much to the boys' amusement, but their laughter faded into expressions of horror when they rolled me over onto my back and saw me clutching my oddly-bent arm.

A few hours later, I was back from the hospital with a purple cast on my left arm, and a fuming Ms. Young sending me to my room for the evening. I smarted off to her, telling her that I hadn't knocked myself to the ground, and asked shouldn't having a broken arm be punishment enough for getting into a fight, but that only got me a smack on the head and a lecture before I was shut in. In all honesty, I didn't really care about the punishment, other than the dinner I probably wasn't getting. When I was in here, I didn't have to worry about being hassled by the other kids, at least not until the other girl I shared the room with came in for the night.

At school the next day, Zephyr was completely enthralled by the cast. "I always thought it would be so much fun to have all my friends sign a cast," he gushed during recess, poking at the hard surface.

Kaj, sitting nearby, just rolled his eyes. "Zeph, seriously. Broken bones aren't 'fun'. They hurt."

"Have you ever had a broken bone?" I asked the silver-haired boy.

"Yeah, he broke his wrist a few years ago," Zeph answered for him. "Must've been not long before you started school here."

"I fell out of a tree," Kaj supplied quickly.

Zephyr wrinkled his nose. "I thought you told me you fell off your bike."

Kaj froze, then looked away, across the playground. "Oh. Um, yeah. You're right. I was...thinking of something else."

Zeph and I shook off his strange answer almost immediately. Kaj was always getting lost in distant thought, so we were pretty used to it by now. "Anyway," I sighed. "You two are the only friends I have, remember? So I don't know how much fun getting signatures could possibly be."

"Well, then the two of us will just have to decorate the whole thing!" Zeph replied brightly, not at all fazed. He produced a Sharpie out of his shorts pocket that he had likely pilfered from the classroom just for this occasion, and set to work on the cast. After painstakingly scratching out his name in giant block letters, he started on some sort of drawing that I couldn't get a good look at. Several minutes passed before he sat back to admire his handiwork.

"Ta da! What do you think?"

I held my arm up to study it. The profiles of two faces were smiling at each other, one with a long ponytail, and the other with short, messy hair. Above them, a third face wore close-cropped hair and a smirk. "Is that...us?"

"Yep!" Zephyr looked very pleased that I had recognized his masterpiece.

Kaj appeared above us and grabbed onto my hand, narrowing his eyes at the drawing. "Not sure how you figured that out."

"Hey!" Zeph protested.

Snatching the marker out of his hand, Kaj settled down onto the turf in front of me and carefully positioned my arm so that the bottom of it was facing him. "You're hogging the canvas. It's my turn."

Lying in bed that night, I turned my arm all around as gingerly as possible, a smile creeping onto my face. Kaj's signature was simple, just his name in his normal handwriting, but next to it he had sketched a pretty nice picture of a palm tree and some waves. Zeph had taken back over after that, adding a few barely-recognizable doodles of cats and dogs, followed by Kaj drawing the same things just to prove he could do it better. It really wasn't surprising that even my broken arm had turned into a story of competition between those two. They were ridiculous sometimes, but they were my friends, and I was more grateful for them that night than ever.

Please let me know what you thought in a review, and if you have any special requests, shoot them my way! Ideas for scenes can be as vague or specific as you want. I'll try my best to do whatever I receive!