Memories One: Memory's Waking
Waking. For most people an unplesant task, to be snatched out of a calm sleep.
But for some, sleep is not so calm. For some, waking is a relief insead of
the most dreaded part of the day.One girl looked forward to dawn in this most terrible way. It was a tragedy made even more pronounced by the fact that she was in middle school, when most value sleep above all other things. But for Kari, sleep was something to be feared. Not sleep necessarily, but the dreams that always accompanied it. She fell asleep easily enough—almost too easily. For once unconscious she was always immersed in the same dreams. Dreams that were too terrible to forget.
Most people would have forgotten the dreams. Most people forget their dreams immediately upon waking. It's easiest that way; they don't have to deal with the hidden terrors of their subconscious except at night. Kari was neverone to take the easy way. She was still a Digidestined. So she knew the dreams that came every night, and he fear only intensified them.
They say there's truth in any dream that you dream more than once.
So Kari woke, and as usual her sheets were soaked through with fear-sweat. Her mother would once again reprimand her for being too big a girl to wet the bed, no doubt. A routine so familiar that its embarrasing, unpleasant aspects had been dulled by repetition. It was too bad her dreams were not the same way...
She told herself to stop thinking about them. It was bad enough to dreamthem, much less obsess over them and increase their impact. The only logicalthing to do, she reminded herself, was to ignore them as best she could andmake he situation somewhat better. Unfortunately, in the human mind illogicoften overpowers logic. Kari's repeated attempts to concentrate on something else—anything—only focused her further on that night's fears.
Once again she pondered telling someone about them, and once again she decided against it. No doubt it would make her hidden horrors much easier to bear if she shared the burden with someone. The problem was, who? The only people who could possibly understand were other Digidestined. But Tai had givenup his fated heritage. He was now a normal high school freshman. Well, notso normal necessarily as he played varsity soccer. But that was a typicalaberration from the standards. Unusual and abnormal aren't the same thing.
As far as she knew, all the other Digidestined had taken Tai's path, hadforgotten not what had happened four years ago but rather its emotional impact.All Tai—and probably the others—had lost was the feelings, Purefright, anger, indecision... all those were lost to him. Oh, he still rememberedwhat had happened—but you can hardly call an emotionless timeline amemory. All the others, probably, had forgotten similarly. They were alreadybeginning to forget back at their return from the Digiworld. Only Kari—andone other, TK—had noticed that a party was not the right way to celebrate losing the deepest friends they'd ever had, their Digipartners.
Thoughts of TK finally took Kari's mind off on a tangent. Where was he now? He still lived with his mother, Kari thought. But Tai had lost track of Matt so there was really no way to know. Pretty much the only thing Kari was sure of where TK was concerned was that they had never seen each other since that party. The party where they had both noticed the others forgetting and vowed to never do so themselves.
Had TK kept that promise? There was no way to know. More likely not; allthe Digidestined had vowed to never forget their Digipartners when they left. Both Tai and Sora, the only ones she saw regularly, had become so wrapped up in a normal life—school, sports, social events—that therewas no time to remember what they had lost on the trolley back home. Forall she knew, everyone else had and she alone still kept the memories ofthat time.
It was futile to think about such matters anyway. There was so much she needed to do, homework, singing lessons, all the activities of a busy sixth-grader. There was enough to worry about without adding to that stress by still thinking about the Digiworld... but down that path lied forgetting. And if she was the only one she knew had kept the memory alive, it was doubly essentialto never forget.
These thoughts all filled Kari's mind as she went through the familiar rituals of getting ready for school and then walking there. It was a good thing that these actions had become somewhat reflexive; if she had actually had to think about directions then all the thoughts already swirling about in her head would have gotten her lost and tardy. She barely noticed as a car came to an abrupt halt so that it would not kill her. The driver certainly did; he hurled a stream of curses and insults at "you idiot kid." Kari was oblivious.
She continued in this waking, marginally more pleasant dream as school began. She mechanically got out her textbook, pen, notebook and homework and read off answers without really considering their content. She barely noticedwhen a new kid walked in and gave his name as Takeru Takaishi. She didn'tnote the name, at any rate, and gave hers literally without thinking whenher teacher asked everyone to introduce themselves. She didn't mind thishalf-awake daze; it made up for the sleep she lost trying to overcome herfear of the dreams.
At lunch she still moved in this trance. She barely tasted the lunch hermother had packed—another advantage of this inattention. Lately theonly times she had truly been awake were her dreams. A paradox. But doesn'ttruth lie in seeming paradoxes?
She only woke from this mobile sleep when the new kid sat down in front of her and began to speak. Her rise to fuller consciousness was not caused from politeness; it was from surprise that any would speak to Kari Kamiya, that half-crazy girl who never talks back anyway.
"When I walked in the door today, I immediately wondered where I'd seen you before. When you told me your name, I knew. Kari, do you remember me?"
She looked at his face and found it vaugely familiar. The blue eyes she definitely knew from somewhere, but although she'd seen many strange hats—Sora, Tai's girlfriend, wore them all the time—she'd never seen that particular kind. Nor did she understand why this strange boy would wear one, as hishair—what could be seen around the hat's edges, at any rate—wasa nice shade of blond.
"Don't you remember me?" he said, with a different, more annoyed inflection. "You promised..."
"Oh...! TK! I didn't recognize you. I'm sorry." That revelation jolted her into full awareness.
"Why not? You knew my name..."
"I wasn't really paying attention when you walked in."
"Thinking?"
"Yes."
"About what?" He waited for a while and got no response. After it becameclear that Kari would not talk back, he asked further. "Gatomon, maybe?"
"Sort of..." Kari said softly.
TK mentally berated himself for reopening an emotional wound that he wassure was barely scabbed over; Kari wouldn't forget, he was certain.Matt might have, but he had known that Kari wouldn't forget. Quite possiblyshe couldn't. Although she had been in the Digiworld for the shortest time,she had experienced so much more than anyone there that it should be impossible for her to forget.
"I'm sorry. You probably don't want to talk about it."
"No... it's okay. I guess that it's better if I do."
"If you don't want to..."
"I do," she interrupted rather vehemently. "You don't know what's been happening to me lately, TK. I need to tell someone... but no one else could ever understand. This is something that only a Digidestined could comprehend."
"Then what about Tai?"
Her answer was another question. "Is Matt still a true Digidestined?" That one sentence's question highlighted the situation better than ten sentences' answer could have. Matt wasn't.
She continued. "A month or so ago, I began having this dream. Just the same dream, over and over. I'm standing on a plain in the Digiworld, and something—no Digimon I know, but vaugely like Myotismon—walks towards me. And then it attacks. Sometimes Gatomon's there, sometimes Salamon, occaisionally Nyarumon or Angewomon. Sometimes I'm alone. But whenever she's there, she always leaps in front of the attack and it passes straight through her heart. If thathappens I can feel the dissolving data hit my body... But if she's there,the attack goes right through as if she weren't there. If she's not, of course,there's no reason for it to slow... And just before it hits my body, thescene melts and fades away. I see two children, my age or younger, disappearin a great flash of light. And when the blindness from the flash fades away,sometimes I see someting else. But more often than not, it just starts overon that plain."
"I've been having a dream, too. I see you on that plain, calling for help... Then I see those same children disappear. That's why I transferred. I made up a reason that Mom and the school officials would listen to, but the real reason is that I wanted to see if you did need help."
"Trust me, I do. I haven't been able to think of anything but this lately. Almost as if a part of me were waking from a long sleep..."
Don't you just hate the phrase
TO BE CONTINUED...
TO BE CONTINUED...