Lucid (Sora, #25 Choices) (original) (raw)

Title: Lucid
Claim: Sora
Theme: #25, Choices
Word Count: 666
Rating: G
Spoilers: KH2
Summary: Sora learns to control his dreams; Roxas helps.
Disclaimer: Characters mentioned within do not belong to me, but rather Squenix and Disney.

Bit by bit, his dreams became more lucid.

It wasn’t much at first, really. One night Sora stood under a large tree in the middle of boundless grasslands, watching the leaves sway gently in the wind. To his great amusement, he discovered the leaves would change color to whatever he desired, and many dreams were spent turning leaves into every possible hue he could imagine.

Several nights later, Sora would curl his hand into a fist, and the tree wilted into winter dormancy, as if the branches themselves were crushing under his fingers. Months later, he could transition through seasons fluidly with a simple gesture.

Finally, after meticulous practice, he had gained complete control of his environment. Sora, the master of his own playground, turned around, one foot in snow, the other hidden beneath a sea of flowers… and let out a sigh of boredom. “Now what?” he wondered aloud.

Sora watched as his dream took control of itself again, and the tree melted into the gray and blue skies. He was suddenly indoors, and he realized then he was in the basement of Twilight Town’s mansion. The white room was almost blinding compared to the shades of blue and the hazy grays he had been surrounded by previously. Sora glanced to his left at the pod, noticing now that maybe he had never lost control at all.

Sora had to admit he didn’t expect to see his second half here. Roxas was absent the entire time Sora was teaching himself to bend the elements to his will, and he felt inclined to ask how, then, Roxas had learned how.

“Your dreams are boring,” Roxas muttered simply, before Sora could even open his mouth.

Sora gaped for a minute, feeling a tinge of insult. “Well, thanks a lot! When did you learn to control dreams, anyway?”

“I’m you, remember?”

Sora didn’t have a retort for that. “Fine then, Roxas”, he said, a hand on his hip. “It’s your turn to come up with a good dream.”

Roxas looked thoughtful. “I want to meet the Cheshire Cat.”

------

“Fragility: permanence as a snowflake, Brief as the stone’s flight from air to lake, Such as just what a man might make, So fragile, in uttering its name it might break.”

Sora held the piece of paper in front of him, so that he and Roxas could both read it.
“What is this, a riddle?” Roxas asked.

“Well, you said you wanted to meet the Cheshire Cat. Everything’s a riddle with him,” Sora replied, shrugging.

The forest was eerily quiet. Roxas shook his head and sighed. “So, we’re supposed to find something so fragile that saying its name breaks it?”

“Looks like it”, Sora said. “That shouldn’t be too hard, though. There’s lots of stuff around here that breaks.” He walked off deeper into the forest, looking around for clues.

Sora didn’t remember the forest being quite so still. Not one animal jumped from tree to tree, not one leaf rustled in a breeze… Not one Heartless. Sora wondered to himself if the forest itself was what he was supposed to break. He lowered his gaze to the ground.

“Forest.”

Nothing happened. Sora huffed a sigh of annoyance before continuing on.

------

An hour or so later, Roxas and Sora returned to the entrance empty-handed.

“What’s so great about the Cheshire Cat, anyway?” Roxas grumbled. “Axel was so full of it…”

Sora grinned. “Want to call it quits? We could dream about something else if you-”

Roxas interrupted by clapping a hand on his fist. “I know the answer to the riddle.” He held a hand out confidently in front of him. “This is our dream, after all…”

The Cheshire Cat slowly materialized, with Roxas holding him by the tail. “And since this is our dream, I can break whatever I want.”

Sora had never seen anybody punt something so far in his life. Roxas turned away, looking smug.

The stillness of the forest was immediately broken by the sound of the Cheshire Cat crashing through branches.

2/100 // Table