Scene III: The Melodious Wayfarer of the Waters
"Where are we going?" Namine asked the marionette. Zexion continued to stay silent as he led her through the foggy thicket. "Zexion? Can you please tell me?"
Zexion turned torwards her. "We're going to see a friend of mine. He likes the water a lot." He spoke quietly, before the two continued walking.
It wasn't long before they found themselves at a large clearing, with a lake ahead of them. A waterfall rushed from a towering height, the neverending water bubbling down into the lake below. On the land, some blooms that seemed like daffodils, but not quite daffodils, grew on the verdant ground.
In the middle of the lake, however, a figure sat on a large, smooth boulder peeking out from the water below. His bare feet dangled in the water as he held a sitar close to his chest and played a gentle mellow tune, plucking the strings of the instrument quietly. His hair was a messy mullet of dirty-blond, his eyes a bluish-green, lit with delight as he continued the musical piece. A grin was on his face, which seemed to say exactly the same message as the rest of his face did; full of delight just messing about the music.
The mullet-haired figure, who looked about Namine's age or maybe a little older, finished the tune and turned towards Zexion and Namine.
"Hey there." He spoke, giving a goofy grin. "I see you're looking lively."
Zexion sighed as he walked over to the mullet-haired musician. "Demyx, we don't have hearts. We can't feel."
Demyx just let out soft pout. "Oh, we do too have hearts, don't be mad, Zexy!" He responded as he literally walked across the water and onto the grassy land, the sitar vanishing into thin air. He turned to Namine. "Hey there! The name's Demyx, Melodious Wayfarer of the Waters. Yours?" He asked, immediately extending a hand towards her.
"Um, my name is Namine." Namine responded quickly, shaking his hand and smiling, slightly nervous. "It's nice to meet you." Don't have hearts? Namine immediately thought back to Zexion's previous remark. What the...I wonder what that's about...
"Nice to meet you, too!" Demyx replied. "You're new here, aren't you?"
"That's exactly why I brought her here." Zexion replied before Namine could say a 'yes.' "I figured you could help me tell her the basics of how this world works."
"Ah. I see." Demyx tiltled his head, leaning it against his arm (propped up vertically ontop of his other arm which was horizontal) temporarily before letting out an 'ah-ha!' "That's great! I can show you to the place where I live, first, if you want!" He spoke to Namine excitedly.
Namine was confused at this statement. "I thought you lived around here."
"Oh, noo..." Demyx trailed off. "I live IN the lake! Isn't that awesome!? I can totally show you what it looks like!"
"But-but-I can't breathe underwater!" Namine responded, mortified. "I'm-I'm just a regular human being, I don't have gills to breathe with!"
"I don't need 'em to breathe underwater, actually. It's one of my natural abilities. But for you," Demyx dug about in his pants pocket before fishing out two candies covered in bluish-green wrappers. "Just eat one."
Namine picked up the treat and stared at it as Zexion picked up the other one, unwrapping it before he popped it into his mouth. She then unwrapped it, revealing the candy to be a small sphere of the same colour as the wrapper.
"It's not going to poison you or anything like that..." Demyx trailed off. "It will taste like seaweed, though, just thought I'd warn you if you don't like seaweed. And you don't have to chew on it, either, just swallow it."
"Um, thanks..." Namine hestantly put the little sphere in her mouth and swallowed. Demyx was right. It did taste like the sharp taste of seaweed exactly. "What now?"
"Just dive into the water!" The mullet-haired musician told her.
"...What?"
"C'mon, we can dive together! One, two, three!"
At 'three,' the first thing Namine realized was that she was falling into the water below, with Demyx and Zexion by her side.
She tried to hold her breath on instinct as soon as her head went underwater, but then she remembered that she could breathe underwater, due to the help of the seaweed-flavoured candy Demyx gave her moments ago. She exhaled, seeing bubbles of air float upwards, before taking another breath. She wasn't drowining. She was fine.
She looked around quietly. Pink coral stuck out from below; shells glinting in the pale brown sand. Fish of all colours, some black, some rainbow, swirled about in the water around her. This was definitely nothing like any lake she saw underwater before.
"Hey!" She turned to see Demyx, waving to her. Zexion was beside him, a small grin on his face. "Come on! Follow me!" Demyx called out before he started swimming away. Namine quickly followed, thankful that she was such a strong swimmer in the first place. Eventually she was swimming alongside the other two, and she continued to look around.
Seahorses seemed to dance as crabs scuttled about on the ocean floor. The seaweed, glowing in their many shades of green, let themselves be swayed by the small currents around them. Namine couldn't help but smile at the view around her. No wonder Demyx lived here, she thought to herself. It would definitely fit a wayfarer of the waters for sure.
It wouldn't be long before they finally reached the cave that Demyx lived in.