The planks all around them are green from the edges—the kind of life that means decay.

Even the moon plans to wane, someday.

Their eyes are shut, but their whispered words carry over the tide.

Sora says, “All I want is the ocean against me.”

(sand through memory-glass and seas, why should I leave?)

Kairi says, “All I need is to touch my heart and feel it start.”

(washed-up otherworld girl, what else have I been?)

Riku says, “All I see is grey, like something waiting to be said.”

(lightning traffic in my veins, why do I stay?)

Because every dreaming heart is bound to stray.

—

“There’s something in you,” Axel says, “like life that means decay.”

She knows what he means, strangely. He says these things to upset her, to confuse her, but she gets this. She sees herself setting like a waning-moon puppet witch, to the tiles, but she stands straight. She dreams of paint, of sea-cool flames, but for now she only looks at him and takes his hands the way she shouldn’t and her eyes are wide.

His eyes are shut.

She says, “I know what I want.”

She says, “All I want is the ocean against me.”

He tells her how she’s fucking crazy, no, really.

He says, “You’re here to screw up his memories. Just that. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

He says, “Just do your job.”

He has her pressed against him and she says, “Why? Should I leave?”

—

“There’s something in me,” Roxas says, “like life that means decay.”

She knows what he means, in the little town of numbers and computer-screen tricks that he calls his life.

She’d like for him to live, but it’s not like she’s ever done it herself.

He says thoughtless thoughtful things, like a song, like the vanishing ghost-room of white is a place for all his sea glass thoughts to wash up and sparkle. And she likes him when he talks, when he talks to her. But she doesn’t like to hear him.

Her eyes are shut.

She says, “Do you know what you want?”

He says that no, he doesn’t.

He says, “I know what I need. I need to touch my heart. I need to make it start.”

She tells him how she’s wrong, wrong, wrong. She says, “Feel for my pulse. Look for any life in the things I draw. We’re statues that walk and speak and sometimes dream. We’re hardly enough to count at all.”

She says, “I’m just doing my job.”

He says, “I’m all sand on the wrong side of the hourglass. What else have I been?”

—

“There’s something in us all,” Naminé says, “like life that means decay.”

They’re quite sure of what this means.

They are chess-piece players in black and white.

They open their eyes.

Naminé thinks, what am I but a throwaway? Why do I stay?

The hill below them is capped in a twilight glow, and isn’t this a beautiful place to stay? Naminé thinks it’s beautiful, but it’s less work and more mystery because she doesn’t know why they stand by the fence, why they keep under the sky. They have a purpose and it isn’t hers to know.

She sees Roxas in her memory and Axel in her dreams, but as they are she knows she can’t find friends in them.

Maybe if she’d been someone, someone else?

She says, “What is this place and what are we here for?” — but it isn’t her right to know. So she’s been told.

She’s told, keep quiet until you have to do it, until you have to do your job.

She is a pawn and this is where she'll stay.

—

Originally posted at requiempathic at livejournal; 11-27-07