He returns just in time for her funeral. It's awfully ironic because there the fair maiden resided, dutifully waiting the return of her prince, only for him to show up as her petrified body and pasty skin are being lowered into the earth under a little marble angel that says goodbye, princess. We'll miss you. And doesn't he know it?
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Her eyes roll back in their sockets and she's staring up listlessly as the sky gets further and further away and she sinks s l o w l y down into the abyss. Her hair floats upwards like pondweed, fingers splay out, water flowing freely between the gaps; she feels light and free and ethereal just as a princess should as she chokes on the water and it fills and floods her lungs.
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She stares out across the sea, crimson hair blowing about her pretty pale face, cold breeze touching her skin in a way no lady was meant to be touched. Doesn't it know she's a princess? Ha. She idly wonders what they'll say at her funeral as she steps into the water, shivering as her toes, feet, ankles, knees are submerged. A princess down to a tee; waiting, always waiting, and spineless to boot.
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She was never one to write suicide notes until a few days ago. Hell, she was never one to write anything remotely depressing until a few days ago. It all started with that letter and who knows where it's going to end up now? She tried to smile and pretend everything was A-OK, a goodie gumdrops picture-perfect world. She shivers because she knows it's only a matter of time before those suicide notes are put to good use.
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She sits on the shore and watches the waves devour her bottle greedily; green glass sucked under by strong currents and spat back out again like used gum. Once. Twice. Three times it bobs back up into vision, only to be dragged down for the fourth and final time. "It's a letter," she tells Selphie later, forcing a smile. "I wrote it a while ago to that boy I can't remember."
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Selphie walks her home from school, talking all the while about boring mundane things that she trys to sound interested in; boys and clothes and hair and make-up. She nods her pretty head and laughs occasionally but when Selphie asks about paying a visit to their old play island all smiles cease and she frowns. She has no business there, not anymore.
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She thinks about him a lot, so much so that his picture in her mind has started to fade, flecked with age. She worries she'll forget everything about him altogether, knows it's only a matter of time, so she takes the mental snapshot out of the hidey-hole in her head and gazes at it desperately, slurping up every single minute detail with a straw. She tries to recall his name and falters, mouth agape; she's shocked but not that shocked to find she can't remember. She'd always known it was coming.
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Fingertips brush against cool stone, violet-blue eyes scanning the crude drawings hacked into the walls with pointed stones all those years ago. Her movements stop, breath catching in her throat as she pauses over a certain picture; a boy and a girl. And a papou fruit. She giggles a little at this new revolution that maybe he really did like her that way after all but she also cries a little because it's sad, horribly, awfully heart-wrenchingly sad. Sad because she knows she'll probably never see him again and that old pictures in cave walls are best forgotten, always forgotten. People grow up.
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Her heart pounds as he takes her hand in his, warmth spreading from the tips of her fingers to the aching lump in her chest which seemed to be frozen for so long. Sky blue meets violets, he talks about promises and reunions and suddenly it feels like her heart's been ripped out of her chest all over again because her fingertips brush past his and suddenly, too suddenly, he's gone and she knows deep down he's not coming back.
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She sits at the waterway, arms around her knees tucked under her chin, and she stares at the mural decorating the cave wall and he stares at it with her, leaning up against the other. It's more than a fairytale and he doesn't need a lucky charm to tell him so.
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She buries her head into his chest, inhaling and exhaling heavily, arms encircling him and his encircling her. She feels warm and safe and she clings to him like a limpet because he's all that she has left and she depends on him, always depended on him, and he's like some glorious drug that'll make everything seem okay if she just keeps holding on. And then he lets go and the spell is broken.
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She lays on the floor with a hole for a heart and a mouth wide open and she can't think or feel or see or speak but if she could she'd probably be screaming because it hurts so much laying there submerged in darkness with nobody to rescue you. She knows exactly how it feels to be forsaken.
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He tries to reach her, arms flailing, extending outwards and she turns to face him slowly, eyes cloudy. He's so close he could run up to her and gather all her limbs up in his arms and keep her close but he's afraid he'll break her and, in that split second of delberation, the door opens in a gust of breeze and she's bowled over into a state of nearly non-existence.
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They sit on their tree, giddy with the idea of new worlds and adventures and all the good stuff teenagers dream of. Of being rebellious and breaking free from the watchful gazes of parents; to venture beyond the horizon line and stumble into strange new places with strange new faces. She giggles because to her it's just some elaborate game between friends and in her picture-perfect world there's no such thing as pain or hurt. Or maybe there is and she's too stubborn or scared or both to acknowledge it.
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The young girl sits on the shore of her new home with her new friend, eyes large as she stares out at the vast expanse of reddy-goldy glimmery sea as it sparkles under the sun at their kingdom by the sea. She can't imagine life without him and only hopes he feels the same way because, even at the tender young age of seven, she's only living for the sea and for Sora. It's really that simple.
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a/n: this oneshot was inspired by a poem called Anabell Leigh by Edgar Allan Poe. It is like… the most BEAUTIFUL poem I have ever read. I just had to do a oneshot about it. Hope you like it.