This Duet Called Mother and Son

She can't help but turn an anxious glance towards the staircase; wondering where her son could be, why she hasn't seen him staggering into the kitchen these past few mornings with sleep still clinging to him like a tangible scent.

She can't do more than watch helplessly out the kitchen window, missing her baby boy so badly, longing for him to come crashing into the dining room with the smell of the ocean surrounding him like a living thing.

It's part of her nature, wrapped in the very essence that allows herself to say she's a mother to worry about what he's up to. She imagines he'll be hauled home any minute now by his friends, the rougher one and himself half bloodied. Another fight, she convinces herself, that's what's keeping him. A fight with those strange children in the sandlot. She worries about what happened to her smiling child.

She tries to keep the fear at bay but it's wrapped too tightly alongside her feelings of love, she wants to keep him safe from the world. But she knows it's not as bad as it seems, it can't be, and any moment now he'll be dragged home by his friends. Probably tangled with sea-weed and half drowned. Another hero mission, she knows that's what it is, trying to save Selphie's flip-flop or Kairi's bracelet from the waves.

It comes as somewhat of a surprise the day she opens the door and a young girl dressed all in white is standing on the other side.

"Who-" The girl lifts one hand, smiling so serenely that she doesn't doubt she's here as a good omen.

"Diz said not to worry about you," says the girl, "that you're only part of the program. But he was your son. He was real to you," and her heart flutters so helplessly she has to cling to the door-frame least she swoon, "so I thought you deserved to know. Roxas is alright. He's better than he's been for a while actually. So please don't worry about him anymore."

She believes the girl, has no choice but to, and her heart aches so fiercely for her son she thinks it might destroy her right there.

She's both ecstatic and terrified when Kairi comes running across her lawn, the young girl's face flush but filled with some private joy.

"He's alright!" Kairi blurts before she even has the chance to offer the girl a drink, "he can't come home just yet, but he will. He promised."

She knows Kairi's not lying, the girl wouldn't fib about something like this, and she's gripped with such a surge of love for her Sora she thinks she just might break.

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This drabble wasn't written for anything in particular, just a thought I had bouncing around my head. It tops out at 442 words (Pssst, final fantasy fans, check out my journal for a link to a FF Christmas exchange community. The more the merrier!)