You have her eyes, you know.
Do you remember?
I suppose not. You were so young when she was taken. So young... But she knew as well, before any of us could have imagined. And she would sing to you - songs of times you were destined to know, things you would someday understand. Each day she would hold you in her frail arms and sing, and you would gaze up at her loving face with those bubbly blue eyes and coo silently.
She looks after you still. When she passed, she promised she would. She said it was her blessing, her curse, and she would watch you always. And I knew she kept her promise because you would talk to her when you were a little older, alone in your room at night. Others learned through the years, but no one understood. I did, because I understood my daughter, and I protected you as best I could.
I suppose you're wondering why. It's been so long, why do I come to you now?
Can you picture that day, when your mother died? Sure you can, just use your eyes, not your mind. The figure with her, do you see it? You tremble, but not to worry. It is only a memory, and it hasn't come for you. Calm down and focus. What do you notice?
Yes, it doesn't have a face. Your mother, she sees it more clearly.
It troubles you. It always has. As well it should, though not in the manner you take it to. I could never protect you from yourself. I tried so hard... You questioned, came closer to the truth. As close as your mother ever did, but you wouldn't remember now...
Stop.
You and your mother are much alike that way. Bull headed and curious. Much too curious. I begged her to stop looking - stop looking before it was too late! But she was too determined to see... simply because she had that power.
It's not too late for you. That is why I'm here - to tell you.
Let it go. Close your eyes.
Live, Riku.
He awoke into darkness, pale and hot, a shivering shadow among his sheets. A rush of cool air from his open window dried his sweat soaked skin; at some point he had fought his blankets to the floor. Outside the window, the moon had left him to the darkness and his nightmare, having drifted beyond the neighboring roof. His clock chimed softly the four o'clock hour.
"A dream," he murmured, touching an unsteady hand to his face. He swallowed thickly, rose to sit against the headboard of his bed. There he took measured breaths until the fear subsided and the nightmare became a dim anxiety in the recesses of his mind.
"That feeling again," Riku spoke to nothing. His gut clenched with something he had come to call 'portent'. It followed prophetic dreams, and often night visits. But it had been so long now since he had experienced either one that he hesitated to believe his own instincts. Perhaps his mother had visited him like she used to, although he usually remembered...
Riku felt the moist cotton of his pajamas. Something had not been right. Could his dream have contained a warning? A warning for whom? And if was indeed meant to alert him, why couldn't he remember?
"I've been through this," he whispered fervently to the shadows. "I thought they were gone for good. What has changed?" Almost desperately he sought an answer in the thick darkness where hid his closet. Closets were where demons lurked, right? Children know it to be true, and though now grown beyond those years, the vague memory surfaced of him performing this same act long ago. He never saw the monster, but somehow he still knew it was there.
Just like right now, with the breeze freezing his spine and the shadows lengthening in a black void and the sickened feeling in his stomach of ill omen.
'Preposterous,' Riku berated himself. 'Regressing to my duller years... I thought I gained more sense than that.'
"Maybe I haven't changed as much as I like to think..."
The image of his younger self receded and Riku released it gratefully. His childhood had been full of tragedy and pain for as much as he could recall. He had been weaker then... Prone to talking to himself - only then there was someone listening that he alone could see. Delusions, he had scoffed. An illusion of his mother meant to fill the part of his life that needed a nurturing female figure. A projection from a lonely boy who wanted his mother, nothing more.
If that were so, why did the feeling tug at him so? That foreboding... The impression that soon he would remember all too well what it was like to know fear and isolation.
"Rubbish," he mocked. Maybe things were going to change, but Riku had confidence that it would be for the better. Good things were going to happen, and he was going to set them to motion. Surely this life had more to offer him than a shallow existence on an obscure island with fragile ties to people around him. It had to be so.
Because he was going to be sure that it was so.
Reaching over the bed, Riku gathered his blankets to prepare for sleep again. Rest may well elude him, but he could at least plan for the future - a prosperous future away from this mundane hunk of land. And hopefully Kairi would be right there with him, to share it...
With that peaceful thought, Riku lay back and let his mind wander, prior fears forgotten in his
ambition.
Author's Note: Yeah, it's been a long time. I had lost my inspiration; and truthfully, it's still gone. I just felt guilty not updating. But I'll try to keep it going, albeit casually. Very casually. Sorry it's so short. It's more of a prologue than my prologue ^_^. Anyway... Thanks for reading - and for the few of you who like this story, please be patient.