Young Writers Society

Kate was broken from her sulking by the sight of sparkling something through the branches of her tree and the sound of what might have been either children or terrified rats.

Either way, she wasn't in the mood to go near them.

She huddled up against the trunk of the tree and went back to contemplating her charm. Levi's charm. The one she should have tossed in the bin forever ago. Why did she still have it? Levi was a traitor and an oath breaker. She should never want anything to do with him again.

Somehow, though, she couldn't bring herself to cast it away. A stubborn sense of sentimentality kept it wrapped around her wrist.

Why couldn't that little brat from before be right? Why couldn't vampires really not be human? Why couldn't they just be the unfeeling, uncaring beasts that annoying chunk of the media wanted them to be?

It wasn't fair that she had to be told every day of her life that she was other and still not get to actually benefit from the stuff everyone told her she had, she was. It wasn't fair that she was told that she was unfeeling while she couldn't even toss a useless piece of crap given to her by someone who abandoned her into the fucking abyss and let this clingy nightmare be over.

It wasn't fair.

“Sure, I can show ya!” Peter said, but then he paused- he’d been flying since forever, but he rarely ever had to describe it. In the end he settled on, “Well, I suppose there’s faith, trust, you already got the pixie dust- just think of a wonderful thought,”

“-Any happy little thought?” said Baba.

“Yep.”

Baba flopped over, with one hand positioned thoughtfully on their chin, flapping about with the other to stay afloat.



What lovely thoughts would Baba think?

“Baba will think of kraken’s ink! Mixed up with a mummy’s phlegm, to write on sheets of ancient skin! Tales of hallowed nights gone by-”

Baba shot up into the air, and collided with the racoon twins.

“You can fly!” the other Lost Boys chorused.

“Oh Baba's so sorry are you alright-” said Baba to the twins. But they were fine. They just pushed Baba back, so they floated fast away toward Lira.

Baba thought of basilisk eggs, and rolled out of her way just in time. Baba rolled into a tree, but they only laughed, and flew back up, spraying leaves and twigs.

Peter Pan laughed again, and turned to Lira. “Now it’s your turn!” he said. “You think of something!”

__
Donald and Goofy ran across the treetops, to make it to Baba and Lira. They weren’t far, now. Just a few treetops more, and-

Crash. Bang. Plonk. They fell through the leaves and smacked several branches down the way, violent piano noises embellishing each smack. Finally Goofy grabbed onto a branch and hung there, Donald clinging to his waist.

And there was Kate, sulking on a branch just below them.

"Hi, Kate," said Goofy.

Kate gave a glare with all the heat and fury of hell behind it. "Fuck off," she growled, most definitely meaning it as a threat. The glow of her eyes grew from the simmering glow of coals to the intensity of a raging bonfire. She bared her fangs, just to prove the point.

She was sick of this. Done. Those fucking morons couldn't even take the most obvious of hints. They couldn't take her fucking off from the group and climbing a godsdamned tree as a message that maybe she didn't want to be here. She didn't want to fuck around and get herself covered glitter so she could bumble around the sky like the rest of the idiot-squad decided to do. They didn't even get her outright hostility as meaning that she didn't want them around.

She would get home on her own. She didn't need them.

She needed to think of a happy thought.

She tried to imagine the beaches of her island, but all she could think of was them breaking apart as darkness swarmed her world. All of the Heartless, too, with Levi just watching in the distance.

She tried imagining the future, but all she thought of was that same darkness. She couldn't even imagine meeting Levi again - he seemed so different than the Levi she had once known, and he had been gone for years.

So she tried imagining the past.

Her mind flickered to the last time they had truly seen each other. It was five years ago, and Levi had just gotten them ice cream from who-knows-where. At ten, Lira hadn't really questioned where sweets came from - you just accepted them.

She had been trying to convince him to eat the ice cream after they went on an adventure instead of before - it seemed like a tradition in the making.

“I don't think I can, Lira,” he said. “I had to run here after I got the ice cream, and I don't think I can get it after our adventures. Maybe we need to change the rule – instead of doing it after, we do it before as good luck!”

She fiddled with her charm. She didn't think they needed luck when they had each other, but that was okay. She would respect Levi and what he wanted.

“Okay,” she said, smiling at him. Suddenly remembering what she had been so excited about before the popsicles, she plopped her bag down beside her and started to dig through it.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I'm getting out a gift,” she said.

He scooted so close that she could feel his breath on her neck. He drew back surprisingly fast when she turned around with the papou fruit in her hands – she was sure she was going to hit his head by accident.

“What is that?” he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side.

“It's a papou fruit,” she informed him. She held it out. “I read a book that said that people's destinies become connected if they share them. I think it's for love-love, but I think it's alright if it's for friend-love instead.”

He studied it.

Then he grabbed it from her hands, ripped it in half – juice going everywhere – and proudly presented one dripping part to her with yet another smile. “We'll be best friends for really forever, then,” he promised.

She returned his smile.

“Best friends for really forever,” she agreed, taking her half from him.

They feasted on papou fruits, watching the sun as it set over the ocean.

Lira suddenly gained control over her flight. The smile that danced across her lips started out small at first, but it quickly grew. She lifted herself up a little so she was closer to Baba and Peter Pan. Levi would have been laughing if he could see her now - he was right all along-

The rest of the memory came back to her.

After a few minutes passed, Levi looked down at his lap and frowned.

"I don't think I'll be able to see you as much soon," he said. Lira looked over at him, trying to hide the alarm that was threatening to spread across her face. "I have to do something important."

"What kind of important?" she asked.

Levi shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. "I just know that it's really important for me to do that, and that I can't tell anyone about it."

Lira frowned. "You're telling me about it."

"I'm just telling you there's a thing," Levi protested. "I'm not telling you what the thing is! I can't get in trouble for that."

The little charms on his necklace all clinked together. He raised a hand up and ran his fingers across them. In the years that followed, Lira would always be surprised by how serious Levi looked then. He was only ten. What kind of important thing could a ten year old do?

"I'm really sorry," he apologized. There was a long, drawn out silence, and Lira found she was trying to hold back tears at the thought of losing her only friend.

He looked back over at her.

"But we're best friends forever now, thanks to the papou and the ice cream!" he exclaimed. "So even if I'm gone for a really long time, I'll come back. I promise!"

A moment later, an irritated voice called from the horizon, "Come on, Levi! We have to go, or both of us are going to get in trouble."

Lira didn't focus on the speaker - all she focused on was the last hug that Levi gave her before he went running off towards the man calling his name.

Lira plummeted.

She had already been descending as the memory played out, but the ending was enough to make her fall the little distance that was left. It didn't hurt. It shouldn't have, given that she was just a few inches above the ground pre-fall.

But tears still sprung to her eyes.

Baba flew down to Lira, calling her name. “Lira! Is Lira hurt?”

Peter landed softly beside them. “I think she looks okay.”

“But- but she’s leaking,” Baba replied, confused. Baba still wasn’t sure about this crying thing, or wether or not it denoted physical harm. They had only cried once, and could not claim that their experience was definitive.

“It means there’s something weighing her down.” said Peter, frowning lightly. “She’ll never fly on her own like this.”

Baba looked at Peter. Peter looked at Baba. They knew what to do.

They put their arms around Lira, looping them underneath hers so she could hold on to them, and hovered gently just a little above the ground.

“You ready?” asked Baba encouragingly.

___
Donald climbed up from Goofy’s shoulders, to stand on the branch. He put his hands on his downy hips, and scowled at Kate from above.

”Young lady, don’t you speak to your elders like tha-”

Goofy, still hanging from the branch, took a breath, and counted to five. He knew he had to keep his cool.
Kate was more than difficult, she was frightening, but the young keyblade wielder was his responsibility. A world of horrors to come would be attracted to her power, wether she had anyone to face them with or not. On top of that, it was their fault that she was stranded. He had to try to connect with her. And he knew the way to do that was to talk to her like a person.

“Donald, get down from there,” Goofy said calmly.

Goofy then lowered himself from the branch, and sat down beside Kate.

“So what’ll ya do now, then?” he asked her.

Donald stared at Goofy, beak agape in indignance. But in truth, he was grateful that Goofy had taken over. He shrugged pompously, dropped down, and sat with them on the branch. (On the end opposite from Kate.)

Lira opened her mouth to say she was. She knew she should. But she didn't feel like flying - she just felt like standing where she was, her chest heavy with memories and emotions no one else seemed to be feeling. Baba and Kate seemed to have moved on from their time with Levi. It had been five years. Lira knew she should have, too.

But Levi felt so close when she was going on an adventure like this, and thinking of him was better than thinking of the home she couldn't return to.

Lira gave a tiny shake of her head.

The unrelenting anger in Kate's eyes relented. Behind the blue glass, the red glow subsided, changing the tinted light to a soft purple hue. She shifted, pressing her back against the trunk of the tree, and pulled one leg up to her chest. The other one dangled down off the branch. A chill ran up her spine as her center of gravity shifted slightly toward the edge of the branch with every minute movement of that leg.

She didn't show any of that as she tried hard to stay angry. The question, that stupid question, was in her head. Under her skin. She'd skin herself alive to get it out.

Because she didn't know.

She could...

She would...

Tears pricked the back of her eyes and she fought them back with a fury. She would not cry in front of these fucking anthropomorphic whatever-they-were. Nothing was going to make her cry. Not now, not ever. She did not cry.

Of course, by the time she finished that thought a glittering bastard of a tear was forming in the corner of one of her eyes, catching the red glow and sparkling through the blue lenses of her glasses.

She reached up to adjust said-glasses with a scowl, hoping to wipe away the traitorous liquid without tipping off dumb and dumber.

"None of your business," she tried to growl with the same weight as before, but all of the anger just wasn't there.

“How about just a little glide, to start with?” Peter suggested.

Baba shook their head. “I think she needs to sit, and be quiet for a moment.”

So Peter and Baba sat with Lira on the grass, and rested with her.

It came more easily to Baba, but Peter did his best.

________

Goofy, master of the anti-confrontational nod, demonstrated his skill.

“Of course. My mistake. But before you go out alone, I'd like to tell ya the basics real quick. About the Heartless, the Keyblades n' such. Just so ya know what's goin' on. It's none of my business, but all this business is gonna make itself your business, very soon."

He smiled at the forest scenery, proud of his own wordplay.

"...Baba?" she asked after awhile, her voice quiet. "Do you...miss him?"

She scowled at him in a token attempt to still look angry - which she wouldn't admit was such - and crosses her arms across her chest, shifting accidentally in the process toward the edge of the branch. The bark slipped beneath her, and slowly gravity attempted to pull her down. Immediately her hands shot down to the branch and she realigned herself.

She sat back up slowly, her hands hovering just over the bark for a long moment as she found her balance. Pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, she once-again crossed her arms and attempted to regain her composure.

"Fine," she spat with the ferocity of an angry kitten. If he wanted to tell her whatever about keys and blades and whatever, he could. She didn't care.

Baba sat and thought, hugging their knees, eerily still, object-like on the outside.
In lieu of facial expressions, Baba would often bob their head or gesture with their hands when they spoke, but in this moment all that moved was yarn in the breeze.

“Baba does not miss Levi. Not properly. Maybe they should.

But Baba seems to think Levi will come back to play sometime, as though nothing happened, and everything will be the same.”

Even now, Baba could picture themself and Levi, tumbling in the grass, laughing and struggling in their own crow nets.

The invasion seemed less and less real by the moment. Especially now. Baba had met Donald and Goofy, flown in a spaceship, seen the cosmos, seen mermaids, and flown with fairy dust. All Baba wanted to think about now was the other fairy stories Levi had told them, and how many must have also been true. What stories they wanted most to be true.

Baba sat back, more relaxed now. They had judged Levi too soon. They didn't really know that the imp was him. Not really.


“Maybe nothing has changed.” said Baba hopefully. “The thing Baba thought was Levi, they never heard him speak. And there are hundreds out there who look like him.”

Lira sat down next to Baba.

After a moment, she hugged her knees, too - grateful that she was now wearing pants instead of a dress. Something told her normal was something that they couldn't go back to. Her world was destroyed. Levi had been gone for the past five years, only to show up and disappear again. And here she was now, talking to a sentient scarecrow.

Baba's last sentences finally clicked.

She glanced over at them.

"Baba?" she asked, wiping a tear away with her sleeve. "...What are you talking about?"

“Baba saw hundreds who looked like Levi." Baba asserted. "They were all there with him. But Baba never heard him speak, Baba can’t say for sure that any of them were the real Levi, or that he was there at all.

Baba knows what Baba said in Traverse Town, but it’s too soon to judge him. Not when we don’t know.”

Then Baba added, much more quietly, “Baba wants to leave memories as they were, where they belong. Levi doesn’t need to come back. He’s fine where he is.”
______

Peter Pan had been uncharacteristically quiet in this conversation, because he was busy trying to remember why the name Levi sounded so familiar. Besides he didn’t really know what he wanted to make of that conversation anyway.

As the ever-forgetful spirit of youth, he was typically (though not deliberately) the one to abandon a friend rather than be abandoned. On top of that, he lacked the self awareness to understand the reason for his confusion. But he soon forgot it anyway. It took him ages and ages, but he remembered!

“I know that Levi!” said Peter suddenly, jumping up.

“We tied a big ribbon on the crocodile, painted pictures on Skull Rock, and-” here he interrupted himself with bouts of laughter- “-the clocks!- It was my idea, of course.” he boasted, almost stabbing his chest with his thumb.
_____


Goofy exhaled through the nose in relief. It really looked like Kate would fall off the branch. Having collected himself, he began.

“You’ve met the Heartless- those little shadow things- they’re made when somebody’s heart is stolen, or overtaken by darkness. There’s hardly a kingdom, town or dimension that hasn’t seen at least a few 'a the critters running about, nowadays. And they'll keep comin' until darkness is all there is.

“Those Keyblades are the only weapon that works on ‘em, but the Heartless, and whoever controls them, they’re attracted to its power, too. They’ll be looking for you. It don’t make no difference to ‘em what you don’t care about. And it don’t make no difference to ‘em if you’re alone.”

At this point, Goofy was finding it difficult to rein himself in. He felt like he was failing the kid. But he shook his head, and turned to Donald.

"Donald, do ya still have that map?"

Donald looked up, mildly dazed. “Uh, yeah.” He retrieved a folded map from one of many pockets, and offered it to Goofy.

Goofy took it, and offered it to Kate.

“You’re bound to run inta the Disney Kingdoms at some point, so take this. Don’t worry. We know the place inside ‘n out, hyuck.” He winked.

Donald looked resignedly at Goofy. He understood where Goofy was coming from. But he couldn’t help but feel some apprehension over giving their only map to a high strung teenage vampire they’d just met who might run off and never be seen again. Or rip it up to show them she didn’t need their help. Hell, maybe she’d eat it. For all his arts, he never could predict what a teenager might do just to get a reaction.

Donald was shaken from this train of thought by an over-careful Goofy tacking on, “How ‘bout a phrasebook?”

Donald sighed silently in his gut. “Goofy, she doesn’t need a phrasebook.”

“Of course, of course.”

"All you need is a little bit of fairy dust, and a lot of belief."

Lira stared down at her hands. Baba and her had been covered in what had to be fairy dust. The trick to flying was believing - and a little something extra. But it was still exactly what Levi had said.

Levi had been talking about spending time with Peter.

She scanned him for one of the charms, trying to figure out if he was one of them. She couldn't find one. Peter seemed like he'd display it just like Levi displayed his.

"And you flew," she said. "You flew with him, too."

She wanted to say more, but was preoccupied by what Baba had said. She turned to Baba again, a mixture of curiosity and hesitation on her face.

"...You thought Levi looked like one of the Heartless," she slowly said. "He didn't look like a Heartless when I knew him, but you didn't look like a scarecrow when we first met."

She stared at what Baba was wearing.

"Your outfit changed," she said. "Do our appearances change to match where we are?"

...Did Levi even look the way she remembered him?

Kate listened carefully behind her rolling eyes. She was beginning to think that maybe ditching the moron squad wouldn't be a good idea what with her being a funky-ax-with-a-gimmick wielder or whatever she was. The nasty little shadowy things would be way harder to fight by herself.

The others would be like...decoys.

Right.

She might hate having them around, but at least they had some purpose.

She scowled and shoved the map away. She wasn't going to tell them she wanted to stick around their bumbling crew of misfit toys, but they could take a hint just fine.

Carefully, she swung both legs over to one side of the brach and eased herself down, trying very hard not to show that she was trembling. The ground was a long way away.

Without waiting for McDonald's rejected barnyard pets, she made her way back to the ground one branch at a time. As the forest floor grew closer, she picked up confidence and moved a little quicker, finally hopping off the last branch to land with a thump on the dirt.

Shoving her hands in her pockets, she walked out of the forest in the direction of the potato sack and what's-her-face the insufferable do-gooder with a vamp prejudice.

They were having what looked like a rather emotional chat with a peppy looking boy in green. Green was such a miserable color.

Kate crossed her arms and leaned against a tree a fair distance away. She didn't care what those glitter-munchers were talking about so solemnly. There was certainly nothing they could say to get her to go all motherly to them, like they would probably want. Everyone always wanted an 'aww' or an 'I'm sorry' whenever they were upset. As if anyone they were talking to had anything to apologize for.

She glanced over at them one last time before looking out at the water instead. The wrecked ship was still there, along with a few more fish-chicks.

Kate made eye contact with one, a pretty blonde with brown eyes the color of wet sand and a string of seashells braided into her hair on one side, and suddenly Kate was not blushing because she was anything but the blushing little schoolgirl in all the stories.

No.

She was better than that.

Her cheeks were red for a completely different reason.