Author's Note: Well, I'm not dead, as you can see with the inclusion of this next chapter. I'm so sorry to those who were waiting for this chapter (if there's still any readers left! Man, I really did leave you guys hanging.) I'm gonna really try to get the next few chapters going, but I'm a little stuck on the next one, so please bare with me. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy reading this chapter!

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square-Enix and Disney. I'm just borrowing these characters for a fic, okay?

Night Four

She was still singing about last night. I couldn't blame her; she'd finally fulfilled one of her (short) life's dreams. Girls really were fond of the whole wedding experience. The cutting the cake, the first dance, the toast to the bride and groom?

They relished every single moment, with photographers behind them every step of the way.

Personally? I'd hate to be the groom at a wedding. What was so special about getting married anyway? It was like declaring your love to the whole world. It only really mattered to the person standing right beside you at the aisle. But... then again, I'm not exactly a fan of the whole wedding ceremony in the first place.

After the reception last night, we spent the night at one of the inns in town before having a final breakfast with both Sora and Kairi.

(What was it about bringing Naminé to breakfast that made everything so... awkward?) I knew Sora and Kairi were finally dating, but to the extent that it felt lovey-dovey? Give me a break. I didn't think they'd be the kind of people to give each other sickeningly sweet nicknames and hold hands together in public.

It had made our first French breakfast very, very awkward. Naminé agreed. We tried to leave with some excuse about touring the world; Sora, obviously, knew better.

"I hope you find all those pages, Naminé," He called as we left the cafe (but not before we paid for our meal), that goofy grin still stuck on his face. Jeez. You'd think that it would disappear once he turned sixteen. But nah. Fate had decided it was fond of that goofy grin and kept it there.

Oh well. At least I could still tease him about it.

Our next location was Olympia, the world of the gods. Belle's world had had books on the subject, calling them 'Greek gods' who had people worshipping the very ground they walked on. Sora had asked me about this once, when we were in the library reading all those old books, since he wanted to know how I felt about almighty, powerful gods.

To be honest, I don't know what to think. Of course they existed, if my current location had anything to say about it. But something all powerful? Almighty? I don't know. If they did indeed exist, wouldn't they have interfered with Kingdom Hearts six months ago?

Maybe it differed from world to world. They might be all-powerful in Olympia, but their powers were severely diminished in other places like Beast's Castle and Hollow Bastion. Either that, or they strongly believed in the world order Donald and Goofy had tried so hard to keep. (Not that they'd been doing a very good job of it, but who could blame them? They did travel with Sora.)

Our arrival in Olympia was surprisingly low-key, considering I was the only guy in town that wore pants.

Needless to say, Naminé quickly bought me the local fashion and insisted that I changed. (It wasn't like we were going to be here for very long!) Of all the times she had to insist on following the world order...

The marketplace felt lively. We walked casually among the aisles, watching people barter with the shopkeepers. Namine giggled to herself as we passed a vendor selling goat cheese and olives. I gave her a confused look.

"What's up?"

She blushed, squirming a little as she looked at the next few vendors. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking... about things."

Oh really now. I grinned, "What kind of things?"

"Just. Stuff."

It was honestly too easy. "Oh?"

Pouting, Naminé bought some bread and olive oil from a nearby vendor. "Riku, it's really nothing."

I broke off a piece of bread. "If you say so," I replied, waving the piece of bread in her face. "But it sure sounds like it was pretty funny."

"Well," She began, biting into the warm bread. "I was just thinking. Where would you find my art in this world?"

"That doesn't sound like it'd be that funny," I countered.

"I'm getting there," She retorted. "This world is so ancient that my art's probably unlike anything they'd ever seen."

Oh god. She wasn't suggesting--- "You don't mean..."

"That it might be worshipped? It's a possibility."

I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing, trying my best to muffle it with my free hand. "You're kidding me."

She smiled innocently. "It's always a possibility."

"Your art... worshipped by thousands of people..." Yes, I was still laughing. The thought was just too ridiculous to let go. Who would worship Naminé's art? No offense intended, but her art wasn't exactly amazing. It was like a child's drawing. It wouldn't be amazing and as awesome as the sculptures in Belle's books.

"Or at the very least, put in a museum," Naminé quipped. "I was just thinking. No need to laugh so hard."

I honestly tried to stop laughing. It was just nearly impossible. She frowned at me, before walking even more swiftly in the direction of the nearest monument. I finished off my bread before following her. The streets weren't too crowded at this time of day; I could easily make her and her white toga out amongst the townspeople.

(It also helped that we both had extremely light-colored hair. Everyone else appeared to be dark-haired.) The townspeople also stared at us as we made our way through. One even stopped Naminé and asked in extremely broken English, "You two married?"

We exchanged nervous glances before hurriedly saying that no, we were not married. And no, we were not planning to be married within the next year, thank you very much.

She pouted as I caught up to her. "Why do these worlds keep thinking we're married?"

"Bad karma, I guess," I shrugged. "You were redder than I was."

She glared at me. Rolling my eyes, I took her hand and dragged her the last five hundred feet to the monument. The writing was also foreign and hard to make out. Naminé, however, smiled as she read the caption at the statue's feet. "It's of Hera," She remarked. "This world's goddess of marriage and women."

No wonder the townspeople were asking if we were married. Figures that she was the first statue we had to see. (But we weren't married. Or planning on getting married. For God's sake, we weren't even eighteen!)

"This is also her temple," Naminé added after I stopped groaning to myself. "You can smell the sacrifices, can't you?"

No offense intended, but it was pretty much impossible to miss the scent of burning cow carcasses. It stunk. "No," I sarcastically replied. "It smells too nice to miss all together!"

She frowned, walking in without saying a single word. What was it with women and their inability to figure out when we were joking? I followed her in, ignoring our footsteps as we passed through the dimly lit hallway to the giant chair in the middle of the room.

There was a woman tending to the fire beside the chairs; she waved at us and smiled gently. "Would you like to pray to Hera?"

Namine looked towards me for help. I shrugged, pushing her towards who I assumed was the priestess. "She'd like to," I called. "We're looking for something and figured..."

The priestess raised an eyebrow at me. "You know, men are more than welcome to pray to Hera. Especially if you're married."

"But we're not married," Naminé and I both protested in unison. We exchanged nervous glances before Naminé hurriedly explained, "He's um... actually my brother. We were just traveling." (We were now related? Eh. It'd keep people from assuming we were romantically involved.)

"Ah, a family... perhaps you should pray to Hestia later," The priestess smiled. "But you can still pray to Hera, sir. She'll accept all prayers."

Was I actually getting pressured into praying to a goddess? I sighed, but exasperatedly knelt down before the fire. I had no idea what I should say, but I figured it'd be a good idea to mention Naminé somewhere in there. Please let Naminé find all of her sketchbook pages, Hera. I have no idea if you exist or not - or even if you're a real goddess - but help would certainly be nice.

Naminé too knelt down beside me, but she stayed longer than I did.

As we were about to leave, the priestess added, "Aren't you going to sacrifice something to Hera?"

Sacrifice? Oh yeah, Belle's books had briefly mentioned something along those lines. But what on earth were we supposed to sacrifice to her? As if she were reading my mind, the priestess deftly took our fresh olives and bread and fed them to the fire.

Naminé gasped in horror as she watched the bread burn. I groaned mentally (that bread was expensive!) as I watched my money go up in flames. "Hera, like most of our deities, love the smell of burnt food," She explained as we left. "Have a pleasant evening!"

"Yeah, right," I grumbled as more patrons passed us into Hera's temple. "That was expensive bread."

"And very wasteful," Naminé added mournfully. "You think the gods and goddesses would've come up with better methods of sacrifices..."

(Was it sad that I really did care more about the loss of money than food? Probably.)

"So," I began. "Hestia, right? But maybe we should go scour those art stores first. Your pictures might show up there."

She nodded in agreement. "Should we buy more bread and olives?"

"No. The other gods will just burn it first," I immediately replied, making a face.

Naminé giggled and sent me an amused look, but said nothing as we wove through the busy crowds. Didn't really help that the streets stunk or that the townspeople were always in a hurry. It took us at least half an hour to find that art store, and we were stared at again once we walked in.

"Hello," The shopkeeper greeted us. Once he got a better look at our light hair, his eyes widened and he then added, "You're not from around here, are you?"

"No," Namine admitted with a slight blush. "We're looking for art supplies, sir."

He motioned over to the rows of quills, pigment, and clay. Naminé acknowledged him with a polite nod before she followed his gaze over to the rows of supplies. I hung back by the entrance. It was pretty obvious that I wasn't much of an artist; I couldn't tell the difference between different types of clay, and I certainly didn't know how to mix pigments together.

Within minutes, Naminé came back to me and shook her head. "It's not here." Turning to the shopkeeper, she apologetically smiled as she took me out the door, calling, "I apologize for taking up your time, sir!"

"Now what?"

"Perhaps we could pray to Hestia after all," Naminé shrugged. "Or to the god of art, whoever that may be."

"Probably Apollo," I mused. "He's the god of a lot of things like music and poetry and medicine. How far's his temple from here?"

Naminé shrugged. "I'm not sure. Maybe an half hour's walk?"

I frowned. Of all the worlds to get stuck in... it had to be the one without much modern technology. That stunk. And we couldn't really rely on the reputation of the keyblade here; this wasn't the Underworld. Or the Olympus Coliseum, for that matter. Were we really stuck between the two worlds?

Belle's book had said that this place, Athens, was the mortal ground. It was between Mount Olympus, home of the gods, and the Underworld, which was Hades' domain as well as the home of the deceased. Athens was just home to mortals like us. ... That would probably explain why we looked so weird. They'd never seen people quite like us.

Upon stopping in front of Apollo's temple, we saw a woman sitting on the front steps. She looked vaguely familiar; I couldn't quite place where I had seen that purple toga or deep chestnut hair before. Naminé, however, decided to walk up to her.

"Um, excuse me. Is this Apollo's temple?"

The woman blinked, looking up at her. "Huh? Oh, yeah. This is definitely her temple, hon. What business do you have here?"

"I'm here because I'm an artist," Naminé smiled. "... Unfortunately, I've lost some of my paintings, so my brother and I thought we'd pray to Apollo for help."

"An artist," The woman's face softened. But then she remembered the second part of Naminé's words and blinked. "Lost your paintings? Were they on plates or something? They'd be a little hard to lose if they're on the wall..."

Naminé stared. "On the wall? I-I painted them on paper."

"What's paper?"

Oh jeez. They didn't even have paper? Naminé blushed, but explained, "It's kind of like... a material that we can write and draw on? And ink will stay on and it's portable, so you can take it places."

"Kinda like papyrus, huh," The woman grinned. "My boyfriend just walked in with something like that. He thought it'd make a good sacrifice to Apollo."

Naminé gave me a horrified look before hurriedly dashing into the temple. "What the heck," She muttered to herself before she completely disappeared. "He couldn't!"

I smirked, "He's not really going to sacrifice her drawings, is he?"

"Herc's a little on the slow side," The woman admitted, "But he wouldn't sacrifice them without making sure Apollo knew the truth behind them." She paused for a moment, studying me over. "You really aren't her brother, are you?"

"... Not really," I confessed. Crossing my arms, I added, "But it got the townspeople off our backs. I'm Riku, by the way. My friend's Namine."

A look of recognition washed over her face. She immediately stood up and smiled. "You're Sora's friend, aren't you?"

I nodded. "I should've figured... but yeah, it's me."

"He's found you, right?"

"Of course," I grinned. "No worries. It's not my style to just ditch my best friend like that."

"Good. Otherwise I might have to hurt you," She responded with an equally large grin. (I decided that she probably wasn't kidding.) "Name's Megara, but everyone calls me Meg."

We shook hands. I started to descend the stairs, but Naminé came out at that exact moment with a fistful of papers in her hands. A tall, muscular man followed her out; I assumed that was the 'Herc' Meg had mentioned earlier. "Good news, Riku," She beamed as she greeted me. "Hercules here had found all of my paintings! And he was at Apollo's temple to help. Good thing we asked Hera for help, huh?"

Hercules blinked. "Wait, you guys were at Mom's temple earlier?"

Now we both stared at him. "Mom?"

"Yeah," He laughed nervously. "You see... Hera's my mom. And Zeus is my dad. So I'm kinda a demigod?"

(Okay. Sora had definitely omitted this from all his stories. I had a feeling that I was going to grill him about this much, much later. And perhaps give him a couple of headlocks over not telling me the whole story.)

"Wow," I whistled. "That's... pretty cool. Did Hera tell you that we were looking for art?"

"She'd actually found it herself," Hercules shrugged. "Supposedly was a sacrifice to her since the people in the paintings looked like her and Dad. But once she saw you two... she realized it was probably yours, so she wanted me to give it back. But on one condition."

Namine beamed. "I'll do anything!"

"Okay, okay," Herc laughed. "She wants you to paint a mural on her temple wall, preferably of her and her symbol, the peacock."

"Works for me," She cheerfully responded. "Thank you so much, Hercules! I don't know what I would've done if I hadn't found the art."

I laughed, exchanging knowing glances with Meg.

"They're alike, aren't they," Meg commented. "Both with eternally one-track minds."

"Yeah," I chuckled. "So I guess we'll be off to paint that mural?"

"You can stay at my place afterwards for the night," Hercules added. "As thanks for making my mom smile an' all."

"No problem," We both chorused. Naminé's eyes met mine, and I saw her blush briefly before we started on the trek towards the art store again (but hey, at least we'd buy supplies this time!) Meg and Hercules hung back, their arms interlinked as they talked amongst themselves.

"Today was actually pretty good," Naminé remarked to me. I blinked as she took my arm, but said absolutely nothing as we walked into the store.

Considering the worst-case scenario, today hadn't been bad at all. But it felt like every one was going to be eternally long for a while... Jeez. I'll really need a vacation from it all once it's over.

Nine Nights Left.