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This chapter is rated for near nudity and a little language. Have fun!
White Firmament, Obsidian Earth
Chapter 3-- Omens and Actualities
Riku sat chewing on a stale piece of cold toaster pastry, eyes on Kairi's hunched form as he tried to come up with a rational reason to forgive the girl for what she had nearly done yesterday.
Kairi's arms were curled around her knees, and by the way her eyes were staring unfocused out over the water, Riku knew that she must be as deep in thought as he was, whatever it was she was thinking about.
Just the sight of her made an instinctive flash of resentment flare up inside him before the logical part of his mind could quell it down. Because he knew that it had really been his words that had drawn out the intense burst of anger from the girl; that it was his pushing had finally made her snap. He just hadn't expected such a reaction from Kairi, considering her normally controlled and calm demeanor.
And yesterday had given him a taste of real fear. At first, Riku had only been scared that they would lose the paddles, which meant an inability to move the raft in any other direction besides that in which the wind generally blew, thus resulting in their eventual deaths if they couldn't sail or row to land once they saw it. But then, when his body had felt as if one more stroke would cause his heart to burst in exhaustion, Riku had feared for his life. Only the blind need to appear strong in front of the others had prevented him from allowing Sora to drop the anchor. But he had been terrified, nonetheless. His muscles still pulsed their over-taxed soreness even as he sat almost entirely still. Had the distance between him and the raft been any greater, he felt sure he would have drowned despite his competent swimming ability.
And that primal fear that had all but dominated his consciousness yesterday still lingered somewhere deep in his gut, and that was what was making it so difficult to forgive Kairi. She had caused him to feel more scared almost than he had ever been in his entire life. And he couldn't stand it when someone had that power over him, even for just a small while.
Sharp clanging of metal on metal brought his attention back to his surroundings, and he turned to see Sora struggling with a knife and a can of peaches. Poor boy.
Sora had always hated it when Riku and Kairi fought, and the last few days must have been really hard on him. But now he seemed more content and at ease, undoubtedly due to the supposed resolution yesterday of Riku and Kairi's conflict.
To Riku, however, the conflict still stood, lingering under the surface of forced civility. His jokes had only been his way of dealing. The only way to hide the all-consuming fear he had felt in those trying moments from the others.
And he couldn't forgive Kairi just yet. That was just how he was.
"Riku!" Sora's call drew his eyes from the forgotten toaster pastry and over to the younger boy's anxious form. "Help me!" he entreated.
Riku heaved an exaggerated sigh as he pushed himself to his feet, tucking his breakfast pastry into a pocket. As he went over to Sora he noted that Kairi had turned at Sora's fuss and was now smiling sympathetically at the brunette's predicament.
Then she looked to Riku and smirked as he took the knife and can from Sora. "Of all the things organized Riku forgot to bring, it just had to be the can opener," she chided jokingly.
It occurred to Riku that Kairi was probably being so buddy-buddy with him now because she felt genuinely bad about the paddle incident… As she should, he thought complacently.
"I told you guys, I could've sworn I packed it," he countered, unable to refrain from coming to his own defense.
Sora was watching him carefully as he examined the abused can in his hands. "Sora, this hardly looks salvageable," he told the shorter boy. "You were beating it too hard."
Sora huffed and pouted, not unexpectedly. "Just try."
Riku nodded resignedly and got to work, twisting the knife so that its handle was brandished and beginning to meticulously tap on the contorted metal. After he had gone around the entire circumference of the can's top, he used the knife's blade to pick at the weakened spots, and it was only a matter of seconds before the top popped open.
"Here," Riku said, putting down the knife and offering the peaches back to Sora, whose face lit up in appreciation as he took the can.
"Thanks a lot!" he said, flashing a grateful grin.
Riku was waving his hand dismissively when a sudden gasp from Kairi startled both boys, compelling them to turn toward her.
The girl was standing rigid as she stared open-mouthed out across the ocean, one hand clenched tightly over a bag of dried fruit down by her thigh. Then, the iron grip on the bag loosened as she seemed to suddenly relax, and she cast a sheepish look back to her companions.
"Sorry," she murmured. "I thought I saw something, but it was just some dark clouds."
Sora exhaled loudly. "Jeez, Kairi, you almost scared the poop out of me." He sighed again and began to rifle through his bag in search of something.
Kairi scoffed and furrowed her brow curiously at Sora's words.
Riku ignored them, focusing his gaze on the wide clump of clouds at which Kairi had been staring.
"What did you think you saw?" Riku asked her.
"Huh?" was her reflexive response as her eyes shifted to meet his. Then she shrugged. "I don't know. It kind of looked like an island. The way it was so close to the water, you know."
"Yeah…" he replied distractedly, eyes drawn back to the dark line of clouds on the horizon that looked almost black against the bright backdrop of the midmorning sky. If Riku squinted his eyes, he could see how Kairi could've thought they were an island.
If only…
"A new world wouldn't look like that," Sora broke in, chewing around a mouthful of peaches.
Riku shifted around to regard him inquisitively, and out of the corner of his eye, saw Kairi do the same.
Sora swallowed his mouthful. "I mean," he began, pausing to scoop another spoonful of peaches into his mouth, somehow managing to continue speaking as he chewed. "I don't think it would be an island like our islands, you know. I think it would be bigger—almost as wide as the sea. Like the kind we read about in school."
"You sound so sure," Kairi said, sounding impressed and laughing a little. "But, honestly, as long as we find it soon, I don't care what size or shape it is." She looked down then, expression slightly disappointed. "For a second back there I was really excited."
Riku almost felt a little bit sorry for the girl, the way she stood there looking sad, but he had never been one for useless pity.
"Ah, don't worry, Kairi," Sora said easily, scooping the leftover juice out of the can. "This must be like a good omen or something. I bet we'll find our first new world in no time."
Kairi nodded a little as she smiled back at Sora, and Riku couldn't stop his own smile from springing up.
What would they do without Sora's optimism?
~*~*~*~
On the eighteenth day of their journey, it was apparent that even Sora's positivity was hard pressed to remain at so high a level. As Riku and Kairi's good humor drastically deteriorated with each passing day that a new world had not been found, Sora's began to waver.
Naturally, Riku hated seeing anything dull Sora's almost constantly cheerful spirit, and if nothing became of their mission, then Riku would know for certain that it was his fault Sora's hopes had been raised so high only to come crashing down in disappointment.
As Riku worked himself into an even gloomier mood, he was anxiously watching the flap of the bed tent for movement that signaled Sora had finished changing and was coming out.
This was how it went every night before they settled in to sleep. They would each take turns using the privacy of the bed tent to change into their pajamas while the other two waited, usually patiently, outside.
Today, however, the sudden chill in the air was making it difficult for Riku to sit calmly as he waited. His hands went up to rub at his bare arms in an automatic gesture, but he was not so uncomfortable as to want to put on a jacket. Besides, he really didn't feel like getting up, which would cause the chill to be felt even more acutely as he moved through the cold air.
A gentle scratching sound reached his ears as Kairi began to brush her teeth off at the edge of the raft. As Riku turned toward the girl, he was relieved to see—for her sake—that there was no sign of any fresh drinking water around her.
Of course, with only the help of the weak battery lantern's light, it was impossible to tell for sure if Kairi was hiding the bottle somewhere behind her where Riku couldn't see. But he liked to think that she had learned her lesson.
Riku sighed and drew his eyes away to stare out into the dark ocean, and since it was a cloudy night, it all looked like pitch black limbo save for the small waves near the raft that reflected the lantern's light as they rolled and broke.
And as Riku gazed unseeing into the sheer blackness where he knew the horizon was, he came to the conclusion that it was a slightly scary sight. If he hadn't had the knowledge that the ocean really did stretch a great distance farther around the small area lit by the lantern, then it would seem as though the raft were surrounded by sheer black nothingness. As though nothing else existed.
Then the sound of Kairi spitting into the water penetrated his dark imaginings, and Riku forcefully shook himself of that unpleasant state of mind.
"Okay, I'm done," Sora announced suddenly, causing Riku's body to betray him as he started in surprise. He stood quickly to cover the movement, and glanced over at Sora for a reaction as he emerged in sweats and a thin T-shirt. But the boy was blessedly oblivious, caught up in the sudden coolness raising goose bumps on his arms while he put his clothes away.
"About time," Riku grumbled as he moved to enter the large tent, purposely sounding annoyed.
Sora stepped aside to let him pass, absently muttering, "It's cold out here," to no one in particular.
As Riku began to undress in the warm tent, his lip quirked at his friend's habitually slow observational skills. Count on Sora to state the obvious.
"Sora, what'd you do with my face wash?" Riku heard Kairi ask outside. Her facewash? Wait… hadn't he just seen a tube of some kind of cleanser lying around? Riku searched his memory as he threw the shirt he had been wearing onto a sleeping bag.
"I didn't do anything!" came Sora's petulant reply. "What face wash?"
"The one you used two nights ago, remember? You're the one who asked me if you could." The volume of Kairi's voice grew with her frustration.
"Oh, that face wash… I didn't use it, though. I changed my mind and put it back in your bag."
Riku rolled his eyes before shifting them to glare at the right leg of his jeans which, for some reason, wouldn't come off over his sock. Stupid, thick sock, bunching up on his ankle like that.
"No, you didn't," Kairi disagreed. "I just looked in both of my bags."
And then it clicked in Riku's head.
He had seen his redheaded friend's missing face wash—underneath her bag when he had been scooting it over the other day. Correctly assuming it had been Kairi's, he had then placed it on top of her notebook, which she kept at the bottom of her sleeping bag since she usually wrote in it every day. Riku hadn't returned it to her pack because then she probably would have assumed that it had never been missing, which he wanted her to realize so he could rebuke her about how she wasn't careful enough with her things.
Looking back on it now, Riku was aware that his intentions had been rather base and self-serving. And Sora was the one who had lost it, anyway.
Sighing, he shuffled over to the end of Kairi's sleeping bag, his irritating jeans still clinging to his right foot.
The silence outside was broken when Sora hesitantly proposed, "Maybe you dropped it in the ocean."
Riku immediately pictured how Kairi was going to react to that suggestion, and had to stifle a snort of amusement as he searched in the meager light from outside for the tube of face wash.
"Why on earth would I do something that stupid?" came the high-pitched response.
Sora should've expected that, Riku thought to himself as he came upon a pair of dirty, mucus-green socks where he had hoped to find the face wash.
"Gross…" he muttered, hurriedly flicking away the offensive clothes items.
Ah! …There it was. The green socks had been covering it. Maybe that's why Kairi hadn't found it.
"Hey, Kairi!" he called, straightening up. "Your dumb face wash is in here! But don't come in, yet. Give me a minute to finish."
Riku reached down and hastily pulled his fat sock off, wondering why he hadn't though to do so earlier.
"What?" Kairi asked, voice faint as though she had moved farther away.
"Your face wash!" he yelled, pausing to growl when his pant leg flipped inside out as he tried to yank it off, the stubborn denim refusing to release his foot. "…is in here! But, just wait a—"
Fwoop!
The tent flap flew open and Kairi ducked her fuschia head in, eyes widening as her brain registered what she was looking at.
"…the hell, Kairi!?" Riku jerked awkwardly, trying to force his jeans back on, and then tumbled over in a tangled lump onto a sleeping bag.
He lifted his head to see Kairi's jaw dropping even lower, and shouted, "Friggin' get out!"
"Sorry," the girl peeped, quickly pulling her head out and yelping when her hair caught in the tent's zipper. She smartly closed the flap before making any attempt at freeing the lock of hair.
Riku's face was on fire, equally from frustration and embarrassment, as he slowly pushed himself up. Surprisingly, he wasn't as angry with Kairi as he was with how ridiculously he, himself, had reacted. He hadn't even been entirely naked, so why had he freaked out so much?
Sora's merciless snickering from outside made his ears burn even more, but it ceased when Kairi hissed a scathing, "Shut up!"
The front of the tent shook once before Kairi's shadow disappeared from the entrance, seemingly having yanked her hair free from the zipper.
Then her voice took on a meek, supremely apologetic tone as she addressed Riku. "Riku, I'm really, really sorry! I totally thought you said 'Come in here'."
Riku scoffed bitterly. Was she deaf? He hadn't said anything remotely resembling 'Come in here'…Okay, maybe… but, still. What a blond she could be sometimes.
He said nothing in response to her apology as he resumed changing. He didn't think he could speak calmly to her at the moment.
A few moments later, Riku became aware of a whispered conversation being held outside, though he couldn't make out any distinct words.
He stepped quietly over to the front of the tent and, turning an ear toward where the whispering was, began to eavesdrop.
"…know that Riku wears briefs?" Kairi was asking. Well, hadn't she gotten over her embarrassment in record time?
"Not all the time," Sora whispered back, making Riku's face burn as he shook his head at his friend's unceasing honesty. "He usually wears boxers when he spends the night…" Sora trailed off awkwardly, seeming to have realized the oddness of what he had just said.
For a minute, all Riku heard outside was a thick silence, until it was broken by Kairi's highly-amused laughter.
"Oh my gosh, Sora, you crack me up!" She gasped.
"Well, we're both guys, so we don't have to get all weird about changing clothes in front of each other." As Sora's voice rose in indignant defense, Riku attempted to force himself to remain calm as he moved away to finish changing, wishing his dear friend would just stop talking and keep his mouth shut.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kairi retorted, sounding a tad bit amused.
Sora failed to offer a reply, and Kairi seemed to take it as a sign that he needed more explanation. "So, you think even though I'm a girl, I shouldn't be weird about changing in front of my two male friends?"
"What? No!" Sora hurried to respond, sounding stuck. "I didn't even… How—I wasn't even implying that!"
Riku had finally gotten his shirt and flannel pajama pants on and emerged to observe his companions in their dispute, his appearance going unnoticed as he stood beyond the beam of the lantern.
Kairi was giggling cheekily where she sat on some food crates, like she knew something that Sora wasn't admitting to.
"Oh, sure you were, Sora," she said in response to his denial. "You just want to see me without my clothes on, you sneaky, little dog! Well, your little roundabout way of saying so is definitely not going to work. I guess you'll just have to get your perverted kicks out of seeing Riku in his briefs, since you two are so totally fine with undressing in front of each other."
Sora spluttered helplessly, but Riku stepped forward before he could pull any coherent words together.
"He's the perverted one?" he asked Kairi disbelievingly as he joined the game, and both his friends snapped their heads around in surprise. "When just a few minutes ago you walked in on me knowing that I might not be dressed?"
Kairi quickly recovered her composure, grinning disarmingly at him as she rested her chin on the arm propped on her leg. "Sorry about that." Then she turned to Sora. "And calm down, Sora, I was just joking with you. I know you're the farthest thing from perverted."
"Oh…" said Sora, cocking his head to the side as he watched Kairi, apparently undecided about how to take her comment.
Riku huffed out a short laugh, going over to put his clothes in his pack, then straightening up. "Oh, Kairi, your face stuff is in here," he told her as he moved to reenter the tent, seeing the other two follow him inside.
"What's it doing in here?" she questioned as the three of them gathered in the tent, Riku stooping slightly under the sagging roof on Kairi's side.
"I put it on your notebook where I thought you'd be sure to see it," he explained as he picked up the face wash and tossed it to her.
"Oh." She reached for the tube, fumbling and dropping it before bending down to pick it up. "Thanks."
"There are my socks!" Sora suddenly exclaimed, pushing Riku out of the way as he pounced on the filthy green pair of socks. He picked them up and went about folding them neatly. "I really missed these."
"Eww…" Kairi scrunched up her nose in distaste. "They smell disgusting! Is that mold or are they supposed to be that color?"
Sora stuck out his tongue and began to childishly flap the socks in front of the girl's nose.
"Ugh! Sora, cut it out!" Kairi complained, pushing Riku between her and Sora's socks. "Get those out of here! It's my turn to change, anyway, so both of you guys have to leave!"
Riku was smirking as he exited the tent, Sora following while saying over his shoulder, "Revulsion is the surest form of love, Kairi!"
"That's not even how it goes!" Kairi shouted after him before pointedly zipping up the entrance flaps of the tent.
As Sora went to put his socks away with his other clean clothes, for reasons that Riku could not fathom, the older boy stepped over to the edge of the raft, looking out over the black expanse once again. He folded his arms against the cold, and in the next second Sora was at his side doing the same.
After a few moments, the brunette craned his head to peer up at Riku with searching eyes. Riku glanced down at him, offered a smile that he intended to be comforting, and went back to staring out to the darkness. He couldn't tell if Sora had bought the attempt to assure him.
"It's the eighteenth day, Riku." Sora's tone wasn't one of disappointment; he was just stating a fact. "We've still got plenty of time left before half our food is gone."
Riku didn't know when three days had become 'plenty of time' to find a new world, but he was grateful for his friend's solid reassurance. He nodded in response without shifting his gaze from the sea.
"And, you know…" Sora began again, now following Riku's gaze and looking out over the shrouded ocean. "I've been thinking that…when we do find a new world, and you really do want to stay there or keep looking for other worlds… then I'll stay with you. Though, I'll want to go home from time to time and visit my mom and everyone, but I'll always come back. So, you don't have to worry about being left alone, Riku."
Riku turned and stared at Sora's reddening face, effectively rendered speechless in his shock. Was Sora truly making this promise? Did Riku's occasionally bittersweet friendship really mean so much to the boy?
"…Seriously?" Riku couldn't help but ask, trying to make it not sound like he really thought Sora would joke around about something like this.
The other boy half-turned his head, looking reasonably uncomfortable as he gazed up from underneath his spiky bangs.
"Yeah…" He appeared to be searching carefully for the right words as he gnawed on his lip, eyes flickering down before quickly returning to meet Riku's. "It's what best friends do."
Riku took a deep breath as he cast a glance back at the sea, his breathing having suddenly become more difficult.
Then he looked back at his waiting companion. "Thanks," he said, genuinely smiling. And though the simple word hardly seemed adequate, Riku knew that Sora felt his true appreciation radiating from him as he looked at Sora, who nodded his acceptance.
And because Riku would not be able to stand another minute of the emotional exchange if they were to start bawling like menstruating females, he felt he had to divert the path of their conversation.
"You know what else best friends do?" he asked vaguely.
"What?" Sora wondered, the lantern light highlighting the side of his face as lips began to curl into a smirk.
"They exact revenge for their best friends on their female best friends who have greatly wronged a best friend." Riku pointedly ticked his head in the direction of the bed tent.
"Oh, yeah?" Sora said, chuckling. "Well, you should have just zipped the entrance closed, genius."
"Oh, yeah?" Riku mimicked. "Well, why were you just standing around doing nothing while Kairi was barging in and invading my privacy? You could've stopped her." He gave Sora a playful shove, making the smaller boy stumble over his own feet fall onto his back, grunting as the air left his lungs.
"Oh, I see," Sora said as if he had come to a sudden realization, pushing himself back up and brushing off his pants for show. "That's how it's gonna be, huh?"
Riku smirked and haughtily cocked an eyebrow, casually resting his hands on his hips. "You bet your ass that's how it's gonna be."
"Okay, okay," Sora acquiesced, nodding in feigned understanding. "I guess I'll just have to—" he broke off and swiftly brought an arm up to thrust at Riku, intending to punch it into the older boy's chest to knock him off his feet.
As if Riku hadn't seen it coming.
He easily deflected the blow with a swipe of his arm, then stepped back and held up two forefingers to halt Sora's next attack.
"Wait," he said. "If we're going to do this, then let's do it the right way."
He trotted the short distance to the sailing equipment, and after briefly digging around under the paddles, extracted two wooden swords.
Sora immediately leapt over and snatched a sword, then sprung back and watched Riku with an eager grin.
"You're on," he challenged.
Riku simply shook his head as he took his time to gracefully settle into his own stance.
Then, the sparring began. And the boys merely saw the resulting dipping and rocking of the raft as another small obstacle, much like how they viewed Kairi's complaints that she 'would never be able to fall asleep like this' as a minor obstacle.
But when the harried looking girl emerged for the last time threatening to throw their sleeping bags into the ocean, the boys were quick to drop their sticks and call the match a draw.
~*~*~*~
Five days later, the three friends had turned the raft around and were dejectedly making their way back home, the twenty-first day having come and gone without any sign of a new world. Though the wind was blowing from the north according to Riku's compass, and Destiny Islands was due east, the wide sail managed to push them along in the right direction at a fast enough pace.
Not that Riku was worried about running out of food at the moment. Not since now he knew for certain that he would never find another world, and he would never be able to escape the cloying quaintness of his home.
He twisted the thick compass between his fingers, and almost dropped it when a startling crack of thunder resounded in the overcast sky.
"Oh, no," said Kairi apprehensively, looking up from her notebook to gaze up at the thick, grey cloud cover. "I hope it doesn't start raining."
Beside her, Sora placed his bookmark between the pages of his paperback and sniffed the air probingly. "It seems kind of dry for rain."
Kairi regarded him flatly. "Did you not just hear the thunder, weather man?"
As if on cue, a bright flash lit up the southern half of the sky, making the surrounding clouds look even more sinister in their contrasting darkness.
Sora opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by another loud peal of thunder. He visibly started at the roaring boom, and then seemed to have forgotten that he wanted to speak, opting to stare up at the shifting clouds that appeared heavy with an impending downpour.
Riku could feel his already negative mood declining further with their ever-worsening situation, and he wanted to stop any other complications from arising before it was too late.
"We should probably eat our lunch now, then, in case it actually does start raining," he suggested, trying to keep the despairing sigh from his voice. "It's almost noon, anyway."
"Yeah…" Sora agreed wearily, as Kairi closed her notebook and moved off to go put it away.
Once they had dug out some canned pork and beans, and were quietly settled eating, Riku was struck with the realization that he hadn't seen any lightning or heard any thunder for a few minutes now. Well, it would be a very welcome relief if the weather decided not to gift them with rain.
Kairi seemed not to have noticed that the small storm was abating. "Maybe I should go wash now before it gets too late and I have to do it in the rain."
She probably meant that she wouldn't be able to dry off from her 'bath' if she was continually being rained upon. Though, 'bath' was not an entirely accurate term; it was more of a dip into the ocean followed by a short, soapy scrub—Kairi called it a 'wash'. That was how they bathed, always wearing their bathing suits since none of them wanted to wait cramped in the bed tent just so the other could have the privacy of the entire ocean while they washed.
"I think the storm's calming now," Riku informed, voice slightly muffled by the strangely hard piece of meat he was attempting to chew. "The lightning and thunder have stopped."
Kairi halted the spoon heading for her mouth and looked up at the sky thoughtfully. "Huh," she remarked.
But in the next second a high-pitched yelp escaped from her lips as what could only be described as blinding light flashed in the sky directly above their heads, brightening the entire raft to an intense, vivid white.
"Holy--!" Kairi gasped, immediately bowing her head and dropping the spoon to clap a hand over her eyes. "My eyes!," she hissed as she roughly rubbed them.
Riku was blinking at her dazedly, hardly able to make out her movements through the white spots dancing across his vision. He supposed he was fortunate that he had at least been looking down when the lightning had flared.
"You okay, Kairi?" Sora asked. Riku watched him reach out a hand toward her shoulder, but he missed by a good six inches and simply pawed at the air beside Kairi.
"I will be, I think," she replied, setting down the can to use the freed hand to reach back for Sora. She, too, groped the air for a few moments before she found his outstretched hand, giving it an appreciative pat.
Riku was still silently waiting for the thunder, but it had been a while and he began to get the impression that it wasn't going to come.
"I've never seen lightning like that before," he said, looking up at the unchanged sky through gradually clearing vision. He noted that the air felt strangely still. "And I think the wind has stopped."
At that, Kairi looked up at him, blinking and squinting like an old woman without her glasses. "It's stopped?" she echoed.
Sora, as well, turned his slightly worried gaze on Riku. "Does that mean we have to row, again?"
"Well…" Riku started, putting his own lunch down and searching for his compass as an excuse to avoid his friends' gazes. "Let's just see if the wind doesn't pick up again in the next few minutes."
Sora's response was an incomprehensible murmur while Kairi's was nonexistent, though they both slowly resumed their interrupted lunch.
Riku found his compass and stood facing east, the direction in which he thought they had been heading before the freak lightning show, but had since lost his bearings.
The compass indicated that he was facing due north.
Okay… so, he had been wrong.
He then turned right approximately ninety degrees, expecting the compass to now point eastward, but was stunned to see the hand of the compass still on the tiny N that represented north.
What the…?
No way… his compass was so not broken. That couldn't even be possible. He had been more careful with it than anyone had ever been with any other precious possession in the world.
Riku was turning in all directions now, at the same time twisting the compass this way and that. But to no effect. The red indicator refused even to twitch a millimeter away from the stupid N.
"Shit!" he hissed through tightly clenched teeth, gripping the small compass so forcefully that he thought it would crack.
"What's the matter?" Sora piped up from behind him.
Attempting to reign in the anger he felt heating his face, Riku slowly turned to face his friends and willed his fingers to relax around the compass.
"My compass is broken," he said quickly, trying not to let those simple words incite his extreme irritation again.
They stared at him for a few quiet moments before Sora furrowed his brow in confusion. "I thought we didn't need the compass to tell the direction if we just looked up at the…" he trailed of as he turned his gaze upward, where the dark clouds still hovered low over the entire visible ocean around them. "…Oh. Yeah. I guess the sun can't help us that much right now."
"Well," Kairi was quick to interject, sounding too uncertain to really be convincing. "The sky will clear up soon, won't it? I mean, this is the first time it hasn't been clear since we started out."
"That's kind of what I'm worried about," Riku admitted. "But I'm pretty sure I remember that east is this way," he added hastily, pointing.
"Yeah, I think I do, too," Sora supplemented, but it had no effect on Kairi's anxious expression.
"So," she said, looking up at Riku as she worriedly fiddled with the hem of her shirt. "We row?"
"Yeah," he sighed. "Might as well get to it."
The task was carried out in silence, and the clouds stayed with them unremittingly the entire rest of the afternoon.
~*~*~*~
On the twenty-sixth day of their journey, the clouds had departed and the sun shone once again, but there was not even a hint of a breeze, let alone a strong wind that could actually propel the raft forward.
The trio was currently taking a mid-afternoon break from rowing since they had been going at it all day for the past three days and their arms were becoming increasingly weary. Kairi was sprawled flat on her back in front of the bed tent, looking truly exhausted, and Sora didn't seem much better off slumped against his pack.
Riku stood, attempting to shake the tiredness from his limbs. "Okay, guys," he said, trying and failing pathetically to sound encouraging. "Let's get back to it."
Sora slowly began to push himself up, but his arms began to tremble so badly that they gave out on him and he fell back with an "Oof!" On the second try he managed to get himself into a sitting position, but took a good deal of time pushing himself all the way to his feet.
Kairi hadn't even moved yet.
"I can't do this anymore," she said with apparent frustration, sounding close to tears. "I can't even lift my arms, Riku." Her right hand twitched up a bit in demonstration, but it began to shake and wouldn't go any higher than the top of her stomach. She let it flop back down with a worn-out sigh.
"We'll never get home in time if we don't all help out," Riku stated, irately meeting her half-lidded gaze. "None of us can afford to stop right now. Rowing only makes us go half the speed we normally would as it is!"
"Then, what's the use?!" Kairi cried desperately, managing to bring herself halfway into a sitting position in her distress. "Who knows how far we drift off course during the night, anyway! We'd might as well just stop and conserve our strength so we don't drink up all our water in one day!"
"You do that, then!" Riku pointed at her to emphasize his point, but then brought his hand back to indicate himself. "But Sora and I are not stopping. Keeping it up is the only thing that's going to get us anywhere!"
"Fine…" Kairi muttered, turning her head away as she obviously dismissed him.
"Come on, Sora," Riku said, moving over to his oar without a backward glance.
Sora obeyed, and the two of them started to paddle the raft forward as fast as they could possibly make it go.
But only an hour later, Sora's oar clattered down on the wood, and Riku looked over to see the boy resignedly slouching forward over his knees, arms hanging completely limp at his sides.
Sora brought his head up to look over at Riku in apology. "I'm sorry, Riku. My arms are dead."
Riku turned his eyes away, remaining silent as he pulled his own oar up and laid it on the floor of the raft. There was no use in him rowing by himself. The raft would just spin in circles if he were to attempt it.
They sat unmoving for the rest of the day, each of them thoroughly drained, though Riku refused to acknowledge his own exhaustion.
When night fell, he told the others he wanted to stay up for a while, and they went to bed without a word in protest. He wondered if his words had even filtered through their haze of tiredness.
And then he finally allowed himself to relax. Sprawled out on the raft much like Kairi had been earlier that day, Riku stared up at the sea of stars that had always seemed infinitely vaster than the ocean below it.
If only they were looking for new worlds somewhere up there where twinkling stars abounded, instead of on the impenetrable ocean. And if each one of those stars were a different world, then they would have no trouble finding an endless myriad of new places to discover.
The thought suddenly came to Riku that here, stuck on this empty sea, the promise Sora had made to always stay at his side really meant nothing, now that their fruitless search had proved that there was nothing out there. And it was a real shame, because Riku knew that Sora had really meant every word he had said.
Riku's eyes suddenly began to ache as he felt tears start to gather, but there was no way he would let them fall. He hadn't cried in a long time, and he had no intention of starting a trend tonight.
It wasn't only the fact that Sora would never be able to act on what he had promised; it was also the sudden confirmation that Destiny Islands really was the only place he would ever know. And he was growing so tired of everything associated with the islands, he just couldn't imagine being stuck there for the rest of his life. He would go crazy if he had to live out the rest of his adolescent life forced to bend to his parents' will, and then grow up just to work and take orders from people just like his parents.
He just couldn't do it.
The sudden caw of a seagull overhead abruptly threw Riku back into his memories, into nights when he had to go to sleep early in order to wake up in time for school, but couldn't drift off simply because a flock of seagulls had just found a midnight snack right outside his window and were making the loudest ruckus as they fought over it. He used to get so irritated he would actually go complain to his dad—who absolutely could not tolerate any 'nonsense' from Riku whatsoever—and put up with getting severely berated for waking him. Which, in turn, woke his mom up, who also yelled at him before his dad would go to the basement and dig out one of those flares that they never used and take it outside to shoot up straight in the center of the seagull flock, effectively terrifying the birds so that they wouldn't come anywhere near the area for another two weeks.
Riku had really hated those nights—being ganged up on from all sides at once. And all because those obnoxious birds couldn't shut up.
He blinked as the seagull flew into his view directly above him, silhouetted against the bright stars, and for a second he was worried that it might poop on him, until he became aware of something else.
There was a seagull flying above him. Above the raft. Which was in the middle of nowhere.
There was land nearby! There had to be!
Riku immediately shot to his feet and rapidly began to search the ocean around him, and his eyes alighted on it almost instantly.
There. In the far southern distance, barely visible against the dark horizon, was the outline of a large mass of land, far too wide to be Destiny Islands. And if Riku squinted real hard, he could make out a few specks of what seemed to be orange light.
"Sora! Kairi!" he called elatedly, dashing over to flip open the tent flap. He stuck his head in and yelled, "Guys, there's land! I see a new world! With lights!" They slept on like logs, Sora only twitching his nose once. "Sora, get up!" Riku gave him a rough kick in the calf and the boy jolted into awareness. "Land, hurry!" he cried, pulling Sora to his feet and toward the entrance, turning back only to shout, "Wake up, Kairi! Get out and come see!"
And then he was bursting out of the tent, dragging an unintelligibly murmuring Sora behind him, and turning him around to face the far-off shape of land. "Look,"he urged.
Sora blinked blankly for a few seconds before bringing his hands up to rub the sleep from his eyes, simply blinking again when his hand had dropped away, and Riku felt he was about to piss himself from impatience.
Kairi stumbled out of the tent next and shuffled over to the boys, staring at Riku in sleepy bewilderment. "What band?"
"Land, you ditz," he said after a snort, too excited to get really upset with her. But, seriously-- they had just barely gone to sleep! How were they so out of it?
"A new world!" Sora suddenly cried, leaping up and down in delight now that he had finally seen it. "I can't believe it! It's huge!"
"I know, so let's get over there," Riku told them as he pushed them over to their oars.
Before Riku could even blink, Sora had snatched his oar and was getting it ready over on his side of the raft, not a hint of his former weariness evident in his energetic movements.
As Riku got set in his own position, Kairi was doing the same at a much slower pace, craning her neck around as she moved to keep her wide, disbelieving eyes on that miraculous strip of land.
"Kairi, come on!" Sora pressed impatiently. "Get down here!"
The girl finally tore her eyes away and settled down behind Sora, and then they were off, moving faster than Riku had ever remembered them moving, but still not fast enough.
He knew that it would take them quite a long time to reach the distant piece of land, and that they would be beyond exhausted when they did, but he was only concerned with getting there as soon as they possibly could.
They had finally found their new world, and right now nothing else mattered.
A/N: The scenes in this chapter may be too many and too short in comparison to those of the first two chapters, but I couldn't see it happening any other way. Please feel free to share any thoughts or complaints with me! And thanks for reading!