KINGDOM HEARTS BELONGS TO SQUARE ENIX (IN ASSOCIATION WITH DISNEY)
WINNIE THE POOH'S CHARACTERS ARE A CREATION BY A. A. MILNE
Pooh performed his morning exercises. Up, down, up, down...After just five minutes, his tummy started grumbling, and he said: "I worked up an appetite", so he decided to pay a visit to his friend Rabbit, expecting him to say...
"Christopher Robin, perhaps you can tell us the answer."
The boy rose his head from the book on his hands, in which he had been doodling and scribbling.
He quickly glanced at the blackboard, trying to guess what the teacher had been talking while his mind was somewhere else, but the figures written in there gave him no clues. Of course, that made things worse.
"Distracted again, huh? Back to your own world, I see. I suppose this one is not interesting enough for you. Well, perhaps an F Will bring you back to Earth." The teacher reprimanded him.
His cheeks turned a little red when he noticed the whole class looking at him and snickering. He sunk his head into the book again, this time wishing it would help him escape from the shame.
He wished more than before to be back at home, back to the Hundred Acre Wood, where one could get distracted with everything and there no old teachers to reprimand one for it, and be surrounded by people nice enough not to snicker when he made a fool of himself. Yes, he dreamed all the time to be back because school was the last place he wanted to be. But he had to be there for half of the day. Father said it was his only duty. And he had to be thankful it was his only one, he normally added. He said he world have more responsibilities when he gres up, he would have to be out of the house for way longer and do harder, more boring things...If it was so, Christopher Robin said to himself, he didn't want to grow up.
He forced himself to follow the class. They were doing Maths, some difficult calculations. 9x7. Yes, he regretted not having had paid attention. It sounded like an imposible things for him to multiply such big numbers. They really went far while he was back to the Woods, were they?
John Alcott was answering incorrectly, and he was one of the smartests!
"I sometimes feel like I am talking to the wall..." The teacher regretted, shaking her head. "Let's go over the nine times table again. Nine times one?"
Nine. Christopher Robin had only gone this far.
"Nine times tw..."
The teacher sushed and rose her head. All the children, not just Christopher Robin, got distracted and looked around.
The ceiling was trembling. It started softly, and it was slowly increasing in intensity. Christopher Robin felt his desk shake too, and the floor under his feet. The children were too stranged to mutter to each other.
"Look! Out there!" Liam Quimby shouted suddenly. He was sitting right next to the window so he had a perfect view of the outside.
Everyone, even the teacher, ran to see what was going on out of the building.
Something big was indeed going on: even though it was just ten in the morning, everything was as dark as it was midnight with no moon. Only the silhouette of the houses and the trees was visible, and they could see it was not just the classroom, everything at all was shaking. An earthquake?
Some classmates started yelping and gasping nervously.
"A-Alright, children, don't panic! Get under your desks! Hurry!" The teacher instructed them.
They quickly did as she was saying. No one minded to grab their most valued possessions, since they were too scared to even remember about them.
Christopher Robin did. He quickly grabbed his scribbling book and his under his desk. There, he held on it tight.
Had he been back at home, he would have grabbed Pooh Bear and as many friends as his arms could have covered, but at school he only had the stories he wrote about them. A little image from them, anyway—enough for him.
He thought of Kanga wrapping her arms around him and comforting him in that way only mothers can. Perhaps Tigger could crack a joke or two, because Tiggers are never scared of anything; the unknown is never scary but exciting to them. Owl could tell them this is was nothing, just an insignificant vibration and distract him with a boring anecdote. Rabbit could perhaps tell him if it was normal that the earth school this violently, him knowing everything about the earth.
The lights inside the classroom flickered, then died, leaving them in the dark. The shaking intensified, becoming a violent tremor. The temperature seemed to drop drastically. Christopher Robin heard the teacher let out an exclamation: "oh, good Lord!" Even she had no idea of what this was. She was an adult but she wasn't in control of the situation at all.
He wished he had taken Piglet to school with him. He was so small he fit inside his pocket, and he would have had his hand to press. He could have settled for Eeyore's tail.
The earth was breaking! It had to be! The walls were cracking and everything on the shelves was falling and smashing against the floor. They heard people in the nearby classrooms scream. In Christopher Robin 's there was now no one who wasn't wailing in fear. Some bawled, calling their mommies. Even the teacher was terrified and wouldn't stop saying God, good heavens, dear, my oh my...
Christopher Robin, too scared to join them, just pressed the book against is chest, trying to comfort himself with the memory of those peaceful Woods, his quiet and steady paradise, where these sort of scary things never happened, where his friends awaited him and could help him in this and any kind of predicament.
How he wished he could hold them all tight at that moment! Most especially good old Pooh!
Pooh, Pooh Bear! The boy called him mentally, as loud as he could, to try to make his mental scream louder than the yelling around him.
His last thought before he, everyone and everything disappeared.
...
All except one little thing.
It floated for long in the emptiness, until it found a way inside Merlin's bag. He was curious enough about this when he found it among his belongings, and much more after Cid restored it.
A relic from a vanished world.
There was something particular in this book. He took it to his home to examine it more carefully. The heartless had tried to get their hands on it, it seemed. It was damaged, though reparable and still readable, as far as it was possible with many pages missing.
A world on its own. A book which contained little creatures with big hearts—or at least it used to, because there was just one left; the others were missing along with the ripped pages. Of course those critters had tried to get their hands on it, in order to consume them. The inhabitants were most possibly a bit shaken by the heartless' mistreatment. Merlin got inside of it and found the world had lost quite a bit of territory due to the mutilation of some pages and the only bear living in it knew his friends were gone, but didn't remember anything particular happening and held no memory of anyone else or anything except the taste of honey that he so missed. But he and his friends had had it pretty well, in Merlin's opinion. Far better than many other worlds destroyed by the forces of darkness. The book was protected by a powerful magic. The writer had sealed it from the bad influences from the outside with their own heart. They had poured all of it on those pages and drawings, Merlin could see it.
He turned the pages and found a name, written with a scholar's calligraphy.
Christopher Robin.
What a pity, thinking that this person did not exist any longer, his world and his very person swallowed by darkness. But he had left this interesting piece behind. A world created by one single person, a young one it seemed, with so much love it had survive the destruction. He hoped the power from the keyblade could help him bring him back and know more about this Christopher with such a big heart and imagination he created and saved his own world...
THE END
