Kingdom Keepers: Once Upon a Dream

Chapter 24

At first, Finn wasn't quite sure what had happened. It was like he had very suddenly woken up after not knowing he had gone to sleep. His mind was hazy, and he wasn't quite sure where he was or how he'd gotten there. He blinked his eyes over and over as he tried to process it all, and then he heard his name.

He looked up. Amanda was crying. They were on Tom Sawyer Island. Why was Amanda crying? His eyes widened as a wave of memories came over him, and suddenly, he knew. He'd forgotten her. He'd changed the world and he'd forgotten her and then he'd kissed her and now he remembered her and she was his girlfriend and she was standing in front of him and he'd forgotten her and she was crying.

They met eyes and then, at the same time, they lunged forward, enveloping each-other into an embrace. Amanda's arms squeezed him as tightly as they ever had and he pulled her close to him, cradling her head in his hand and trying to quiet her cries as they intensified. If he could, he knew he would stay like this forever, never letting go of her ever again.

"You were right," he whispered, and tears filled his own eyes as well. "We shouldn't have tried to change anything; it was too risky."

"You were right first," she replied. "I should've listened to you all along."

He broke the embrace and held her face in his hands, wiping away her tears with his thumb as she continued to sob.

"You were dead," she blubbered. "The last thing I saw you were dead and I was holding you in my arms and I thought I was never gonna see you again..."

Her cries took her over just as Finn pulled her into him again, letting her tears soak his shoulder.

"Shhh," he whispered, filled with guilt now that he'd done this to her. "I'm not leaving: never again; I promise."

After a moment, Amanda pushed away from him and wiped her tears away with a forceful hand. He watched her closely, and they still stood inches apart.

"You were right about something else though." he said softly.

"What's that?"

"Even when we changed things...fate brought us together."

Amanda's laughed brightly, tears still streaming down her face.

"Guess it's destiny then," she teased, though she knew the words were true.

"Amanda," Finn said seriously. "I love you."

His heart soared as he said the words that he'd scribbled nervously weeks ago onto a note that he'd meant to give to her when she found him, its envelope left as a clue, the note he'd never gotten to give her.

Amanda giggled.

"I love you too," she said. She'd known it for a long time, realized it while he was missing, but this was the first time she'd said the words out loud, and immediately it felt like the truest thing she'd ever said.

Finn's eyes bared into her own, and there was something deep inside them. His cheeks raised in the slightest smile, and then he was leaning in again, and she was too, and then their lips met once more. It was sweet and right and perfect and magical just like the last one, only now she knew right away who she was kissing, and what it meant. She wrapped her arms around his neck again and stood up on the tips of her toes, pouring every ounce of her soul into his own, so that he'd never be able to feel he was without her again.

They parted and Finn kept her close, holding her cheek in his hand again. Both of them were smiling, and crying, and somehow this felt like the most important day of Amanda's young life. He was hers and she was his, and, even though they were young, and even though she knew others would laugh at it, she knew that that was how it was meant to be forever. This was her fairytale, and nothing, not even entering a parallel universe, could take that away.