Sora had always seen Merlin's house, back in Traverse Town and now in Radiant Garden, as a cozy place where nothing bad could ever happen. For the child, it wasn't so, because, one more night, his sleep was disturbed by nightmares.
He was seeing the light...A warm light...filtering through the leaves, bathing the meadows, the trees, the flowers...
It was beautiful. He tried to touch it. Feel it.
But instead he fell...He fell...Fell...Fell...
He still reached for the light, like a plea to save him, to grab him and take him to safety.
But he kept falling...until the light disappeared from sight and only shadows...coldness...silence...remained...
When he snapped his eyes open, he found that his three protectors were fighting a few unversed which had appeared inside the room. And after they made them disappear, all eyes turned towards him. It was so embarrassing. Like wetting one's bed.
"Are you okay?" Goofy gently asked him, rubbing his back for comfort.
His head nodded yes but the trembling Goofy felt indicated otherwise.
The light...I feel it...But the darkness doesn't go away...It won't go away...
It kept happening night after night. Goofy decided to sleep by his side. He said it worked for Max, when he too got these night terrors. And it had some effect, because, even thought the boy kept whining in his sleep, hunted by bad dreams, he held onto him and seemed to find some kind of comfort.
Night after night, Pooh walked out to the door, when everyone else was sleeping, and watched the sky. He could only find a vast black veil, no stars to be seen. But he was sure to find them eventually.
Then, I will ask them to shine their brightest so they can find the way back
Who they was, he wasn't entirely sure, but he hadn't been more sure of anything in his life.
The trio, as much as their mission allowed them, tried to cheer him up, in hopes that he would feel better and make some kind of progress, even just stop creating unversed. They took him to the beautiful gardens, off in long walks to the places where two years before they had fought monsters and dragons, telling him all about it, even reproducing said battles. Encouraged Aerith, Yuffie, Leon and Cid's visits, and thought they were going in the right direction, seeing with how much curiosity he watched Sora, Leon and Yuffie's friendly fights. Uncle Scrooge gave them endless sea-salt ice cream supplies.
Everybody was friendly to him..., so why did he seem like he couldn't see any of them?
Lost in his own world...In his thoughts...
Piglet knocked at Pooh's door. His friend doesn't make him wait much.
"H-Hi, Pooh. Want to come play Poohsticks with Eeyore and Owl?"
"Oh, no, thanks. I'm waiting for someone." Pooh replied.
And he looked above Piglet's shoulder, as if he expected to see someone behind him. Piglet looked around as well.
The little pig sighed.
"...I think we are all waiting for somebody...But that somebody's not coming..."
He turned his eyes at his friend, who kept on inspecting the surroundings.
"...Pooh...Do you even remember who that somebody is?" Piglet asked in low voice.
"One thing you should know: no matter where I go, we'll always be together."
Piglet's eyes turned to the ground at his feet. "...Because...I can't..." He continued, even lower.
A certain fear shook the soul of the bear.
He had tried..., but he just couldn't get a face...or a voice...He couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl...Who, what...
"Forever and ever."
But...he could remember a promise.
And since it was the only thing he had, he held onto it with all of his might.
The air is filled with the sound of the birds chirping and some bees lazily flying around...That tree in front of him...Its leaves cast an inviting shadow...
The tree has windows and a door. MR. SANDERS, can be read on a sign above it. A small sign by the doorbell says RNIG ALSO.
There is someone sitting there, looking idly at the clouds which float above. They smile at him, and...
The boy smiled back in his sleep.
"These are my nephews. Huey, Dewey and Louie." Donald explained to the boy, pointing at three ducklings who were running around at the plaza. "What are they up to now?"
"So you've got...siblings?" Sora asked.
"Yep. A sister."
"Huh. You never told me about that." Sora looked at him with an offended expression. After so many years, he was finding out these sort of things by chance!
"We don't talk much." Donald shrugged.
"Do you remember having any siblings?" Goofy asked the child.
The boy shook his head. "I don't think so."
He was pretty sure he grew up without them. He remembered a few adults—his parents, grandparents, perhaps an uncle or two—, but no children.
Still, there had to be...Even just friends...
Seeing the triplets whispering in a circle, laughing at some sort of mischievous project or private joke, then running off, he thought...he remembered what it was...
("Catch me if you can!")
("You won again!")
And it made him feel a stabbing pain.
I once had friends for whom I would have given my life...
But it that's so...why can't I remember their faces, or their names?
Merlin had his house so cluttered with curiosities that there was always something new to find in every corner, if you looked closely. However, the boy was surprised he hadn't noticed the book resting on the lectern until that afternoon, when Goofy offered himself to cook dinner and a black smoke and a terrible smell started taking over the kitchen. Sora was already out looking for something else to eat and Donald had a blizzaga spell on the tip of his tongue. The boy decided to get as far away from there as he could, hide somewhere safe, when he felt like something was pumping in his ears. He turned to one side and there he saw it—the book.
Pooh was sinking his paw into the hunny pot when he stopped and turned his head towards the door.
He knew he had it forbidden to touch Merlin's stuff without his presence and permission, but nobody forbade him to look...Slowly, almost fearfully, he approached...
Pooh left the pot and walked slowly towards it
A book with a golden lock, an embossed, brown binding, and an illustration on the cover. Sora was in it, sitting next to a yellow bear with a red shirt...
And that bear...
That feeling again...He wasn't afraid...He just wondered...Would they remember him the way he remembered them?
WINNIE THE POOH.
What's a Pooh?
This seems to be Sora's...But...I've...seen this before...Where have I seen this before?
That grumpy owl wasn't around to complain if he peeked...It was just irresistible...He extended his hand towards it...
...his paw was grazing the doorknob...
"Hey!"
The boy gasped when Donald appeared out of nowhere, and jumped away from the book.
"Don't touch that! It's a magical book!"
"A magical book?"
"Yeah, only Sora can go in there. You'd better not try. It might suck you in and never get out or who knows what!"
So the boy didn't attempt to approach it again, at least with witnesses around, which was all the time. Which didn't mean its powerful attraction disappeared...
And Pooh opened the door, his little heart bouncing like a certain striped friend he had, an excited smile on his face. A smile which vanished when he found nothing.
He looked around before going back inside.
Yet he was sure someone had come to say hi...!
"Hey, how's it going?"
Donald and Goofy were arguing about dinner. After what happened some days before, Donald didn't want Goofy near the kitchen, and Goofy tried to convince him that nothing wrong what happened last time, 'the food had just stuck to the pan a little'. Aerith had kindly come to bring them potluck stew—all of Radiant Garden had come with buckets full of water to the house after seeing and smelling the disaster—, so Sora let them argue till they got tired. In the meantime, he wanted to have a little talk with the kid, just the two of them, without Donald and Goofy overwhelming or intimidating, and so he took him out of the house, to the Fountain Court, where they sat.
"When are you giving me my heart back?" The boy asked in return, fixing his eyes on him.
"Uhm...I can't just...you know...It...doesn't work that way." Sora didn't even know what to say.
"Hm. Right..." The boy sighed, immediately looking away.
If only it was that easy! If I had the power of waking, perhaps I could...
"Some people in your same situation remember how they lost their heart." Sora suggested.
The boy pressed his lips. Suddenly, a couple of unversed appeared and Sora was quick to dispatch them. The child muttered an apology, refusing to look at him out of embarrassment.
"I know it was a terrible moment you don't want to remember, but if you do, we might have some sort of thread to pull here."
A long silence followed. Just when Sora thought he was getting nothing from him, the boy started talking, still with his head on the waters which fell from the fountain:
"Do you know what school is?"
Sora had missed quite a few classes by that point, but he remembered. "Yeah, I hated it." Riku and I skipped classes sometimes.
"Me too. Having to wear that lousy uniform and keep it clean so Mum wouldn't get angry...Sitting there for the whole morning, forced to memorize things that didn't make any sense...There used to be better days, days when I was happy and fun things happened—but all I remember now is school..."
"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.
"Classes hadn't even started and I was already dying to go back."
"Home?"
"I suppose. I had friends at school. I can't remember their names or what they were like, but I know I had one or two. The ones who mattered were back at home, they were waiting for me..."
He wished more than before to be back at home, back to the sunny place, where one could get distracted with everything they liked, or do nothing at all, and there were no old teachers to reprimand one for it, and no one 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 grew up, he would have to be out of the house for way longer and do harder, more boring things...If it was so, he 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 impossible things for him to multiply such big numbers. They really went far while he had his head on the clouds, didn't 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. He had only gone this far.
"And...what happened?" Sora asked.
The boy furrowed his eyebrows.
"Nine times tw..."
The teacher sushed and rose her head. All the children, not just he, got distracted and looked around.
The ceiling was trembling. It started softly, and it was slowly increasing in intensity. He felt his desk shake too, and the floor under his feet. The children were too confused 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?
"...The sky went dark..."
Some classmates started yelping and gasping nervously.
"A-All right, 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.
He did. He quickly grabbed his scribbling book and his under his desk. There, he held on it tight.
"...It started to feel very cold..."
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. He 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.
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. There was now no one in his who wasn't wailing in fear. Some bawled, calling their mummies. Even the teacher was terrified and wouldn't stop saying God, good heavens, dear, my oh my...He, too scared to do the same, just pressed the book against is chest.
He called mentally, as loud as he could, to try to make his mental scream louder than the yelling around him. To whom, he couldn't remember. But he did.
He did, and that was the last thing he did before...
The unversed spawned around him, a good bunch of them, and Sora took care of them once again. The boy, in the meanwhile, hugged his knees.
"And then I felt like something was ripped away from me and everything became dark and I've seen nothing but darkness ever since!"
And started sobbing. Sora was cautious in case more unversed appeared. It seemed not. So he sat back again, letting him vent with immense pity.
I've fallen into darkness, too...I know how frightening it is...But I knew what was happening..., he did not...He was too small...
He placed a hand on his knee for comfort. "You're in the realm of light now. You're safe. That darkness is gone."
"No, Sora, that's not true..." The child sniffed, wiping his tears off his face. "It hasn't really gone away...I feel the light close, but I can't...touch it...I...I don't know how to explain..."
"Don't worry, I understand what you mean."
"I want to go back home...I want to go back to all those people who mattered...I promised them I would be back...But I can't find the way...And...I-I wish...there was someone out there looking for me...No one is...No one ever came, in that dark place...Except, that man...But I don't think I know him...Or do I?"
Posing as a friend? A selfless benefactor? Oh, no, Sora wouldn't allow that.
"I know how important it is to keep a promise." He reassured the boy. "I will help you find your way."
The boy looked at him with a face bathed in tears and Sora thought that surely Archimedes was exaggerating. How could someone pretend this?
"I'm sure no one's forgotten you and there's someone out there still waiting for you and calling you home."
After a long silence, the child sniffed again and rose his eyes to the sun, which was hiding behind the houses.
"...Thank you..."