Kairi Hearts
By Chronic Guardian
Written for Twelve Shots of Summer: DECK
Week 2: Priestess and Empress
02 – Widening the Circle
Naminé woke up with a start. She was in a bed, metal framed and furnished with professional austerity. Not the ornate trappings of Castle Oblivion, nor the geometric inlays of The Castle That Never Was, but still reminiscent of the same emptiness. She wasn't home.
More importantly, she wasn't with Kairi. Something had gone wrong.
"Ah, you're awake," A young woman with bobbed brown hair, presumably a caretaker in charge of the ward, came around the corner with a clipboard. She wore a black uniform jacket over a blue, knit sweater and a plain white skirt. Part of an organization, then, but not one scrupulously concerned with dress-code. Naminé noted a black and white emblem patch on the shoulder and studied it for a later sketch while the young woman went on. "Welcome to Garden; I'm glad to see you're recovering finally."
Naminé frowned as she sat up and ordered her thoughts. "My apologies, I didn't mean to impose." Then, after a moment of remembering how first meetings usually worked, "My name is Naminé."
It was a bland introduction, but she was too fixated on orienting herself in the new world to spare more decorum.
"Umm… H-how did you find me?" She pressed on. If she just kept saying things, maybe she would catch her footing. The last thing she remembered, she had been picking at the world fabric, trying to follow the thread of memories between Kairi's heart and Sora's. In theory, it was supposed to make a way off Destiny Islands and bring them to wherever he was now.
Unfortunately, unless Kairi and Sora were somewhere else in this Garden, it would seem that plan had been somewhat less than successful.
"Lost Spirits from the Sleeping Realm gather in Garden," the young woman said simply, making notes on her clipboard. Her voice was patient and had a cadence like gently bobbing waves. Naminé's hands flexed reflexively, missing her own customary sketch pad. "It's a point of crossing, apparently. Our Relics let us turn them into Guardian Forces so we can use them in the Realm of Waking. Maybe you're not a Spirit, but from how we found you I assume you slipped into the Sleeping Realms without leaving your body."
Naminé pursed her lips and tried to think of a more favorable explanation, namely one that didn't cast her as both breaking taboos and attempting established impossibilities. Framed like that, she wasn't just a vandal, she was an incompetent vandal.
Then again, there could be perks to admitting ignorance. Her hostess seemed ready enough to talk, anyway, so at least the young woman wasn't holding it against her. "Yes," she admitted after a beat, "we were trying something like that."
The woman from Garden gave a rueful smile and shook her head. "I hope you learned your lesson, then. A taste of magic can make you forget there are laws of the natural world to be obeyed. You don't get true power by subjugating nature, you know. You need to learn from it, not bend it."
"Thank you, but..." Naminé paused. She could just leave it at that. The caretaker didn't need to know that she wouldn't stop until they got Sora back. As soon as she could find a way out of Garden, they never needed to meet again. All things considered, that would probably be the easiest choice in the long run.
On the other hand, if the woman actually did understand something about the Sleeping Realm, then maybe it was worth talking honestly with her.
Taking a bracing breath, she decided to risk the latter. "I'm not sure nature wants me to have what I want."
"Maybe. In my experience, nature doesn't want us to have things the wrong," The young woman suggested evenly, finishing up her notes and turning to go. If the intention to re-offend the laws of nature bothered her, she didn't show it. "You still have a while before you'll be ready to go. Why not rest and learn the lessons the Garden has to teach you?"
Naminé gave a polite nod and looked away. It wasn't terribly encouraging, but it was still a chance. Maybe she'd been separated from Kairi for now and maybe their first attempt had ended poorly, but it hadn't been a total disaster. If she kept seeking answers, there would still be a chance she could help.
-N-
She hobbled as far as the doors to the infirmary ward before giving up and returning to bed the first day. Apparently, her little stunt with the Sleeping Realms had taken more out of her than she thought. She found doors to other parts of the ward that were locked, and long hanging logs showing she hadn't been the only one to visit the facility, but no other people besides the young woman she met when she woke up.
As a small triumph, she had found a front office stocked with supplies, including pens and reams of record paper, and helped herself to one of each from opened packages. The caretaker seemed laid back enough that she wouldn't mind, and Naminé could already feel herself going stir crazy without her usual processing sketch habits.
She spent the rest of the afternoon sketching her surroundings and trying to re-establish her connection with Kairi.
The caretaker—Ellone, as she introduced herself—came back in the evening with dinner: prepackaged cafeteria food.
"So… How big is this place?" Naminé asked over a nutrition bar with the consistency of over-aged fruit jerky. She'd seen other corridors and structures outside the windows while she poked around, but the most she could tell for sure was the infirmary wing connected to a towering central hub that led off to several other modules, including an outdoor space.
In a way, it reminded her of The Castle That Never Was, but with a more gently curved, human aesthetic, and at least enough colors to fill a basic eight-pack of pencils.
Most notably, however, Garden appeared to be traveling freely through the Ways Between. They weren't on part of a world somewhere. Beyond the Garden grounds was the abyss of space. If Naminé was going to leave eventually, she would have to find her solution within these walls.
"Big enough," Ellone returned with a warm smile. She had brought her own tray of cafeteria fare, but had only taken a few discreet bites of the contents. For the most part, she seemed to be there to watch Naminé. "We're working on an orchard in the quad, but it hasn't taken yet. We'll move you to the dorms when you're a little better, and then you can explore the rest. Or… the rest that's there now, anyway."
The Nobody girl gave her companion a tilted look. "'There now'?" She repeated. Were they planning on expansions? Where were they getting materials from?
Ellone's eyes shifted to the window and her expression thinned with contemplation. "Garden is a Relic, a special creation from the Age of Fairytales. It doesn't behave like most things in the current age. If you want, maybe we can ask the matron. She was the first one to find this place."
"And the Spirits you mentioned earlier?"
"Guardian Forces," Ellone corrected lightly. "Spirits are tied to the Sleeping Realms. Guardian Forces are tied—or junctioned—to hearts in the Realm of Waking using memories. Think of them like gifts from the Sleeping Realms. We only discovered them when we ended up here a few years back and reawakened the Relic. Here," she extended her hand. A moment later, a blue armored, child-sized knight tumbled out, as if she had been concealed in Ellone's sleeve. Immediately, frost spiderwebbed out from the knight's feet and the temperature in the room dramatically cooled.
"I s-see your point," Naminé shivered, drawing her bed's blankets closer. Even with the extra barrier, she felt her body slowing, as if falling into hibernation.
Ellone smiled and withdrew the knight. The room warmed appreciably, and Naminé let out a breath that would have been visible a moment earlier.
"Are all of them like that?"
"All of them are special," Ellone said, slightly shifting the question. "Not all are elemental. We're not sure what Mirabel's is, but I'm sure she has one."
"Mirabel?"
"Another girl who lives here," Ellone explained. "I'll let the family explain at breakfast tomorrow."
Naminé dropped her eyes to her own body, still worn out by the brief expedition earlier in the day. "You think I'll be healthy enough to leave the infirmary then?"
"Sure," the older girl raised one of the wrappers from the lunch tray and peeled it back. "The cafeteria food may not be great, but it has cure magic baked into it. Tomorrow will be a whole new you."
They talked about other things after that, about where Naminé was from and what she was trying to do. She gave fairly straightforward answers but purposefully withheld her status as a Nobody. Part of her insisted it would be more trouble than it was worth to explain, but she also wondered how Ellone would react to the classification.
By the time Ellone left, she was feeling a little better, but she wasn't feeling any more full. She needed to do something, to put herself into action instead of just sitting around.
Eventually, she settled for drawing a picture of herself, standing in the area she could see outside her infirmary window. Maybe there wasn't much out there yet, but it at least wasn't a cage.
-N-
Naminé wasn't used to making a second impression. People had always formed their own ideas pretty quickly, especially when they knew about her powers. More than that, for the past two years it had seemed like everything was centered on Organization XIII and Sora and his friends.
Now, alone in Garden, Naminé was having to deal with the idea of herself on her own. Not as Kairi's Nobody, not as the Witch of Castle Oblivion, and not as a convenient tool for some larger plan. She still carried those memories and identities with her, but they didn't mean anything to the people in Garden.
And yet, when Ellone came back again the next day, Naminé could practically feel her taking the time to study and re-evaluate the interloper. "I'm sorry," the caretaker said after a moment.
Naminé gave her hostess a cautious look."Sorry for what?"
"Matron has asked that I keep you in the infirmary."
Naminé thought about the paper and pen she had commandeered (and not told Ellone about) and tried not to glance at where she had stashed them under her pillow. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No, not… wrong," Ellone fidgeted with her hands and frowned at the foot of the bed. "But the Matron is worried you might be dangerous."
Ah, so there it was. They feared her. Once again, she was a problem standing out against the way things should be. "I understand," she replied, forcing a weary smile. At least they weren't trying to use her for something like the Organization had. "Thank you for your hospitality. Do you know how long I have?"
Ellone's eyes jumped up as her brows furrowed. "Have? What, do you mean here? In the infirmary?"
"Until you send me away."
Ellone scoffed. "We can't do that."
"But if Matron—"
"We're in the middle of nowhere, the Lanes Between. If we pushed you off, you would be lost to the Dark Realms."
"...Isn't that what you would do with someone you don't want?"
She didn't mean it rhetorically. After spending the majority of her life being twisted to one purpose or another, Naminé didn't like the idea of manipulating people into giving a certain response. She'd had enough of that with changing Sora's memories in Castle Oblivion. If the Matron really did not want her around, then the most logical course of action would be to expel her from Garden.
"Listen, Naminé..." Ellone began, taking a seat on the lower part of the bed, "You aren't alone."
I will be if you isolate me in the infirmary, she retorted in her head, but settled for a measuring look outwardly. She could always say it later if this went where she thought it was going. After dealing with DiZ and the Organization, soft walk-backs meant very little to her.
"I have certain powers," the girl from Garden went on haltingly, "I… think it's what drew the Unversed to our world—Not Garden, the place I'm actually from—Anyway, I have something people thought was time travel. It's really more like letting people experience memories—sends them to the pasts of people who came before them. I helped some say goodbye to people they lost, or family they never got to meet. Right before our world was attacked, they were talking about using me to investigate the Keyblade Masters.
"Then our world disappeared and I ended up here. I tried to use my powers to change the past, to make things right again. I tried to save my world from disappearing."
"...And it didn't work?"
Ellone nodded, and Naminé could tell now the older girl was forcing herself to maintain eye contact. "The people I tried to send back with my powers that time… haven't woken up."
Naminé froze, her mind snapping back to the locked doors she'd found yesterday and the logs outside them. Those hadn't been from previous uses. Those had been current records.
"You mean..."
"I tried to fix things using the only power I knew how to use," Ellone said. "It didn't change anything in the past. But I don't think…" she blinked and cast about for words. "I don't think we're not meant to fix things. I just… went about it the wrong way."
"Hmm..." Naminé hummed numbly. She didn't know how to respond to the confession. She had talked to broken people before—some of them that she had broken—and still struggled to emote something beyond remorseful acknowledgment when conversations came to this point. She understood the concept of empathy, she even thought she might have felt it once or twice, but she didn't know how to show it very well.
And yet, something about this felt different. Most of the time, people just needed someone to talk to. This felt like someone trying to give her advice. "And you think I'm going about it the wrong way, too?" she went on.
"I think," Ellone said with a quick reproachful look, "that you can help me."
Naminé opened her mouth, managed a soft "oh" steeped in perplexity, then closed it again. She wasn't entirely unused to being helpful, but she also wasn't used to people knowing what to do with her.
"You have some power over the Sleeping Realm," Ellone pressed on. "That's how you got here, right? If we work together, maybe you can help wake up the people I sent into my memories."
"But, the Matron—"
"The Matron wants to make sure nothing bad happens to anyone who isn't already in trouble," Ellone explained. "I think we can safely count ourselves out of that category, don't you?"
"You know," Naminé said slowly, "if the Matron is unsure about me now, I don't think going behind her back is going to help change her mind."
"But it will change lives, and for the better," Ellone pressed, leaning closer across the bed sheets. "And it will give you practice to figure out your own problem. You can't always find all the answers just keeping to yourself, you know. Sometimes you have to widen the circle."
Naminé stared. She didn't like getting involved. She didn't like messing up the world with powers that were never meant to exist and making problems for people like Sora to solve.
But she was also here because she was tired of just trying to stay out of trouble. She was here because she had been trying to do something good. Now, maybe she would get the chance to make that a reality.
"Alright," she said at last, "but I should warn you, I don't have the best track record for this sort of thing."
Ellone's serious expression softened into a relieved smile. "That's fine," she said. "We're not trying to do things the way they've been done before. If you're willing to try creating a new way forward, that's good enough for me."
Chapter Closed
A/N: So, this side story sets up Naminé's adventures away from Kairi, but I promise they will eventually reunite. I hope I did not dump too much lore on you all at once, but there are a few key concepts here that lay the foundation for the rest of Kairi Hearts: notably Relics. While I'll keep the whole lecture for later, the basic idea is that the Foretellers made the Relics to either prevent, escape, or recover from the Keyblade War. Some of them, like the Mirage Arena, are built around harnessing abilities like Ellone's that allow the user to experience past memories and even manifest imagination or data in some cases. Others, like Garden, were meant as Arks for the old world.
Garden, which is drawn from Final Fantasy VIII as the home base for the SeeDs, is here envisioned as originally meant for the Dandelions, but lost to the Ways Between in the ensuing war. It has since been discovered by Ellone (also from Final Fantasy VIII) as well as some other characters that I will leave you to guess and theorize about. Suffice it to say that Naminé's segments will take place here and we can explore those options later.
Anyway, that's another week down. Thank you for reading! I hope you are having a fantastic summer and that I haven't pressed your patience too much.
See you in the next one?
-CG
6-11-2023