queenoflogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Characters:

mnementomori
Date: 20th April
Summary: An expedition into the wilds with the intent of attempting to make an ocean.
Warnings: N/A

Mahalia had seen Xion's message on the vine, and though she hadn't replied at the time, she was a little concerned over the girl. She seemed to be doing well, happy and excited at the dance, but so many of her friends had come and gone, and that could be trying on anyone. Xion seemed so small, and oddly naive in a way Mahalia didn't really understand, but she was happy to answer the girl's questions and help her in any way possible.

Which is why she thinks today, she should seek her out and spend a some time with her, try to take her mind off the people she missed. Mahalia was used to doing it for herself, finding distractions, company. It was easier that way, though it never took the ache away completely.

She isn't entirely sure where Xion stays, but Paderau has told her that the huge clock tower at the edge of the dunes was Xion's creation. Perhaps too large a structure to find one person in, really, especially when Xion could be somewhere else entirely. She should really ask a cat to take her to the girl, but she gets distracted exploring the train station, poking around like a curious bird. Even if a train station would normally seem quite mundane, it was something that clearly held meaning to Xion, and so Mahalia found it fascinating. She stands on the empty platform and chirps out a brief tune, eyes closed as she listens to the way the sound echoes and moves through the place.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She avoided the clock tower for some time after her friends' disappearance, but now that Roxas is back, she finds herself wandering by every now and then to see if the girl is there. There's a sinking feeling in her stomach that she may have disappeared, but she pushes it away.

Sometimes she'll run across someone else exploring the place, and usually turns to go. But this time, she recognizes the figure. She puts a hand against the glass doors, before pushing them open carefully, peering at the girl stranding by the tracks.

"...Mahalia?"

Mahalia startles a little, caught up in listening to the sounds of the place, laughing slightly as she realises it's just Xion.

"Hello. I was looking for you." She'd gotten distracted, but she'd found her anyway. Or been found. She turns from the platform, walking over to the doors. "Is this place from your world? It's lovely."

"For me?" Her expression eases into a smile. She's always happy to see a friend. She links her hands together in front of her.

"Well, it's..." Her world? In a way. She's been telling people she's from Twilight Town to make things easier, after all. She nods. "It's...one of my favorite places. I used to go here with my friends almost every day."

Mahalia smiles, looks around the place fondly. "It must be full of memories, then." She hasn't really been to a train station before, doesn't fully understand why someone might come to one every day, if they weren't travelling, but Xion says it's one of her favourite places and so Mahalia likes it too.

She gives another soft, whistling chirp, a very small blessing sent out over the structure.

Xion nods. "My best memories...I think. It got beaten up once, but I'm glad we were able to fix it." She didn't hold any grudges for what Paderau had done in her monstrous form; she herself had been no better. She smiles a little at the sounds Mahalia's making. It sounds a little like singing, and a little like a bird. It's nice.

"You want to see the rest?"

"There's more?" There clearly was, from outside, but Mahalia had seen no way to access the rest and thought that perhaps it was just decorative. She nods. "Yes, I'd love to."

The girl nods eagerly, waving at Mahalia to follow her, and heads for the door to the stairs. It's quite a climb, but thankfully she's fit as well as accustomed to it, having taken this route at least three times a week.

The higher they go, the louder the sounds of the great clock echo around them. The click-thunk of gears is a comforting sound to her, so she barely hears it.

Mahalia has always been an active girl, exploring the woods around her mother's home, and that has not lessened since she arrived in the gardens. But she is unused to so many stairs, and she is feeling it by the time they reach the top. But it was well worth it, she thinks as she sees the view.

"Oh, this is beautiful."

She takes a step out, right to the edge, has never been particularly afraid of heights. She can see for miles out over the dunes, a vast expanse of sand. While beautiful, it also shows, clearly, that there's no end in sight.

"I suppose it really does go on forever," she murmurs.

She follows her friend and looks out over the dunes as she has so many times before, such a different view from the sunset of Twilight Town. This spot does face the Gardens' sunset, at least.

"Yeah...I was hoping there would be an ocean at the end of it. I mean, when you're down there, you can hear it. But it won't let you go that far."

"Yes, I heard it too."

But she hadn't been back out there since her hair had acted so strangely on her return. Although in truth that hadn't frightened her so much as the time she'd lost in the sands. But she remembers speaking to Xion about that, and about the ocean.

"We were going to try and make one, weren't we? An ocean."

Make an ocean. They'd talked about it before, but...everything had gotten so busy, she'd almost forgotten. Now that old excitement flutters in her chest.

"You really think we can do it?"

"I don't see why we couldn't."

Not that anyone had offered any rules on what could or couldn't be done out in the wilds. The animals tried to stop you going out there, but even that wasn't as stringent as it could be, and the soil was the only way to build, something the Queen had a definite interest in.

She looks out over the dunes again, imagines it all water and waves, the breeze against her face warm and salt-scented.

"There's definitely enough sand out there." She wonders if it would take more effort to change that amount of sand, or if it would always be a reasonably easy task, regardless of the size of the creation.

"Right." A smile spreads across her face. With Mahalia's confidence, she feels like she can accomplish anything. "I guess we both have to imagine at the same time, then...okay."

She holds out a hand to her friend, looking not unlike a child in a candy store.

"Let's go!"

Mahalia smiles back, reaching to take Xion's hand without any hesitation. the details of how exactly they'll do it don't really seem so important to her in that moment, caught up in the excitement of the idea, of the happiness shared in both their smiles. She laughs a little, lightly, the stairs down from the clock tower seeming far less in number than they had been in climbing.

She knows the exact edge of the wilds from all her trips there, for sand. She stands at it for a moment, Mahalia's hand still in hers, looking out over the dunes, breathing in that teasing salty scent.

If there were really an ocean, why couldn't they reach it?

"I guess we...should both try to think about the same thing. What's the beach you remember like?"

She hums a little, thinking. The description comes to her more naturally in birdsong, that language being more evocative of imagery, but Xion wouldn't understand and so she attempts a strange sort of translation. She tells the other girl about the beach she'd been so, long, flat, white sand stretching on for miles, hot under the blazing sun. The ocean had been a clear, bright blue, almost green at time when it caught the light a certain way. She'd been there to meet her elder half-sister, to go and stay with her and her people for a short time one summer.

"They live out on the ocean," she tells Xion, distracted from their task as she gets caught up in the memory of her trip there. "On boats, and raised houses they build where the water's shallow enough. They only come to land to trade for supplies and fuel. Some of the children even get landsick."

She closes her eyes, her imagination leaping to life.

"They live...on the water? That's amazing. The beach I saw...the sand was clean and almost white. There are little shells in it everywhere...the waves are small, and there are tiny silver fish in them.

"It was an island, a small one, where kids would go, and...they'd play. I think. I've never played before."

"You haven't?"

She has memories of being told to 'go play' by her mother, but the act itself is difficult to define, the forms it can take so varied. She only has her own experiences of what she did, when she wasn't studying or spending time with her mother or Jast. Mostly exploring the woods, climbing trees, collecting flowers and stones.

"Why didn't you go with them?"

Assuming that Xion was also a child on that island, because how else would she know of it?

She just shakes her head a little, looking a bit sad.

"I couldn't. I was on a mission, and anyway...we weren't supposed to let people see us."

"Well, you're not on a mission now."

She isn't sure what these missions entailed, but considering how many of her siblings live in a war-torn part of her world, some working for rebel forces, she chooses to avoid pursuing the topic for now. She smiles, instead, gives Xion's hand a little reassuring squeeze.

"You can play all you'd like."

And if they were successful in duplicating the beach Xion had seen, at least in some respect, then it would be like she hadn't missed out at all.

"You think you can show me how?" She smiles back, shifting her feet, feeling her boots sink into the beginnings of the dunes.

"There were trees to climb...coconut trees, I think. And a waterfall, and a wooden shack for shade."

"Yes, of course. It's just... exploring, doing what's interesting and fun."

She glances out over the open sand, laughing a little.

"But we need a beach first."

"Right."

She grins up at her friend, brimming with excitement.

"I guess we should start, then. Umm, on three?"

She reaches for those precious memories of hers--the smell of brine, the rhythm of the waves, the sun making the sand and water glitter. Some other things creep in, too...a shadow above her, silver hair and black cloth. His voice, low and comforting despite the words he was speaking, words that struck her heart like needles.

She swallows and pushes that memory away, searching for the laughter she'd heard in Sora's memories, instead.

Edited 2011-05-17 03:26 (UTC)

Mahalia smiles and nods. She closes her eyes for a moment to pull up her own experiences of the ocean, the summer she'd spent with her half-sister's people. When she can almost feel the waves lapping against her legs again, she opens her eyes, checking that Xion seems ready before she counts out the short one, two, three; one hand still holding Xion's as she crouches down to plunge the other into the sand.

The change is not immediate, but Mahalia feels it as slowly the sand around her hand shifts, becoming liquid. She smiles, but holds onto her memories, doesn't want to be distracted before it's finished. The transformation speeds up as it spreads outwards, water spreading out and away from the girls, further and further, until they are stood at the shore of an ocean, white sand under their feet and soft surf lapping at their toes.

She mimics Mahalia's gesture, feeling the grains shift around her hand like all the times she's come to collect it before. But this time is different. She doesn't draw it in, but pushes out. With her mind, her feelings.

When she opens her eyes, the dunes are gone. Replaced by sparkling blue-green water as far as the eye can see. Coconut trees have sprung up around them, and the familiar line of that wooden bridge leads out to the small island she remembers so well.

It's real. She squeezes Mahalia's hand, feeling her heart beat even faster.

"It worked! It really worked!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

ahhh so late I am sorry :(

no worries, you're not late at all!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

sorry for the late, I really wasn't feeling Lia for a couple of days there

no worries :>

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject