Chapter 4: Stargazing
"This is so cool!" squealed Sora, "There's so many of 'em! Look!" He pointed to the stars shining down from the sky. Riku and Naminé sat beside him. She had her sketchbook in her lap again, and Riku held up a flashlight so she could see her drawing better. So far, however, she had not colored anything. A few feet away, her mother had set up a tripod and camera to take pictures of the moon. They were the only ones out on the beach at night.
"Aren't you gonna draw yet?" Riku asked Naminé. "My arm's getting sore!"
"Sorry," she replied, "I just don't know how to draw stars! They're white and this is white too!" She held up the blank sheet of paper and let out a frustrated sigh.
"You could use yellow," Sora suggested, "That's what I use when I draw white stuff."
Riku studied the blank page and the stars above them. "You don't have to do that," he said, "The stars look like circles, right? So draw a bunch of circles and then don't color 'em in. Then they'll still look white."
"Oh!" cried Naminé, "You're right! Thanks, Riku!" She got to work immediately, but once she had finished, she still frowned at the result. "It doesn't look right. It doesn't look like the sky."
"I think it looks cool," said Riku.
"Me too!" Sora piped up.
Naminé ripped the page out. "No, it looks bad. It's not as pretty as the real stars." She crumpled it up and threw it away, before starting on a fresh page.
A breeze blew the previous drawing over to her mother's feet. She paused from her photographs to examine it. "Oh, Naminé, there's nothing wrong with your picture. It'll never look exactly like the stars, but my pictures won't either. You just try to capture it as best as you can." Naminé ignored her and scribbled away at the new drawing. When it inevitably disappointed her, she tore it out with a groan and started on a third attempt.
"Do I have to keep holding the flashlight?" Riku complained.
"One more time! I'm almost done!"
"UGH!"
Sora laid himself flat on his back so he could see the sky better. "You guys should just look at the stars. It's way more fun." Suddenly, he sat up again and shouted, "LOOK! That one's shooting across the sky! Look at it, guys!" His friends looked up just in time and gasped in delight.
As he laid back down again, Sora turned his head towards Riku and Naminé and asked, "Where d'you guys think the stars come from? How come there's so many of 'em?"
"I heard people say that the stars are other worlds other there, with people on 'em that are just like us. And when they look at the sky, they can see us too, but we look like a star to them too," said Riku.
"We're ON A STAR?! COOL!" yelled Sora.
Naminé put down her black crayon for a moment- which had quickly dwindled down to a stub. "You really think there are other worlds?" she asked, "So other kids are watching the same stars as us?"
"Yeah, I think so," replied Riku thoughtfully, "Maybe we can meet 'em some day. I wanna see other worlds."
"Yeah, we can make lotsa new friends!" agreed Sora, "Like you guys are my friends!"
"Thanks," said Naminé quietly, "I like being your friend." And then she returned to her drawing, only to decide that the third attempt didn't meet her standards either. "Can you please hold the flashlight just a little tiny bit longer?" she begged Riku.
"UGGGGGGHHHHHH!"
And as it happened, on another world, far away from Destiny Islands, another little girl sat in her grandmother's lap, watching the stars from their balcony. "They're real pretty, Grandma," she said, as her grandmother rocked her back and forth. "How come there's so many of 'em?"
"Those are all other worlds," her grandmother replied, "Many of them, yet they all share the same sky. And they used to all be one, before darkness split them apart…"
The little girl's face lit up. She wrapped her arms around her grandmother's neck. "Grandma, are you gonna tell me that story again? Please? Please?"
Her grandmother laughed. "You never get tired of it, do you? Very well. Long ago, people lived in peace, bathed in the warmth of the light…" The girl snuggled up close to listen to her favorite tale of how the worlds almost fell to darkness, until children like her saved them. She wondered if the children on other worlds knew the story too, and if they were watching the stars just like her.