Kingdom Hearts fic: All Strange Wonders - Chapter 7

[mistressofmuses]

---

Sora felt… listless after the visit to Naminé. The reminders of his curse, coupled with the worry for Xion, knowing that every day Riku went out was a day closer to his sister’s heart being broken… All of it combined miserably. Unfortunately, while he recognized the depression, that didn’t mean he could shake it off.

“Do you think it really could be love, this time?” Sora asked Kairi idly.

Riku was gone for the day, again. He hadn’t worked on the commissioned spell again since the day he’d roped Sora into helping, and they’d used four of the ten packets on the trip to see Naminé. He didn’t seem to need them when he went alone, but Sora still knew that was where he’d been vanishing to every day since.

“Riku and that witch’s apprentice he’s been visiting?”

“Xion,” Sora said. “Could it be? I saw them, the day he brought me with him. He seemed so focused on her. And he’s still going to see her every day. Maybe this time it’s real.”

Kairi made a sort of sniffing sound, a dry crackle. “It can’t be. I told you, he isn’t capable of giving his heart to someone. He enjoys the part where he’s getting their attention, the chase part of the game. But it is a game to him. As soon as they start to reciprocate, he isn’t able to play it anymore.”

“Would it bother you if he could?” Sora asked. He didn’t mean to sound critical. He just meant that Riku and Kairi were obviously close. Maybe it was just the mysterious contract binding them together, but sometimes it seemed like more.

Kairi sniffed again. “Are you asking if I’m jealous? I promise you, I am not. And anyway, I know just where his heart is, so I wouldn’t have any reason to worry that he’s given it to Xion.”

Sora didn’t bother to protest that he’d meant it hypothetically. Even if it wasn’t Xion, if Riku found someone he was able to love, would Kairi be upset?

“And anyway,” she continued, “how long has he spent in the bathroom every morning as he gets ready?”

“An hour at least,” Sora said. “Sometimes two, I think.”

“Exactly. So I don’t believe it’s even close to being true love. Riku is playing a game that he knows he’s very good at. And to continue the metaphor, he likes very much to control the board. One of the things he can control is his appearance, so he will spend hours a day making sure it’s absolutely perfect. I’ll believe he’s in love when he willingly forgoes that control. The day he rushes out of here with messy hair and a wrinkled shirt is the day I believe he’s going after someone he truly loves.”

Sora had to admit that made sense. He already knew that Riku liked to control whatever he could, to the point he’d throw a tantrum when something went wrong. And it was clearly still a higher priority to perfect his looks than spend the extra time with Xion.

He sighed.

“Why don’t you read some more of that book?” Kairi suggested. “It’s been a while, and I feel like you were about to get to a good part.”

---

“One of the most prominent sources of wishes is the star. Various cultures throughout time have held that the brightest star, the earliest to appear, or the latest to be visible may grant wishes if someone asks them correctly. But these particular beliefs are far less consistent than one that seems practically universal: that falling stars grant wishes,” Sora read aloud.

“Perhaps it is because every star that falls is ending in some way, it’s a kind of bittersweet bargain to think that as it ends, it can grant happiness to someone who witnesses its fall. Of course, the most direct guarantee of having a wish granted is said to be catching a falling star. A nearly impossible feat, to be sure.”

Kairi hummed contentedly. Maybe this was the ‘good part’ she’d been looking forward to.

“The wishes made on falling stars almost never are said to have the drawbacks associated with other methods of granting. The stars don’t seem inclined to look for loopholes, or grant a wish in a deliberately harmful fashion. It’s one of the more straightforward examples of wishing and granting.”

At that, Kairi let out a crackly laugh. “Stars can be as capricious as any genie,” she said. “And anyway, I’m not sure that a star—falling from the sky, sure it’s about to die at any moment—has the presence of mind to really listen to someone making a wish.”

So maybe this hadn’t been the ‘good part’ after all. “Maybe it’s like the book said. The star knows it’s about to die, so it wants to grant a wish as sort of a last gift. Something to be remembered by.”

“Maybe sometimes,” she said. “Some stars might be glad, or at least accepting of the fact that they’re about to die. It’s possible they’d do something like that. But what about a star that doesn’t want to die at all?”

“Do you think the stars that don’t want to die would be more dangerous? That they’d grant a wish in a twisted way, like some of the evil spirits?”

“They aren’t evil!” she protested. “At least not most of them. But they could be dangerous. They might not even realize it, if they were preoccupied with wanting to stay alive.”

The next several pages of the book were taken up with the traditional rhymes associated with wishing on stars. Kairi seemed to know all of them, and recited them along with Sora’s reading.

After that it seemed like a reasonable time to take a break, so Sora set the book aside and went to the kitchen. The speed spells that Riku had completed were in a bowl on the counter, their very presence an accusation. There were only six of them left, out of the ten they’d completed. So ninety-four to go. Maybe Sora needed to push Riku into working on them again.

Riku still hadn’t returned by the time the sun had set. Sora busied himself with little odd tasks, but he kept thinking about the book, and about the idea of wishing on a star.

He hadn’t found any clues to Riku and Kairi’s still-mysterious contract. Kairi said he’d been given hints, but without her telling him what those hints had been, they hadn’t been useful yet.

And that meant he was also no closer to fixing his own curse. Kairi had said she couldn’t help him until her contract was resolved, and Riku hadn’t even seemed to notice. But if Sora managed to get his curse lifted first, that didn’t mean he couldn’t still help Kairi with her contract. He wouldn’t be trying to dodge their agreement.

The idea of wishing on a star was starting to sound rather appealing.

He tapped the cover of the book, where he’d set it on the counter. The most direct guarantee of having a wish granted is to catch a falling star. That would be a nearly impossible task, ordinarily. But Sora, surprisingly, had found himself in a situation where he wasn’t completely bound to ordinary rules. With a speed spell, he could race to where a star was falling, couldn’t he?

“I’m going to go out for a little while,” Sora said. “Out the green door, into the valley.”

He’d seen how nice and open the sky was in the part of the valley Kairi had been wandering the castle through. It wasn’t quite as hilly as the part nearer to Twilight Town, and he thought it was the kind of territory he could speed through in pursuit of a star.

“You aren’t going after Riku, are you?” she asked. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

“No, I’m not following him,” Sora said. “I want to go see if I can catch a falling star.”

He did not expect Kairi’s reaction.

“You can’t! Please don’t, it’s dangerous!”

Sora shook his head. “Don’t worry. I just want to see if one could lift my curse. If it does, don’t worry; I promise I’ll still try to help with your contract.”

“Please! Listen to me! Do not try to do that! You don’t understand how dangerous it could be.” She was straining at the edge of her hearth, like she wanted to get closer, but of course she couldn’t.

Sora tried to wave her down. That seemed like quite an overreaction. “It’ll be fine, Kairi. I promise, I’ll be right back.”

And with that, he grabbed one of the speed spell packets, and stepped out the door and down to the ground. Kairi was still shouting something behind him, but once the door was closed, he could barely hear it. He’d be back before she knew it.

---

He walked the mundane, slow way for a while, until he reached a high point that looked down across a wide section of the valley. The sky was perfectly clear, and Sora thought it might have been one of the best views he’d ever had of the stars. There were no lights down in the valley, no farmhouses or anything that he could see, which made the sky look that much more vibrant. It seemed like a perfect place to watch for falling stars. Carefully, he tore open the packet, and poured a little bit of the powder onto his shoes, so he would be able to race after one as soon as he saw it. Then he settled in to wait.

Unfortunately, it was a long wait. The moon was a thin crescent, and Sora watched it drifting slowly toward the horizon. The stars were as beautiful as ever, even forming the thick milky road through the heavens that was only visible on the clearest nights. But it was still a spring night, fairly long after dark now, and it was cold.

Sora wrapped his coat a little more firmly around himself. It was a warmer jacket than the one he’d worn when he left Twilight Town; Riku had offered it to him, saying he’d outgrown it and was going to get rid of it otherwise. Oddly it didn’t look worn at all. At least it was warm.

Judging by how far the moon had moved, Sora thought he’d probably been out for close to an hour. Or maybe it just felt like it, with how cold and still everything was. His legs were cramping with the need to move and stretch, but he couldn’t even pace, for fear of where that would take him, or that he’d wear the speed spell out and be stranded far from the castle.

He was just getting ready to give it up, to either take his shoes off and head home barefoot, or start walking with the express intent of wearing the spell out, when a star dislodged from the sky.

It fell in a silver streak across the sky, heading toward the other end of the valley.

Sora ran after it. The whoosh of the speed spell seemed even more pronounced than it had before, maybe because he didn’t have Riku holding onto him. A couple steps left him disoriented, unsure just where he was. Looking up, he saw the star still arcing through the sky above him, but closer now.

He took off again, running in the direction he thought the star was going.

The handful of steps he’d taken brought him to the edge of a pond. Turning around, he saw the star heading directly for him. He put up his arms, and the thing fell right into his hands.

It was small, but surprisingly heavy. His skin tingled a bit where he touched it, like hundreds of tiny sparks from a fire prickling at him, too small to hurt. It was a bright, sparkling white, almost too bright to look at, but he squinted at it anyway.

The star had a face, defined by bits of gradient within its light, and it had a pair of wide, frightened eyes staring up at him.

“Hello,” Sora said, a little inanely. He didn’t know what more to say to it.

“Why did you catch me?” Its voice was breathy and scared, but surprisingly human.

“I wanted to make a wish,” he said. “Don’t be frightened.”

He couldn’t very well ask for something when he’d scared the poor thing so badly.

“No!” it cried. “Why did you catch me? I’m meant to die!”

“To die? But wouldn’t you rather live?” That wasn’t really what he’d caught the star for, but it seemed sad for the star to be so resigned to ending.

Though hadn’t Kairi said something about some stars being happier to die than others? This one certainly didn’t seem nearly as upset by that as it was to have been caught.

“I have lived. It’s my time, please let me go!” The star’s eyes seemed to roll in panic.

Sora stopped. He wanted to make his wish, but holding onto the poor thing, especially just to ask it for something, seemed cruel. He remembered all the stories in the book about selfish people trapping fairies against their will. Was this really any different?

Something crashed into Sora from the side.

He lost his balance, toppling sideways into the pond, the star sliding from his hands and into the water. The white light flared a bit, then dimmed, and the star sank to the bottom of the pond. It looked more like a stone, or a lump of coal than a star. “Goodbye!” its voice faded with its light.

Sora flailed a bit, scrambling to sit upright enough to see what had hit him.

It was Riku, panting slightly, and looking furious. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

Sora blinked up at him. “I was just looking for a falling star…”

“And you found one. Do you have any idea how close you could have been to—” He bit the words off and took a deep breath. “That’s something that could have ended very badly.”

“The poor star. It looked so frightened.” Sora glanced at where the star had fallen into the water. “I wasn’t trying to scare it.”

Riku sighed. Then he offered his hand to Sora, and pulled him the rest of the way out of the pond.

“You scared Kairi just as badly,” he said. “I got back from a very pleasant afternoon, to find her practically screaming about you going off to do something foolish. I had to come after you just to get her to calm down.”

“I didn’t think she was that upset.”

“Somehow you’ve made quite the impression on my fire spirit. Come on. Let’s get back, so you can reassure her you aren’t dead.”

Secretly, Sora was actually a bit relieved that Riku had come after him. He hadn’t been sure what he’d do to get back to the castle. He’d been in such a rush to follow the star, he didn’t know exactly which way he’d stepped, or how to reverse it to get back.

Riku had even brought a spare packet of the spell, and it felt like no time at all before they were back at the castle.

“Why did you do that?” Kairi yelled as soon as Riku nudged him through the door.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Sora said. He couldn’t answer her, not completely honestly, anyway. Riku didn’t know about the curse, so Sora couldn’t very well say anything about trying to lift it.

“Worry me? You nearly gave me a heart attack! What if something bad had happened to you?”

“I think I feel more upset by what happened to the star,” Sora said.

Kairi still looked agitated, the edges of her form flickering wildly as she pushed up to the edge of the hearth. “What?”

“It died,” Sora said. “It seemed to want to. But I was still sad for it.”

“You caught one!?” Her voice rose in both pitch and volume. He wondered if anyone outside the window in Traverse Town could hear her.

“What, like it’s hard?” Riku sounded sarcastic.

Sora ignored him. “Well, yes, I did, but…”

“But the Heartless Sorcerer struck again,” Riku interrupted. “I got to the hill just in time to see the star fall and my assistant rush off after it. I chased him and had a bit of a collision when I caught up with him, the star in his hands. The star finished falling after that.”

“You’re lucky,” Kairi said.

All this seemed like a bit of an overreaction. “Why would it have been such a bad thing to make a wish on a star?” Sora asked. “The book said—”

“The book?” Riku asked.

Kairi sighed. “Riku can probably tell you better than anyone why it would be a bad idea.” She gave him what Sora could only describe as a pointed look.

“I’m going to guess you were reading The Power of Wishing.”

Riku didn’t wait for Sora to answer, spotting the book on the kitchen counter. “Ah-ha. Kairi should have known better. The book does unfortunately make wishing on a star sound terribly appealing, doesn’t it?”

Sora swallowed hard. He felt like he was being scolded in school or something.

“But unless I’m misremembering, I don’t think the book included any firsthand accounts from someone catching a star, did it?”

Sora shook his head a little sheepishly.

“Have you ever heard of a man called Terra? A hero of the realm, from a bit over a hundred and fifty years ago?”

Sora had, of course. His disappearance and the mystery surrounding it had been elevated to something near legendary. He’d been one of the greatest heroes ever known. Then he went off seeking something for the good of the country, some way to protect it, and never returned. Everyone knew he must have died, but no body had ever been found, nor any trace of where he’d gone.

“Before he vanished he’d been looking into the stars, and the power they must have had at their disposal to grant wishes the way they did. He was sure there was a way to harness that.”

“I’d never heard that,” Sora said, voice barely audible.

“Few people have, I think. Even The Power of Wishing barely hints at it. But once upon a time, I wanted to be just like him, so I spent a lot of time trying to find out what he’d done.”

Riku cleared his throat. “Which isn’t relevant. What is, is that falling stars are extremely powerful. Far too many people have taken advantage of them, sometimes to disastrous effect. I’m sure that wasn’t your intent, but sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to. A careless word, or a promise you don’t think through all the way… it could go badly for you. Or for the star, not being allowed to end the way it wanted to. Or if the star hadn’t wanted to end at all…”

He trailed off. Then: “Mostly, falling stars are fairly safe, mostly because they are nearly uncatchable. Except with a well-made speed spell. That was not what those packets were meant for, you know.”

Sora wanted very badly to point out that Riku had used the packets for frivolous trips to court Xion, but he resisted the urge.

“Then… thank you,” Sora said. It felt rusty in his throat. “For making sure nothing bad happened.”

Riku looked like he wanted to say something, but instead the silence grew. Finally, he said, “Well, can’t have anything bad happen to my dear assistant, Michael.”

Sora laughed a little. It was almost a running joke, now, even if it was one that felt like being pricked by needles.

Riku’s voice was softer when he said, “Not Michael. But was whatever wish you have really that important?”

Yes! Sora wanted to shout. Of course it was! But had it been important enough to force a terrified creature to do something for him? Maybe not. Even if Riku hadn’t knocked it away, Sora didn’t think he could have gone through with it. “I don’t know,” he answered instead.

“Suddenly held-out hurdles of our wishes. Did we have so many? For stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere…” Riku said, half to himself.

“What’s that?” Sora asked.

“A poem, I think.” He sounded distracted. “Kairi, do you remember the rest?”

“It sounds familiar, but I don’t think I have any of it memorized,” she said.

“I’m sure I have it in another book,” Riku trailed off.

He wandered over to the shelves and put The Power of Wishing back. He scanned the other titles. “I don’t think it’s here. Must have left it back home.”

“Home?” Sora asked. “Isn’t this castle…?”

“I did grow up somewhere else, you know. I didn’t spring fully-formed in a magical castle, despite what you might believe.”

Sora felt his cheeks grow warm. Of course he hadn’t meant it like that. Though at the same time, it was difficult to imagine Riku as anything other than the sorcerer he was.

Then again, Sora had thought at first that Riku was evil, and now he could barely even remember how he’d believed that.

“Where are you from?” Sora asked.

“Farther than you have ever been, I promise you.”

“That’s not a difficult promise to keep,” Sora said. “I’d never been as far as Radiant Garden before coming here. Well, if that counts now; I’ve only seen it out the door.”

Riku gave him a thoughtful look. “Well, perhaps the opportunity for further travel will present itself to you.”

He stretched, then announced, “I am going to bed. I had a very long day, and having to then immediately perform a daring rescue is about all the excitement I can stand for one night.”

With Riku gone, Sora wanted to ask Kairi for more details about why catching a star would have been such a terrible thing, or maybe more about the revelation that Riku had once wanted to be like a hero. But maybe she was still cross with him, because she stubbornly refused to answer.

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