Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix and Disney do. And I don't own the song "May it Be" by Enya.

A/N: This is now my third Kingdom Hearts story. I hope I get them all done. By the amount of reviews I'll make priority on which story comes out faster. So keep reviewing the ones you enjoy most. This story is kinda weird but it'll get more close to the characters from now on so don't worry. And in this chapter you will understand a little bit of Sora's origin. Well, enjoy!

Lover of the Lake

Chapter Three: Lady of the Lake

Sora stood before the tattered prince, glowing in all of her white shrouded glory. He had seemed so shocked to see her standing there, as if he had thought she had walked out of his life as quickly as she had walked in. Tilting her head curiously to the side, she blinked her wide blue eyes at him. Why was he so shocked? He had asked for his name after all?

The silver-haired prince took an uneasy step forward, making her step back.

"I don't mean to scare you Sora," he assured her as he took another slow step. She held her hands to her chest and looked down in fear. Whenever she was on land she felt cornered, trapped with nowhere to flee but on foot. He sensed her fear and paused for a few seconds.

"Young lass," he started, trying to use all of the princely charms he had to learn. Sora then paused and looked up, eyes uncertain. "Who are you? Where are you from?"

She looked to him in confusion. He still wanted to talk to her? Sure she was used to the random few that would wander into the clearing. And she would simply hide as they would drink their fill from the pool and leave. Some would even stay the night as shelter. But this one actually caught her bathing. And she was careless enough to let herself be put into the situation. But something in him made her yearn to be in his presence. Was it the feelings that he had when he fell into her pool, the feelings that she now knew?

"I am the Lady of the Lake though I am hardly a lady," she said, wrapping her arms around her own body. This was all a mistake, a big mistake. She should have fled and stayed in the lake until he had left. But when he dove into the water after her, he was so filled with longing, fear, and anxiety that she couldn't stay there.

He raised an eyebrow to her, stepping closer until he was in front of her. Sora stood there and held her ground, trying to find the courage to be so close to him. But on the inside she was trembling almost violently. Reaching out, he raised out his hand and placed it gently on her cheek, looking into her eyes. She blushed and held his gaze.

"Why are you scared of me?" he asked, rubbing her downy cheek with her thumb.

"I haven't been intimate with anyone before. I'm not used to this kind of contact," she said, making the prince blush and withdraw his hand in embarrassment. Was it something she said? That was the question in her mind as she watched him pull back a little and coughing embarrassedly into his fist.

"Well you make it sound so…"

"Adulterous?" she asked, catching the prince off guard. He blinked and then laughed, making her chuckle lightly herself.

"I guess you could say that." He then looked up and around. The lake had since lost its life-filled glow. Now it seemed like a regular pond, its surface placidly still. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"I've been here since I was a child," she said.

Sora

I've been here since I was a small child, about four or five. The village I lived in was suffering a disease from the water that we were drinking. My mother was pregnant at the time and she too fell ill with the disease. I remember the look on my father's face when he found the flaky blue patches on my mother's neck. She was so beautiful, so very beautiful. She used to have me brush her long brown hair, watching the waves fall down her back. In this form I'm reminded of her, having her long elegant hair and full pink lips. Even my rosy cheeks are like hers. If there could possibly be an angel on earth, my mother was one.

But when she became ill, everything fell apart. My father panicked and cried. If the disease continued, he would lose his wife and the baby, leaving him with only me. And I was a handful myself, always getting dirty and bringing it into the house, or breaking things and constantly getting into trouble.

"There's nothin' we can do Ira, you have to let me go. Take care of Sora," she would tell him. But I knew that it wouldn't get to him, not a word. She meant so much to him that he would do anything for her. When people fall in love, they lose their grip on reality and all sense whatsoever.

So, my father went to each doctor and oracle he could, anyone who could even slow down the disease that was killing her. But all he received were quack potions and false answers. He began to despise me more with each given day. It hurt that my father began to lose his love for me, but I endured. I still loved him and I wanted to help ease his pain. So I would at times run away, hide in the pastures with our cows or in the barn next to the old cat. I found a place with them and they became like my second family.

Then, the day came. Father had come home bearing flowers and candies, a wide grin on his face. He scooped up my bulging mother into his arms and began to dance a jig with her. He gave her flowers from a flower shop and me candies from town. I remembered they tasted so good in my mouth, a swirl of chocolate and strawberry, or lemon, or even orange. We had a feast and father told us that he had found a way for mother to get better.

"But to get all that wi' need, I need to take Sora wit' me on the cart. It's a heavy load Orphia," he had said as he relished in the taste of warm mashed potatoes and heavily tenderized meat.

"Well be careful dear, I don't want you to go off and get hurt now." Father only laughed and pat me on the head.

"Don' worry love, I'll keep out for 'im. He's 'bout to be a big brother now eh?" he said, making me smile. Yes, I was to be a big brother, a really splendid one at that. I was to be someone strong, someone that could show the land and be looked up to. And my father's encouraging smile on his handsome face, his bright blue eyes shining down at me, I knew that all was to be alright. I was to help mother get better.

The morning we left on the cart with the old mule Fanny, mother made us a basket of salted meats, bread, and a small block of goat cheese to carry us for the day-long trek to and back from wherever we were going. I gave my mother a big hug and she kissed me on the forehead, telling me to be safe and to stay on the cart. I put my head on her stomach.

"Now baby, wait for me and da' to get home. Don't make mom angry," I said and kissed it. We were to come back in about a day and I wanted to make extra sure.

"Hurry up Sora, ya' don' wanna keep your mother waitin' now," he said in his thicker accent. Unlike everyone else in the village, father was from the outskirts of the kingdom, giving him his rich black hair and deep blue eyes. Also his accent was a lot thicker and rougher, making him more of a man in my eyes. He picked up my scrawny form and placed me into the cart and kissed my mother before he picked up the reins and started down the long dirt road from our little house.

It seemed longer than a day of riding on the cart but I didn't protest as I became sore from sitting on the wobbly wooden bench. My father decided to give me his small whittling knife and pulled off a think branch from a nearby tree, telling me to make something pretty for my mother. I decided to make a bird since she always loved them so much.

However, while I was paying attention to the misshapen bird I was carving with care, I didn't notice that we took a slightly different turn. By the time that I looked up, we were in a beautiful wood. There were fireflies buzzing around lazily and it almost seemed as if elves would be peeking out of the trees curiously. I wanted to run and play but I had to stay in the cart like mother said so I stayed.

When the brush got too thick, my father then picked me up and helped me out of the cart, tying Fanny to a nearby tree. He kept telling me that we had to go through the forest and what was on the other side would make my mother get better. So we continued and I kept up with him, my unfinished carving in my small side-pouch.

Then we reached a lake. Not a lake really, just a large pond that was like an oversized well in the ground. It glittered and glowed in many beautiful colors but it looked dull at the same time.

I was about to ask why we were here when a beautiful woman appeared out of the water. She was beautiful with long pure white hair and ghost-like silver eyes. Her skin was like fresh fallen snow and she had a cherubim look about her face. But no matter how angelic she looked, she was scary.

Even to this day I'm scared of the woman that emerged from that lake. And when my father pushed me towards her and she dragged me in with her while I screamed and cried, I realized that my assumptions were right. The woman was a witch.

My father had made a deal with the Lady of the Lake. If she was given a child to keep her company until her death, she would spare my mother from the disease that she was giving the village herself. It was a disease in spite after they had refused to give her a child prior. And so, because of that exchange I was the heir to all she held, a mystical but abandoned pond and eternal loneliness.

She was fair to me, teaching me everything that she knew and caring for me as if I was the last thing that kept her in this world, which I was. But throughout my childhood and teenage years, I was weary of her. The few times she let me leave the cold waters of the lake to wander about the pond's bank, I was alone and missed having children to play with or a mother to sing songs with. I even missed watching my father clap out a dancing tune by slapping his knees and watching my mother dance, kick, and jump with the beat.

I had no music here, only the far away song of birds or the sound of the wind hurriedly rushing past the trees. This place was a cursed place were no living thing or positive energy dared to cross.

Throughout my years, I began to see a change in myself. My once short and boyish hair had begun to grow into long and wavy tresses, growing until they rested like a halo around my young face and to my backside. Also, the more shocking thing was that my whole body itself was beginning to change. Instead of being like the village boys and deepening in my voice and growing tall and lanky, my voice began to soften and I was filling out in curves, almost as if a string had been pulled slowly around my waist, making it shrink. I began to look like my mother in almost every way. When I was about fifteen, the Lady of the Lake, Acaridae as she was called, told me that I was coming into my true form, my final and complete form, the new Lady of the Lake.

I ran away soon after that. I ran so hard that I thought that my lungs would never hold air again. But each way I turned, there was always a dead end. And with each dead end, my hopes in leaving this place waned. So, after a few days of hiding, Acaridae found me and took me back home to the lake.

My worries with her didn't seem to last long after that. For twenty more years I suffered under her, doting on her like the good daughter that the cursed pond had made me become. I was broken inside, cripplingly naïve towards the outside world so that I could never make it even if I tried. I began to wish for princes and knights to come and rescue me from her, to take me from her lair and make me their wife.

I didn't care that I used to be a man, that I had lost my gender to her, that I had become a sexless sprite that was doomed to remain with the fading ruler of the pond. All I wanted was to be taken away, to see my mother, to see my sibling who I never got to see, or to even see my father so I could ask him why he forced me into such a life.

Then, after twenty-five years of servitude and forced apprenticeship, Acaridae died. She faded away and the lake became mine. I felt the surge of the water as it shot up into the sky and crashed back down, naming me the Sora, the Lady of the Lake. It wasn't a celebration, more like a festival of misery, it was my funeral. I cried again that night, feeling the true meaning of loneliness. What a cruel and heartless woman to do such a thing to me, to take me as a child and take away my life and disfigure me in a way so that she was satisfied and then die like she wasn't even there at all?

I lived there for a few years after that, laying in misery, waiting for myself to die as well, so the water can again jump up into the sky but this time never return. Though I felt old and weary, feeling my true age of thirty-nine but seemingly with ten years added onto that, I still remained as the youthful beauty I was at age sixteen, flawless and perfect.

Then, after my ninth year in solitude, as my ageless body rested under the bottom of the lake, I felt a jolt. It wasn't a normal pang like when someone drinks out of me or when a sheepskin water sack is put into me. This jolt felt like a million hands shaking you all at once. It was disorienting and I panicked. What was happening to me? Is this death?

A rush of sadness came over me, feelings of suicide, loss, anger, and helplessness entered my soul. It was a crippling sensation. What was this confusion, this loneliness? Why am I feeling this way? A flood of memories crossed over my mind and I knew that someone was in me, someone had fallen into the lake. Materializing into my form, I began to swim up when I saw him.

The prince I saw in the memories, he was floating down to my dark depths. He was beautiful. Even as he drowned he looked like an angel with his shoulder length silver hair and long black eyelashes. As I swam up to him, he became even more gorgeous. How could something so beautiful be so sad? How could the heavens allow such misery on such a divine looking soul?

The scariest thing to me was his smile. He was smiling, even to his death, his perfect lips twisted into a despairing but happy grin. Then, I felt him slipping away.

"I wish for…" I heard him think as I reached out for him. When I touched his shoulder, a flood of images rushed over me. They all were of happiness, of him and what I guessed to be his father, mother, and brother, all smiling and happy together. They all seemed like they would be happy but there was a pang of sadness that came with it. He wanted his family back?

Then I felt it, his heartbeat, the one that pulsated in my ears, had stopped. Holding his limp face in my hands, I felt my eyes burn as I looked up to his lovely face. There was no reason why a soul as beautiful as his was to die, to feel pain and that misery before that final release of his spirit. I placed a kiss on his lips and felt a curious tingle from it. Did I do something?

Bringing him up to the water I pulled him up onto the bank, collapsing on top of him tiredly. His horses reared and cried out as they ran out of the clearing. I had no worry for them, the woods were magical so they couldn't get far even if they tried. Turning my attention back to the prince, Riku as he was called, I brushed my hand across his face, wishing that there could be some sign that he hadn't died, that he could actually be alive and I could actually see the handsome man that I had seen in his memories.

I cried for him that night, as the moon hung high and the stars shone brightly over us. This man, the closest person that I had to true company, committed suicide in my arms and died within me. But, as I cuddled up to his chest and hummed to his pale and limp form, I thought about how it would be if I actually could have known him.

If he had been alive, would he still be the person that I had seen in those million memories? Would he be afraid of me, want to slay me, or even maybe like me? But what would happen if he fell in love with me? I already knew that since the first time I laid eyes upon his drowning form and seeing his life that I fell for him. But a relationship between the both of us wouldn't work out. After all, I am the Lady of the Lake and I am forever destined to be here until the day I die.

And even if I was able to make it out of here alive, how would he feel when I told him I'm really a man trapped in a manufactured woman's body? Would he still love me? Or even worse, would he turn me away, back to my watery prison? As I slept on top of him, relishing in the feel of his muscles under his shirt, I thought of this all, never knowing that when I would be carelessly taking my bath, he would awaken.

A/N: Yes, yet another short but insightful chapter of this story. The plot will be coming in soon, hold your horses! Hehe! Well, I hope you all still like this. I think I might just make it in first person from one character to the next on each chapter. I don't know though so you all can please give me some kind of feedback. That would be helpful. Well, I'm up late trying to get this done so this little note won't be long. But don't forget to review! Bums! Hehe. Just kidding. But please review. Thank you.