cinderlea | (no subject)

(no subject)

[ Riku disappears first. Vanished in her sleep, in the middle of the night, collapsing in on herself in a shimmer of starlights. This isn't like last time. No warnings, no chances to say goodbye, no hesitation or resistance. She just isn't there.

Lea goes minutes after Riku, in the same way. But she's awake, lounging on her couch, having a conversation as she flips through her phone. Here and then gone, like a flame. This isn't the first time either of them have gone home, but it's the first time it's so abrupt. At least it isn't death. The last time Riku went home was seven years ago. She was gone for a month, and she came back with shorter hair and the Mark of Mastery. The last time Lea went home, no one really noticed. She thought she was used to it by now.

Things are different this time. Disorienting. Lea meets Kai in the training, for real this time. Riku has her memories, or at least most of them. They're hazy, dreamlike, but real. She has them all. She remembers how old she really is and how long she's been gone. She remembers everyone she cares about, and everyone that won't change here. She keeps her ice magic and takes what she's learned here to use there. But time is fluid. She doesn't feel like she's been gone for seven years.

Lea's are gone, for now. She lives everything new and fresh, with the dressing room appearing only in dreams vivid enough to unsettle her.

Things aren't the same for every world.

Things go better than expected.

The core story is the same. The heroes rescue the ones that need it, they bring everyone back, they defeat the darkness, and they go home. How and when and who — these things vary, but they do it all together and they go home together. And then their story is over, at least for now, and they come back.

Unlike how they went out, Lea and Riku reappear together on the beach. Coming back is just as disorienting, and neither has their phone, so they get their bearings and confirm memories with each other, of the dressing room and of home, and then separate to find their friends.

They've been gone two months. ]

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Both of those are awful ideas.

[Lea, you're a bad person and you should feel bad. Isa sticks one paw-hand into the cauldron and snags several gummy worms with her claws, and drops them into her mouth before turning and shambling off a short distance away, sniffing at the air. she smells pie and it smells good.]

Somehow I don't think the plastic would hit you too badly like this.

[ She regrets nothing. Mostly. Not here, anyway. Another bug gets removed from the cauldron and she pulls out a couple chocolate bars to devour. Candy sounds great. Sugar that isn't ice cream sounds fantastic. ]

Yeah but what if it doesn't hit me until I'm not like this?

[she's not interested in shitting out candy wrappers, okay. also just like some sort of horrible fairy tale, there is now a huge wolfish monster delicately swiping an entire pumpkin pie from this windowsill and shoving it in her face.]

[ I— what the fuck. She saw that and watched it happen, and obviously wouldn't try to stop her, but she's also staring. ]

I'm impressed. And uh, that's a good point. Still doable. You still want candy?

[ She has two unwrapped chocolate bars for her. ]

Yes. There's another pie here if you want some.

[what, you've never seen someone eat a pie in one bite before? Isa's gonna sit back on her haunches and open her mouth expectantly. there are so too many teeth in there.]

Pumpkin?

[ Maybe she'll pass on it. Pumpkin is such an okay flavor, but there's so much candy instead. She doesn't wait for a response since the priority is, indeed, the candy, and steps over to lean closer and sorta... toss them into Isa's mouth. She doesn't want to put her arms in there, okay. ]

[that's fair, although Isa would never bite Lea unless she asked first. the chocolate disappears into her mouth and she's a little sad that her mouth is so big that she barely tasted it, but what she did taste was good.]

Yeah. I know it's not your favorite, but the first one was pretty good.

Hmmm. We can take it with us if you don't want it.

[ More chocolate it is. She's gonna perch on the low wall near the cauldron and devour this, since they seem to be melting a little faster in her hands. ]

I'll see how I feel after I've gorged on candy.

[she turns back to the cauldron and leans over it, picking carefully through it with her claws. unbeknownst to Lea, Isa's now thinking about when she sent the kiddos to HT separately to fight each other; it was inevitable that it would come to mind here.]

[ Lea's doing a good job not thinking about anything involving kids who aren't bratty Halloween people. After she's devoured two whole chocolate bars with all the fixings, she leans back on the wall to look up at the sky. ]

You ever wonder why some worlds always seem to be stuck in the same time of day? I mean, I've seen Halloween Town at night, I've seen it during the day, but it's always pretty close.

Maybe they're situated close to the edge of things, like Twilight Town is.

[they're a lot of what Isa's thought about since entering this room. she misses them, but she's doing better now that Lea's home. time to dump more gummy candy in her mouth.]

You think so?

[ It makes sense, but honestly she'd never really tried to figure it out on her own. She does that with a lot of mundane, unimportant things - things she's just curious about. Probably because when they were kids she could just ask Isa for the answer. She's gonna use her tail to sweep up a large handful of candy for herself, just to see if she can. (She can, but several things spill. One of those things might have been an eyeball.) ]

[the eyeball ends up on the ground next to Isa's giant foot, and either the light is playing tricks on her or the dressing room is, and either way the eyeball definitely looks like it's that good good Xehanort color. it makes her panic, and she kicks at it, sending it rolling away into some weeds.]

...maybe. Makes as much sense as anything else.

[she's so cool and collected.]

[ Lea knows her well enough to know that she is relatively cool-headed but also a fucking disaster like herself, so you're not fooling anyone. Lea squints at her for a few seconds, then pops several chewy candies into her mouth. ]

I'm not buying it, but I don't have a better theory.

[ Her tail twitches a little now that it's free of candy except for one sucker stuck to the edge. She's trying to flick it off, but when that doesn't work it just bursts into flames. Fuck it. ]

It's that or it's completely arbitrary.

[shhh you didn't see anything, and neither did Isa, because wow just use your hands you nerd. or maybe the nerd train is continuing, because Isa leans over a little more to really dig down to the bottom of the candy cauldron, and the trailing end of one of her chains clangs against it and makes her jump, like she had no idea they were even there. maybe she didn't.]

[ Lea pops a couple malt balls to see how they mix with the chewies, but stops to look at Isa when she reacts like that. Did she... not know they were there? ]

[no shut up, nothing happened. it's a good thing that 1) it's nighttime and 2) Isa's face is furry right now, because otherwise people on Mars would be able to see her going red. she knew they were there, she just forgot about them immediately because we deal in heavy-handed metaphors around here. cough. she's clearly flustered now, which is probably pretty funny on an eight-foot-tall beast monster that's trying to make itself small and unobtrusive.]

Do you want any of these gummi worms before I eat all of them?

Gummis no, I could use more crunchy.

[ The malted milk balls are excellent, for example. Mostly she's finding the rest of Halloween Town pretty boring today. She'd rather just be hanging out with Isa, and is mostly just watching her because the costume is cool as fuck. ]

Do I get a another piggy back ride back to the door?

If you want.

[oh no, she's slipping back towards the way she always talked as a Nobody, she really is embarrassed. she doesn't seem like the sort of person who would be able to just shrug that kind of thing off.

HT is pretty boring, it's true. they could be somewhere else and kissing right now, or having another argument wherein Lea almost gets murdered.]

What if I just want piggy back rides up the hill? You know, the curly one.

[ Wouldn't be the first time they hopped a fence or two just to fuck around with the local attractions. Also stop, she's not gonna let that continue. They might leave soon, all Lea really wanted was to see Isa's costume and eat some candy. She's thinking about getting a bag. ]

[if she can find one that would be ideal tbh. Isa dumps another handful of candy into her mouth and turns to look, coming over with a separate handful of malted milk balls for Lea.]

The one that's right over there? Fine, get on.

Yeah! Hang on.

[ She slides off the opposite side of the wall that the cauldron and Isa are on and sort of sprints-but-floats over to the nearest home. She nearly gets her tail sliced in half by the guillotine walkway, but she's fine. ]

[oh my god are you- that was definitely a big sigh from Isa. whatever, she'll just... eat this other pie while Lea's doing whatever. wouldn't do for it to go to waste, after all.]

[ She's still totally visible! She's just poked her head inside a door to make sure no one's actually there, and then she's grabbing something from beside it - aha, it's a burlap sack, and a nice sized one to boot. Apparently they just keep them by the door like umbrellas or something. Now she's bounding back over, looking pleased with herself. ]

Look at that, a good idea. You're not completely out of them.

[Isa could probably just carry the cauldron, but this is admittedly easier. is she grinning now? it's hard to tell with all those teeth.]