Disclaimer: The World Ends With You belongs to Square Enix. I'm just borrowing.
A/N: Another one written for twewy ldws; the prompt was 'marker'.
Dreaming in Color
She comes across the picture while cleaning her room one day, and stops to stare at it for a while.
It's a chaotic jumble of images, childishly drawn in brightly colored markers. The spaceship up in one corner is a startling shade of red. Some sort of blue dragon flies below it, and there's a creature which upon consideration is probably a horse. Nearby, a blonde stick figure rides a skateboard in front of a blocky gray skyline.
A bright green park, full of trees and flowers and swing sets, takes up nearly half the page. It would be a more prosaic scene if not for the elephant ambling through it, another stick figure on its back.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can always ask." He laughs quietly. "I don't promise to answer."
She nods; she wouldn't have expected much else from him. "What was my entry fee?"
It's strange. She can vaguely remember drawing the picture, though she couldn't have been more than five or six at the time. What she can't remember is having all those things, all that vibrant life, in her head.
He tilts his head to one side, gives her a calm stare. "Don't you know?"
All those dreams.
She sits down at her desk and searches through the drawers until she finds a blank piece of paper and a handful of felt-tipped pens. Her hand holds a pen to the paper and she stares at it for a while. But there's nothing there. No vast worlds of imagination, no fantastic creatures, nothing she wants to be or do. No... anything.
She lost the Game, after all.
"Will I ever get them back?"
There's mild reproof in his tone. "You know the answer to that, too."
And that could mean anything, really.
All right. Maybe... maybe start smaller.
She thinks for a little while, sets the bright colors aside, reaches for a pencil instead. Her brow furrows in studious concentration as she begins to draw.
Some while later she sits back to examine the result. She's not the world's best artist, and the crudely sketched figure would hardly be recognizable if not for the baggy shirt and black cap. But she knows it's her. The self-portrait is sitting at her desk, a smile on her face and a line that's supposed to be a pen in her hand. She's busily engaged in drawing a picture, though its details are indistinct in the sketch.
"Is that all you'll say?"
He shrugs. "There's nothing else to say."
And maybe this is what he meant. She doesn't remember how to dream about big things... but if she can dream about remembering how to dream, then maybe hope isn't lost.
She tapes the new picture up on the wall by her bed, and the old one next to it. The colored pens and markers go back in her desk drawer; she doesn't need them right now.
But someday, she will.
A/N: Look at that, I wrote something that... barely had Josh in it at all. He still insisted on making an appearance, though... he does like attention. -_-;;
Comments, good or bad, would be much appreciated!