Day 1 | ~ Riddle ~

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

[pretty much immediately after Xion's conversation with Verita.]

[Xion wanders, hood up, along the street near the shops, blinking curiously into them. If asked, she wouldn't be able to tell you if she's mostly exploring or mostly trying to pick a place to eat. There are... a lot of shops to look at, but at least now she knows where the baked goods in her basket came from.

She wants to find a place to sit and eat (a real meal, not just something scavenged off shelves in abandoned houses) and think over her riddle. In the end, she just chooses somewhere at random (an Italian restaurant, not that she knows it yet -- not that she knows what Italy is, let alone what kind of food the culture is known for). It's a nice place: quiet, not too pretentious, and the lights aren't extremely bright, which puts her subconsciously more at ease.

But she lingers at the front awkwardly with the sudden realization that she'd never eaten in a restaurant before. What is she supposed to do? She fidgets with the ends of her sleeves until a waiter offers to take her to a table, and she follows shyly. Once she takes her seat (after ordering just water after the waiter asked what she wanted to drink), she takes out the piece of paper Verita gave her and lays it down on the table in front of her.]

I may not have arms or legs to tone
But if you carry me here by my spine
I can go home as your own
Only for a limited time...

[She reads it aloud, though she's immediately reminded how much her voice bothers her now. Her... male voice.

She stares at it for a long time... and then sighs.] I don't get it.

Comments

[fortune_sought]

[leans forward, interested] Did she really? We'll have to test that theory.

It was the same for me. One minute, I was home, and then suddenly--[snaps]--I was here. It was very odd. I wonder what reason someone could possibly have for doing this.

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

I don't know. It's not like there are Heartless everywhere or anything, though, so maybe they don't mean us any harm.

[fortune_sought]

[quirks an eyebrow] "Heartless"?

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

They're -- um... [does she... really not know? but Sora's memory says...]

... you don't... remember the stars going out? About a year ago?

[fortune_sought]

[blinks, not sure what to make of that] Do you mean...falling stars? Fire demons?

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

Um... I don't think so. Just... stars disappearing from the sky. [by "fire demons" does she maybe mean Heartless?]

[fortune_sought]

Well, if they disappear, they must go somewhere, mustn't they?

But by "Heartless"... [leans forward a bit, lowering her voice. this isn't exactly information known by the general public] Do you means humans who have made contracts with fire demons? Is that common in your land?

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

[Xion also leans forward as Sophie does, though she isn't sure why at first, but she finds herself oddly glad for it after she speaks.]

No... I mean... Creatures of darkness that take people's hearts.

[fortune_sought]

[frowns] Darkness? Not light?

gdit pretend that last icon was hooded

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

Yeah. When someone's heart gets stolen, the darkness that's in it gets turned into a Heartless, which goes to steal even more hearts.

[fortune_sought]

[looks at her for a moment, not sure how to react to that] That...sounds rather terrifying. [swallows] Are there many of these "Heartless" where you're from?

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

... yeah. [Both an answer to the "terrifying" and the question.] They're on a lot of different worlds.

[fortune_sought]

Different..."worlds"? You mean different lands?

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

No. Different worlds. Like... There's this one, and then there's the one you're from.

[fortune_sought]

So, different lands. [sorry, Xion, she has no concept of space travel]

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

No, I mean... [._.]

Every star in the sky is another world. All of them are different, and all of them have hearts, just like people. Heartless try to take the worlds' hearts, too, and when they do... the world disappears, and the star goes out.

[fortune_sought]

[frowns, listening closely to her. is quiet for a moment, taking that all in and considering it before she speaks again] How can that be? Stars aren't lands. Or, at the very least, falling stars aren't--they're fire demons, and they don't go out until they reach the ground.

Could our two lands--I'm sorry, our two worlds--really be so different from each other?

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

Maybe... Maybe there are some stars that are fire demons. Falling stars aren't... usually a good sign, though. [Or so Sora's memories are telling her. It means a world's defenses are falling, or something like that. It always means the Heartless are coming.]

I... I don't know. [She frowns a little.]

[fortune_sought]

Really? I thought falling stars were quite normal.

[shakes her head] Well. [gives Xion a slightly awkward smile] It seems, at the very least, we have quite a lot to learn from each other!

[curiously] You don't happen to be from a world without magic, do you? Only, everyone I've talked to so far has said they are, which is ridiculous.

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

[Xion shakes her head.] No. I can do magic.

[fortune_sought]

Oh, thank goodness! I was beginning to fear this place was devoid of it.

Are you very strong?

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

Um... I guess so. [She knows the top-level spells. =x]

[fortune_sought]

Do you happen to know much about misdirection spells? I have a feeling something of that nature must be keeping us in this place.

[irreversibly.livejournal.com]

Misdirection spells? [??]

[fortune_sought]

[frowns. isn't is obvious?] You know, the sort that make you miss something or stop you from going somewhere.