Part one of a little drabble series I'm calling "Adventures of Kuina and Sanji" where a deceased Kuina and Sanji watch Zoro grow up.

For a long while the sun blinds him.

At least, he thinks it's the sun. The bright, golden hue that would circle the blinding light had eventually faded away. Everything was just white now. There he was, a starving young boy, lying on the ground staring into the white nothingness. The sharp pain of hunger is gone now but he knows he's starving, he knows he hasn't eaten in forever. Feels like years.

Everything has gone quiet too. The waves, the wind, the occasional grunt from the old geezer on the other side of the rock. Like the whole world had been muted but he was much too tired to raise himself to check.

He stays like that for a while. He wonders when death will come.

Death turns out to be a little girl.

Not too little, she's at least a few years older than he is, with dark black hair and matching eyes. She's pretty, he thinks to himself briefly, in a very boyish sort of way. Very different from the high end guests he would so often see on The Orbit.

She's smiling at him though and her voice echos in the whiteness.

"Hello."

He opens his mouth to respond, he can feel the rough texture of his tongue and lips, and he's surprised with how easily his voice comes to him.

"Hi."

"I'm looking for someone." She explains, bending her knees to speak closer to him. "Has anyone passed by here?"

He shakes his head. Nothing has come or gone, its been just him for so long. As an afterthought he adds an, "I'm sorry." because even in Death manners were important in front of a female.

The girl lets out an exasperated sigh and straightens herself.

"I knew it wouldn't be that easy. He sure does like to wonder in the oddest places."

He wants to close his eyes, he wants it to be over. He's been staring at white for who-knows-how-long, delving himself into the blackness would be a nice change.

But she's still looking at him, her face furrowed in concentration.

"The search might be easier with two people," She mumbles, glancing at her surroundings. Suddenly he wishes he were back at The Orbit, in its functioning kitchen where he could offer the girl a nice cooked meal and a refreshing drink to help her rest from her search for whomever it was she was looking for.

For being dead, he feels awfully useless.

Death is holding her hand out to him, smiling once again. "Would you like to join me?"

At this point, anywhere would be better than where he was now. Lying on the ground with nothing around him. He nods his head slowly and raises his own hand to meet her's. He can see his sunken pale skin, his bones visibly outlined beneath. His arm, palm, fingers, everything is so painfully thin in comparison to the girl. If she thought anything of his appearance, she showed no signs of it as they clasped hands.

And he closes his eyes, expecting the world to fall away from him, for everything to be absolutely over once and for all.

Instead, sound crashes over him. So many things invade his ears at once that he actually winces from the force. So loud, so loud. And the world beneath him is suddenly hard and rough, something brushes past him and tickles at his nose and it reminds him of the winds while out sailing the ocean.

He opens his eyes and the world is in vivid color, it's populated by everything and anything that had been absent in his white nothingness. And before he can process what's happened, the girl is tugging at their still clasped hands.

"Come on," She urges. "We have to keep looking. Zoro can slip right past us if we're not careful."

He notices his body is still unnaturally thin from starvation and he's still dressed in his ratty, torn up chefs outfit from The Orbit but it doesn't hold him back from following behind the older girl.

Later he learns that she is not in fact Death. Her name is Kuina and she's on a search for her friend, Zoro. And, apparently now, so was he.