Chapter Text
The girl arrived with the storm.
Years later, Sora would remember that detail more clearly than anything else. The sky above Destiny Islands had turned black just after midnight. Not the ordinary darkness that came with rain clouds, but something deeper. The sea had become violent and the waves slammed against the docks hard enough to shake the wooden supports beneath them. Thunder shook the island and had jolted Sora awake. Lightning flashed and then came the explosion.
Every light in town went out and for one terrible second, the world seemed to hold its breath. Then the storm vanished and all that was left was silence.
Sora had never seen anything like it. Neither had anyone else and that was why half the island gathered on the beach before sunrise, looking through the wreckage with apprehension.
Sora was twenty-three years old, a fisherman like his dad before him and still a thorn in the side of his sweet mother. His family had lived on destiny islands for generations and Sora could trace his lineage back hundreds of years. He was an islander through and through.
That day, he stood next to his neighbor, a frail ageing woman in her eighties as half of the town stared down at a girl unconscious in the sand.
"She's alive." The town doctor announced as he checked her pulse.
"How?" Someone questioned, but nobody answered.
The girl looked about his age, maybe a little younger. Her long red hair spilled across the pale sand, but her clothes were unfamiliar: a dress that had once been formal, now tattered and stained with blood.
She looked less like someone rescued from the ocean and more like someone who had survived a war.
Slowly, her eyes opened. Sora watched as the light blue of her eyes focused on the people around her. Her expression was not that of fright, but instead confusion.
The doctor smiled gently as he helped her sit up.
"Can you tell us your name?" The girl stared at him and the words hung in the air.
Several seconds passed.
"Kairi, my name is Kairi." She spoke quietly, her voice rough with disuse. She looked around the crowd, the beach, the ocean and finally the sky. Her brow furrowed, like she had never seen any of them before.
"Where am I?” The question sent a ripple through the crowd and Sora frowned.
The doctor blinked.
"You’re on Destiny Islands, you must have been out at sea when the storm came through last night."
“Storm?” She questioned still staring out at the ocean.
“Can you tell me where you’re from?” The doctor probed gently. The girl looked at him suddenly, her eyes wide.
She stood up abruptly however pain crossed her face and she bent over.
"What world is this?" Her voice was stronger now and there was a desperate sense of urgency underlying her words.
Nobody answered. It wasn't the question of someone who was lost. It was the question of someone who had expected a different answer. The doctor glanced toward the crowd with concern spread across his face before turning back to her.
"What do you remember?" He asked gently, looking at her as if she was a lost child. The girl froze as his words registered and for a moment her eyes seemed to lose focus.
Then her expression morphed into panic. Her head snapped up and she searched through the crowd. Sora watched as her breathing quickened.
The doctor placed a calming hand on her shoulder.
"It's alright." He consoled, however the girl looked ready to cry.
"I don't..." Her voice broke, "I don't know."
The crowd shifted uncomfortably. Sora heard someone mutter that she must have hit her head and another whispered that she was lying. Neither explanation felt right. Sora watched from the back. There was something about her expression that bothered him. He recognized that expression.
It was as though she'd lost something important, something she could feel missing, but couldn’t name.
Sora had seen that expression before. He'd seen it after funerals and after ships failed to return.
The doctor spoke softly.
"What's the last thing you remember?" The girl's eyes widened. For half a second something flashed across her face, but before she could catch it, the image was gone. The girl gasped and grabbed her head as pain exploded behind her eyes.
Sora moved before thinking. Later, he would tell himself it was because she looked frightened, but the truth was that he couldn't stand the look on her face. By the time he realized it, he was kneeling beside her.
"Hey." The girl looked at him, tears had gathered in her eyes.
"I can't remember anything." The words came out small.
"That's okay." Sora offered a hand.
She stared at him like he was speaking a language she had almost forgotten No one had ever looked at him like that before.
"You can figure it out."
The girl glanced down at his hand, then slowly took it. The second their fingers touched, something happened:
A distant image of stars falling through darkness. A massive door. Countless worlds burning and a voice whispering:
“Find the Key.”
Both of them jerked apart, the images burned into their brains. Neither spoke as they stared at each other. The sun continued to beat down on their backs and the waves lapped at the shore.
Across the beach, far beyond the horizon, something ancient stirred in the darkness between worlds.