Wayward

III

"Mom! Dad!" Your voice was hoarse and scratchy as you could feel pins being pushed in and out of your throat repeatedly.  The muscles in your thighs and calves were spazzing and twitching as you continued to run faster and faster against the darkness. It felt like you were wading through snow or cresting ocean waves, you felt like giving up. Every so often you thought that you could see a flash of color and thought that it was your mother or father. That you could hear your voice being called in the darkness. It hurt being in the darkness, being all alone with no one else around to comfort you.  Warm tears stung your eyes as you continued to run faster and faster. Maybe if you ran fast enough that you could get out of the dark and somewhere that you could see.

Then you stopped running all together and sat there hunched over in the dark. You were tired and afraid, so cold and alone. Burying your face into the crook of your arms you just wanted to go back to bed. Go to bed and wake up in the morning to go to work, to come home and make Wayfinders for people you didn't even know from online. To argue with your mother about not wanting to go to bed only to be woken up by your father or mother the next morning.

Normal, you just wanted to be normal. But you knew that wasn't possible right now. You knew what you had seen at the beach what felt like ten minutes ago was very much real. Knowing that was Xemnas meant something wasn't normal anymore, that somewhere along the way you fucked up somehow. Did something to make a fictional world real.

That's how it worked, right?  Falling back onto your behind, you looked up to what you hoped was the sky. "Please, someone help me. I just want to go home, I want to go to that college my Mom and Dad want me to." You sobbed aloud in the darkness. "I'm sorry if I fucked up, I'm so sorry. I just want some help."

A hand was rested upon your shoulder and with a jerk, you turned back around to see someone there in the darkness. You had only seen him once over the course of a single installation of the game. "You aren't alone, little bird." His voice was warm and soft, his eyes shined in the dark like stars. Seafoam, or at least that's what you could make out. A mustache and a goatee with raven black hair that held a tint of dark blue to it. "Come, it's time to wake up."

So, you did.

Waking up with a start you sat up in a bed as warm orange and yellow light came through two windows flanking the bed meanwhile a beautiful illumination of a stain glass mural illuminated the rest of the master bedroom sized room. It was hard to tell whether the walls were an off white beige or some other color that you couldn't figure out after just waking up. You sat there in the clothes you last dressed in minus the light jacket. The jacket and your bag were hung up on the edge of a chair that was pushed into a desk. There was little in the room, two doors and no dresser. Two nightstands that flanked both sides of the bed and curtains that flowed gently in the room as a warm summer breeze blew into the room.

Your hand flew to your chest as the cool material of your Wayfinder pressed against your hot skin. Glancing down hesitantly you found that it was still there in your grasp. Something about the Wayfinder made you believe whatever was going on was real and not a figment of your imagination. It kept you grounded to a reality that you believed was the only one possible.

Scooting off the bed you wandered over to the door closets to the desk, opening it up to find a deep closet that housed a dresser and some empty hangers while there were others that had clothes on them. Picking up a hanger and bringing it out into the light you found that it was a design that closely resembled the kind that Aqua wore in Birth By Sleep. Or any of the characters in the Kingdom Hearts series... you had a tense smile on your face, this helped further come to terms that this was real. Hanging it back up you wandered over toward the other door before twisting the knob open quietly as you could.