Disclaimer: I don’t own Kingdom Hearts I, II or CoM. It belongs to Square Enix and Disney.

Warnings: Eh, not beta’d. It’s 3am. The writing is gonna be awful. It’s also rushed, simply because I. Am. Tired.

Author’s Notes: Weipa. A small town in Queensland, Australia. I grew up there, and whilst I was writing this I was crying because it bought out all these memories. I can remember attending that group, and there was a donkey and cart, and a little bridge over a salt water creek, and sand, and cuts. Little snails and ousters were what we played with at Rocky Point, where my father almost hit another car because he was used to driving on the other side of the road from working overseas. My mother would go fishing, and we would play on the rocks, hacking open ousters and watching crabs the size of ours heads scuttle away.

The bush was hot, the air heavy and the grass itchy. I have this particular memory of driving on a road, both sides of it alight because we were driving away from a bushfire. I can remember the pub, and spinning the lottery wheel with my cousin. I can remember rolling around the golf course, and jumping out of a golf buggy. Lmao.

Anyway, you’d best look it up on the Internet.

This is for Alyssa, who drew a picture and gave me a plot-bunny, which I kinda killed.

Picture: otaku-chick .deviantart .com /art /A-little-something-88510484

Take out the spaces.

He’s fifteen, and he’s beautiful. He has soft brown-red-blonde-cinnamon-bakery coloured hair that spikes likes the little sea urchins you poke that live in those rockpools, and the biggest, bluest, most adorable eyes you’ve ever seen, and you’ve spent the majority of your life hanging around Roxas, the typical blonde-haired-blue-eyed beauty, except you were much too young to take notice of that and now you’re much too best-friends to even think about it. But this boy, who sits there, all tanned skin and shell-white-teeth, is even more beautiful, because Roxas looks a little artificial, whereas this boy just fits. He’s the sea in human form you decide, with his sand coloured hair and skin, his sky coloured eyes and his shell-teeth. He’s perfect, and you’re going to be his friend. So when the Sea Lady says, ‘Now, you’ll need a partner’ you shyly wander over to him, and ask, “Will you be my partner?”

He blinks, and looks up at you, his sky-eyes wide, before he nods once. You hold out your hand to help him up, and he takes it, his palm and fingers as rough as the ouster-covered stones you’ve been chipping away at with Axel for the last three days. He smiles at you, his shell-teeth almost as blaring as the bright sunlight, and says, “I’m Sora”

You smile back, and say, “I’m Riku”

Together, as you all sit on the beach with the Sea Lady, all eighteen of you, you wonder why you’re so enraptured by this boy, this Sea-In-Human-Form. You don’t have long to ponder it, though, because she’s handing out the long, flat form of green palm leaves, and the Other Guy, the one you don’t really know, is showing you all how to weave them into fish. Your mother’s pay close attention, but only Sora’s mother and the Sea Lady and the Other Guy know how to do it right. Your own mother, with her long city-slick hair the colour of your apartment building huffs and throws her botched up attempt in front of her, before she stomps off, her fashionable lime-green bikini and daisy-yellow sarong stark against her burnt-red skin. Your skin is burnt-red too, but you don’t mind, because you’ve spent your holidays before this place, this marvellous place of sun, surf and sand with Axel’s relatives on their little farm in the middle of no where, learning to ride ponies and getting your fingers burnt from playing ‘Who-Can-Keep-Their-Hand-In-The-Camp-Fire-The-Longest?’

But you’re glad your face is red and sore-to-touch and peeling, because then the others can’t see you blush. Your mother is childish, your mother is silly, she’s impatient and hard-to-get-along-with, even though we’ve been trying. It’s embarrassing, but you love her anyway, because she’s your mother and she was kind enough to throw away her teenage life raising you. But then Sora’s mother stands up, smiles at the Sea Lady and says, “I think I’ll go for a walk”

The Sea Lady nods, and turning back to the children she brushes her long, white seaweed hair behind her leathery ear and says, “Who’s hungry?”

The Other Guy and everyone’s mother’s have made lunch, the meal spread out on a camping table that stinks of plastic, mold and fish. Stacks of sandwiches, piles of sliced up fruit and packets of crisps await your hungry mouths, ready to be devoured. Juice packets are at the ready, bottled water forced down your throats to avoid heatstroke and dehydration. You and Axel and Roxas take your lunch, and go over to big sea-tree that you’ve all been sitting under, and as Roxas and Axel start the climb to the top you turn and ask the lonesome Sora, who sits by himself on one of the roots, “Would you like to join us?”

He smiles and nods, and you help him up, and all four of your make yourselves comfortable on the heavy wooden bows, listening to the sounds of Women’s Chatter and the sea, watching the gulls wheel lazily in the blue, blue sky, and gazing out to where your mother sits with Sora’s mother, nibbling delicately on a piece of lettuce and taking a smoke. You feel embarrassed once again, because she’s ruining the sweet, salty, fresh air that surrounds you, but no one really cares, not Sora or Axel or Roxas, who sit around chatting and giggling and just enjoying themselves. Axel grins and elbows you in the ribs, almost knocking you off your perch, and says, “And then Riku did this…”

And you’re wrapped up in conversation, laughing giddily and snorting juice out your nose when Roxas says something stupid.

After lunch the Sea Lady decides that everyone should collect shells, so you’re paired off again and given buckets and off you all go, headed down the expanse of beach that seems to go on forever. Sora walks next to you, smiling at nothing and you’re blushing under your sunburn, but you both grin at each other, and every so often you both stop to pick up the little bits of coral and shells you see, and Sora even dumps a splatter of wet sand in your bucket, just for the hell of it. He laughs when you ask him why, and he shrugs and laughs and runs off ahead, to where the Ouster Rocks are. You grin and chase after him, revelling in the hot sun on your face, the hot sand under your feet and the hot, tingly feeling of perfection. You don’t want this to go, you don’t want to go back to the city. You want to stay here, on this beach, with Sora and the Sea Lady and Roxas and Axel and all twenty of the group, because this is happiness, you’re sure.

Sora’s perched on one of the Ouster Rocks, stone in hand as he taps away at the mass of grey, cloudy white shells that cling to it. He smiles at you as you approach, before holding out his hand where shells fragments lay, all oily and sticky and gooey from the muscles that hid inside them, until Sora cracked them open and threw them out to sea. You point out the tiny swirls of snail shells, and you pluck one from it’s position on the rock, watching it crawl over your palm. You laugh at the slimy, tickly feeling of Snail Goo, and you say to a grinning Sora, “I’ll call him Joe”

After you’ve both added some more ouster shell to your mud-and-shell-and-coral filled bucket, you both decide to go back, and show the Sea Lady what you’ve found. So you both pad off across the beach, the wind whipping your hair around you face and tangling it, the sun beating down upon you and scorching your skin, and Sora smile and happy chattering warming your heart.

A little while later, after the Sea Lady has poked through your bucket with a stick and you’ve shown her Joe, the mother’s decide to go have a chat down by water. The sun is starting to set, the shadows starting to lengthen and you and Axel and Roxas and Sora, the Sea-Boy, walk off again, grinning as you dash in and out of the water, laughing heartily when Axel slips and falls with a heavy splash into the ocean. He runs after the three of you as you all dart off down the beach, Axel’s hand waving in mock-anger, the huge smile on his face his guffawing laughs the dead give-away that he’s not really angry.

You all stop when you get to the coconut tree, and grabbing one of the brown nuts you all decide to take it back to the Other Guy, so he can hack it open. You’re all thirsty, after all, and you’ve never tried coconut juice. Sora grabs another one, and so does Roxas, and soon you’ll all watching the sun set, revelling in this glorious day and sipping from coconut halves. You all dig and pick out the white flesh, roll it on your tongues, and laugh when Axel holds his to his face, revealing the three dots that make him look like a crazed monkey on the coconut’s shell.

The next morning you lather the Aloe Vera on your face and arms and legs and the tops of your feet, and gently rub it into your mother’s bright red back. She moans in pain and gratitude as she lays delicately on the bed in the hotel room, air-conditioner turned up high as it can go and sipping from a fruit looking drink. She smiles at you in thanks, before she turns back to the TV. She flips through the channels whilst you massage her burnt calves, wincing at the sheer colour. She barely slept a wink last night, moaning and sobbing and whimpering as she tried to find a position that didn’t burn. Her hair is tied at the back of her neck in a bun to keep it off her raw-looking shoulder blades, and she’s naked. You don’t really care though. She’s your mother, and she’s seen you naked and you’ve seen her, although you refuse to touch anywhere near her bottom. She just nods and groans again, before waving you off.

“You’re going on that bush walk today, right?” She asks, absently mindedly appraising the naked torso of the guy on TV. You nod as you place your mini-first-aid-kit in your backpack, along with a bottle of water and a cooler bag that contains a chicken salad. You then slip on your shoes, and kissing her on her peeling cheek you step out of the room, heading off towards Axel’s. His eccentric mother has offered to be your guardian for the day, because you’re mother was talking to her earlier as they shared a cigarette. She greets you with a smile, and soon enough you and Axel and Roxas and another girl, Kairi, along with your parents, are all hopping into the hired van and headed off to the meeting point.

Roxas has his earphones in his ears as he reads from a magazine, whilst Axel plays magnetic chess with Kairi. You just sit and watch the dusty scenery go by, your eyes taking in the sights of this marvellous place. Soon you’ve all left the small town, and you’re all driving a dusty road. You watch the bush fly by, and you smile giddily when you catch sight of an emu. You point it out to Roxas and Axel and Kairi, but they don’t see.

But you don’t mind.

When you get to the meeting spot you immediately go over to Sora, smile at him and say, “Good morning. I saw a emu”

Sora’s eyes widen in glee and pleasure as he exclaims, “Really? Wow!”

You nod, and look about. You’re all standing at a public parking place, and harsh, yellow shrubbery and tall grey trees surround you. But there’s something beautiful about it, you think, something real. And so the Sea Lady turns into the Bush Lady, and you all head off, nodding and oohing and aahing as she points out the various trees and plants you can eat from. “Bush tucker” she says as she trots along, pausing at the sight of a heart shaped leaf that’s attached to a skinny vine. She motions for the Other Guy to dig it up with his shovel, and soon she’s showing you all a small clump of knotty brown potato-things. Sora laughs when you say this out loud, and the Bush Lady holds it out to you and says, “Not quite, but close. It’s called a yam”

You nod, and she puts it away in her bag. You all set off again, stopping to peer watch as black winged cockatoos caw at you and flap off, their screeches accompanied by the sound of crickets and a hot summer’s day. You all return to the meeting spot eventually, dusty and bone weary, but happy. You all devour your lunches, and then Sora’s mother suggests going to the local pub for dinner that night. The Bush Lady agrees, and you wonder briefly if she’ll become the Pub Lady, and snort at the mental image.

It rains that night.

The storm comes from no where, as the storms around this area often do, and you’re all warm and happy in the pub, as you listen to the sound of chatter and clinking glasses and the ‘BING-BING-BING’ of the mini casino. The air smells of sweat and smoke and something else, something harsher yet gentler, with the sweet scent of fresh rain added. People mill around, greeting each other and laughing. You watch as small children play with the bingo wheel, sending it spinning around and around while adults sit crowded at the bar. The back of the place is open and overlooks the local golf course, the green grass sweeping and lush. But it’ll all be a mass of mud in the morning, but you don’t quite care, really. A giant fake stuffed crocodile sits elevated above the doors, strangely comforting.

You sit with Sora and Roxas and Axel outside, feet dangling over the edge of the veranda and listening to the noises, listening to the shouts and laughs. You don’t ever want to leave this place, but you’ll have to, you’ll have to go back to your city.

It’s later that night, when everyone’s packing up when Sora yelps in pain. He’s been worrying his bottom lip all day because it’s chapped and peeling like everyone’s else’s, and he’s finally caused it to bleed. You lead him outside, where you whipe away the blood with napkin, but the blood still wells up. He’s grimacing in pain, and smiling and it’s weird and odd, kinda, because this Sea-Boy, like you, has sneaked some sips of beer. You think you might be drunk, and you’re pretty sure you are, because you lean down and murmur, “You got a little something Sora” before you’re kissing him.

That was thirty odd years ago, and you can still remember the Sea-Boy, the one who ran off with your heart that summer. You can remember making love in his room before you left, tears trailing down his face as he clung to you and whispered, “Don’t go, don’t go”

Now you sit in your office, watching your blonde wife enter. She smiles at your as she hands you your mail, a soft yellow envelope catching your attention. You open it first, confused by the address, because it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be, but it is.

Dear Riku.

I’m not sure you remember me, but I certainly remember you. My name is Kairi, and I married Sora. We were all in the same summer activities group, remember?

You and Sora also had a relationship, and that it is why I write you now. Sora was diagnosed with cancer last year, Riku, and died a little over a week ago. It would be much appreciated if you could attend the service, and say a few things about him, and your time with him.

Thank you,

Kairi.

Contact number: XXX-XXX-XXX
Address: XX Beach Street, Weipa, QLD, XXXX, Australia.

You’re standing in a suit of black, in a small church, in front of people you don’t know. Kairi stands beside you, tells them who you are, and where you come from Then it’s your turn to talk, and standing tall and strong and keeping the grief and loss at bay you start.

“He’s fifteen, and he’s beautiful.…”