(Hi! Topaz again. First of all, I want to thank everyone who's reviewed this story so far. I just came home from an annoying, tiring weekend in the sticks, and I was pretty close to depressed...until I checked my email and saw all of the comments I had gotten. At the risk of sounding completely geeky beyond belief, I'm just so happy that you're all letting me know your thoughts! Thank you! This story is fueled by people like you. Enjoy the second chapter! --Topaz Fox)

"Look at this stuff
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl,
The girl who has
Everything...?"

As he looked at her from behind eyes misted with desire, he wanted to tell her she did have everything. Compared to the rest of the gifts in her life, the trinkets in this grotto meant nothing: she had a songbird's–song fish's?–voice, freedom to roam and endless sapphire sea, a father of noble position, friends who looked out for her, and beauty so vast it could stun any man. She had everything, and everything was a huge burden to shoulder.

He was willing to help her bear this pain, this terribly pressure of every gift one could ever want. He wanted to share his life with her...

"Look at this trove,
Treasures untold,
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here,
You'd think,
'Sure,
She's got everything.'"

Torpedoing past an old globe, swimming around it and watching spin lazily, he circled closer to her. He could feel the earnestness in his own eyes, and he hoped she would notice it, too. He was no longer just misting with desire; he was aflame with it.

"I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty,
I've got whozits and whatzits galore.
You want thingamabobs?
I got twenty.
But who cares,
No big deal,
I want more..."

That was when he realized she didn't have everything. No...the look on her face told infinite tales of things she still desired. He hung back, resisting the urge to take her hand in his, put his lips against hers. That empty look in her beryl-glass eyes reflected his hunger in an eerily accurate way. They shared a bond:

Both wanted something beyond their reach.

"I wanna be
Where the people are;
I wanna see,
Wanna see 'em dancing,
Walking around on those--
What are they called?--
Oh. 'Feet.'"

As she grabbed Goofy's two lower fins, smiling like a child, the dolphin-tailed boy felt snares of jealousy threaten his sanity. He felt so helpless, so pitifully helpless, and in this darkened undersea grotto. He, the great warrior, the Keyblade's Chosen One, was completely under this unwitting siren's spell. He would do anything for her.

"Up where they walk,
Up where they run,
Up where they stay all day in the sun,
Wandering free...
Wish I could be..."

She thrust herself up through the water, the melody in her voice swelling. As she swam closer to the surface, closer to the life she longed to be her own, a vision of everything she wanted flashed through his mind. White sandy beaches skewed themselves along his mind's eye, and behind them, villages nestled in fluffy emerald forests sat like a network of prim dollhouses. Her voice pounded so strongly through the scene that, for a moment, he saw her dance along the imagined stretch of sand. He tried to see himself with her, the two of them carefree as when they were rehearsing a song, but he couldn't.
For the first time in his life, he knew what it felt like to be powerless.

"Part of that world."

Down she floated, down past the layers of useless sparkling things on shelves, down onto the shoulder of her new statue from the human world...the very same statue that the boy had freed from a rocky bed not an hour ago. Now, hate smoldered dangerously in his heart, hate directed at the statue and everything else that belonged to that world which the mermaid–his mermaid–so passionately dreamed of. He wished it was his shoulder she was now resting on, instead of the shoulder of a dead chunk of stone.

Why did he want her so? He knew perfectly well that he couldn't have her. At least, he thought he did. Somewhere under that logic, the logic that told him two creatures so different had no future together, a tiny impossible hope flickered.

Could dreams really come true?