Heroes of Dreamland Rewritten, Book 3: Stars Amidst Darkness

Chapter 8

Sakura | 桜

"Axe, please. Are you sure he doesn't have time to speak to me?" My gloves tucked behind my back, I rock anxiously back and forth on my feet. "I haven't heard from Sir Knight in a few weeks, now, and I'm getting worried. I just want to be able to talk to him for a minute; that's all."

The skull-shaped knight gives me yet another unimpressed glance before finally giving his head a slow shake. "Look, Missy. If 'e wanted to speak to ya, 'e'd know where to find ya. 'e's got other things 'e's worried about right now."

"Like what?" I question earnestly. The skull just shakes his head and waves me off, turning away to return to driving rivets into a section of the Halberd's hull. "Axe, please. At least promise me that if you see him, you'll let him know I was looking for him."

He sighs heavily. After a long moment, he turns to face me again, his glowing, deep-set red eyes glowing a bit in minor annoyance. "Look, Missy. You know I don't dislike you as much as the other boys do. I'm sorry, alright? I don't know why 'e 'asn't been wanting to talk to ya lately. It's beyond me, considering how sad 'e was for so long after you disappeared and on 'n off in the interim." He weighs the riveter in his hand a couple of times before nodding once. "Fine. I'll let 'im know you were lookin' for 'im. But I don't think anything will come of it."

I give a small nod in return. "That's all I ask. Thank you."

He waves me off again. "Don't mention it. Now get out of 'ere before one of the other boys sees ya and gets ornery."

He doesn't have to tell me twice. Sword and Blade are by far the worst, but none of the other Meta-Knights like me at all. I mean, Axe doesn't particularly like me, either, but at least he gets along with me okay most of the time. Well, and Javelin's alright as long as no one's around to remind him that I'm not liked by the group. When it's just him, he acts as if he knows me quite well. It's sort of weird, really.

Sighing heavily, I leave the Halberd bay by the secret elevator that leads out into the dungeons, and then slowly work my way from there to the new entrance to the secret library. It's still down and back up a bunch of stairs, but now on the opposite side of the castle from where it used to be. And now, rather than knocking a vase off a table to open the secret entrance, you have to push in the beak of a small bust of Dedede.

I'll freely admit I often push said beak in rather harder than is really necessary.

Once in the library, I head over to my windowseat. Sitting down on it, I curl up in one of the corners and look outside the window. Today is another dreary Midautumn day. It hasn't quite gotten cold and rainy yet, but it's cool and breezy out, and the sky is cloudy. In the middle distance, the top branches of the magical cherry tree over in the Star Warriors' Garden appear to give a bit of a shiver.

I've been back in Dreamland for almost four months, but over time, it's steadily felt less and less like home. Ever since we got back from Patch Land just a day after I woke up, Meta Knight has been growing more and more distant from me. I don't know why. I try to reach out to him, try to spend time with him, but for some reason, my presence just... seems to make him sad. I couldn't find him on his birthday at all, back in Midsummer. A few days later, I managed to run into him, and I've had a few encounters with him here and there since then, but I haven't seen him at all since the beginning of Earlautumn.

"I wonder why I woke up," I murmur sadly to my reflection in the glass, even though no one is here to hear me. "It can't have been because of Yin-Yarn; he was gone so soon. Galacta Knight hasn't even shown up once since then. Nothing bad has happened. Everything's been perfectly calm, honestly." All this to say... it doesn't seem like anything happened that I needed to wake up for.