[255]: "Becoming"; Kairi, Naminé
Title: Becoming
Challenge: [255] Tabula Rasa
Characters: Kairi, Naminé
Word Count: 331
Notes: Kairi has a lot of potential, even though she was underdeveloped in the games. I also feel an attachment to Naminé; somehow, I always end up writing about her. Connecting the two of them is interesting.
ETA: I didn't realize there was another entry also called "Emergence." Changed my title so there wasn't confusion.
Kairi's knee itches from the heat. The air conditioning system in the classroom doesn't quite work right, something about budget cuts, and Kairi has to look at what the teacher wrote on the blackboard because she missed what Ms. Fields said about their journal assignment. She can feel sweat between her shoulder blades.
"Write about your earliest memory using the five senses. Be as descriptive as possible."
Kairi thinks of Aphrodite, who rose fully grown out of the ocean. She doodles a scallop shell on the corner of her paper, and a little stick-figure version of herself standing astride the shell. Curlicue waves in smooth graphite. Aphrodite would know something about having no past. Kairi pretends she doesn't see Riku and Sora giving her looks out of the corners of their eyes whenever they talk about their parents.
She imagines a castle of coral and seaweed under the waves. Maybe pearls grow into mermaids if enough time goes by. This won't do.
She closes her eyes and thinks back. Standing with her feet in the sea and her hand stretched out to catch raindrops. Each drop a tiny, transparent pearl. The sky and sea are slices of mirror-image gray. Everything connects.
Everything connects.
Naminé spends her days drawing birds. It becomes easy to forget the white walls all around her. Bird bones are hollow, easily broken. That is what Larxene says when she takes the paper from Naminé's hands to have a look.
"Give them enough space to stretch their wings and they think they're free," Larxene says. She doesn't tear up the page, as Naminé expected. Instead, she snatches a pencil and draws a box around the bird. A crude sketch of walls.
"Don't waste our time, witch." The silence after Larxene leaves is enough to drown in. Her knee itches beneath her colorless dress.
The first time she leaves the castle, she stands in the rain, as if the pure force of it could make her heart real.
Challenge: [255] Tabula Rasa
Characters: Kairi, Naminé
Word Count: 331
Notes: Kairi has a lot of potential, even though she was underdeveloped in the games. I also feel an attachment to Naminé; somehow, I always end up writing about her. Connecting the two of them is interesting.
ETA: I didn't realize there was another entry also called "Emergence." Changed my title so there wasn't confusion.
Kairi's knee itches from the heat. The air conditioning system in the classroom doesn't quite work right, something about budget cuts, and Kairi has to look at what the teacher wrote on the blackboard because she missed what Ms. Fields said about their journal assignment. She can feel sweat between her shoulder blades.
"Write about your earliest memory using the five senses. Be as descriptive as possible."
Kairi thinks of Aphrodite, who rose fully grown out of the ocean. She doodles a scallop shell on the corner of her paper, and a little stick-figure version of herself standing astride the shell. Curlicue waves in smooth graphite. Aphrodite would know something about having no past. Kairi pretends she doesn't see Riku and Sora giving her looks out of the corners of their eyes whenever they talk about their parents.
She imagines a castle of coral and seaweed under the waves. Maybe pearls grow into mermaids if enough time goes by. This won't do.
She closes her eyes and thinks back. Standing with her feet in the sea and her hand stretched out to catch raindrops. Each drop a tiny, transparent pearl. The sky and sea are slices of mirror-image gray. Everything connects.
Everything connects.
Naminé spends her days drawing birds. It becomes easy to forget the white walls all around her. Bird bones are hollow, easily broken. That is what Larxene says when she takes the paper from Naminé's hands to have a look.
"Give them enough space to stretch their wings and they think they're free," Larxene says. She doesn't tear up the page, as Naminé expected. Instead, she snatches a pencil and draws a box around the bird. A crude sketch of walls.
"Don't waste our time, witch." The silence after Larxene leaves is enough to drown in. Her knee itches beneath her colorless dress.
The first time she leaves the castle, she stands in the rain, as if the pure force of it could make her heart real.