Destiny Islands
What if?

The next evening, the trio returned to their favorite place. Their faces resembled disappointment as they sat on the crooked paopu fruit tree. The island may have stayed the same from their childhood, but things had changed back on the main island.

At first their friends were happy to see them again. They asked about where they were and how they were doing. Still, it was odd to see how people looked different, they were all growing up. They had developed new interests and did not want to be bothered with traveling out to their play land for a friendly brawl. Everyone’s schedules had become too busy to spare more than a friendly hello.

Returning to school, Kairi seemed to fair pretty well, but Sora and Riku struggled to understand what the teachers were teaching. Kairi had only missed a bit of school when she was kidnapped by the infamous Organization XIII so some of the lessons flew by her, but Riku and Sora had not had any formal schooling for a few years, so the instructions might as well had been in a foreign language to them. By the end of the day, their minds were so over stimulated with stuff they couldn’t grasp that even something simple like rowing out to the smaller island was a chore.

They had battled armies of Heartless and Nobodies and taken down their leaders and came out okay, but after the long and tedious day they just went through, they were wiped out. The boys claimed they did not want to go back to school again, but Kairi urged them to keep trying and that she would do her best to help them learn the materials, even though she knew she would have to work hard to catch up herself.

“Gah!” Sora cried, “This is all Xehanort’s fault! Exploring the heart, creating the Heartless, plunging all the worlds into chaos! Things would have been so much simpler if we could have just stayed here and not miss so much!”

“Heh, I don’t think the extra few years in school would have helped you learn anything,” Riku sniggered, “You would have been just as lost in class today as you were.”

Sora frowned and stretched across the paopu tree, one foot dangling off the side.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Sora huffed, “What if we had been here all this time? Maybe I would have gotten smarter and you still would have been lost? Our friends wouldn’t have treated us like little kids when we asked them to play! What if there were no Heartless? What if there were no Nobodies? What if there were no Keyblades?”

Riku looked as if he just remembered something and whispered, “What if!”

A playful feminine voice called out, “You-hoo!”

Riku turned to see a young lady with auburn hair standing on top of the bridge.

“What is it Riku?” Sora asked, sitting up. He and Kairi turned to see where their friend was staring.

Riku shook it off and turned back, “Oh, nothing.”

“Nothing?” shrieked the young lady as she ran towards the group, “Nothing? Nothing! Tra-la-la?”

Riku turned again to see the young lady right in front of him.

She continued, “That really hurts, you know?”

“You know her? Why don’t you introduce us?” Sora asked.

Riku turned his puzzled gaze to Sora, “You mean you can see her?”

The young lady raised her arm in a showoff stance exclaiming, “Yep! I’m all real now!”

Riku muttered, “Great, when I talk to you, people don’t see you so they think I’m crazy; when I don’t talk to you, they can see you so they think I’m crazy.”

Sora hopped off the tree and landed in the sand. He extended a hand to the newcomer.

“Well nice to meet you, I’m Sora!”

“I’m Zefferia!” she extended her hand in a similar fashion, but her hand went right through Sora’s. Her eyes looked away as she kept her hand going up and down through his, “Well, almost all real.”

Sora drew his hand back from the eerie spectacle and uttered, “What are you?”

Zefferia closed her eyes and smiled at him, “Oh, I’m a figment of Riku’s very creative imagination.” She cupped her hands together as she leaned towards Sora, opening up her sea-blue eyes as she continued, “He really must have wanted to share me with you guys if you can see me!”

“What’s all this about, Riku?!” said the perplexed Kairi.

Riku sighed, knowing that a real imaginary person would not be so easy to explain, “She came to me while I was struggling in the darkness. I had many doubts and fears during that time, and a lot I needed to overcome. Many questions swarmed through my mind about how I would survive and wondering how things might have played out differently. As I convinced myself of an alternate reality, she became more real.”

Sora and Kairi still looked a bit lost, since Riku seldom mentioned what he had gone through when the worlds were opened up and darkness sought to take over his heart.

To help, Zefferia lowered her voice to a more serious tone, “To put it simply, I am a What-if. What-if’s are formed when people consider alternate scenarios. Riku’s torment in the darkness was so great that his desire for things to be different was strong enough to manifest me in the form of a being. In turn, I alleviate current pains with images of the desired differences. As long as Riku thinks, ‘What if?’ I will remain in existence. I, myself, would like to be a completely real human being though. He agreed to help me with that, but it took him long enough to remember!”

Sora ran a hand through his hair, “So us seeing you is a step in what you want to achieve? In other words, only we can see you right now, meaning others will look and see we are conversing with no one? Riku, you’ve pulled us into your insanity!”

“Don’t blame me!” exclaimed Riku.

“Well it is your fault, you created me,” Zefferia nodded her head, “But guys, don’t hate him for it. I am very grateful to exist.”

“So, Zefferia?” Kairi stepped in, “How do you plan to become fully real?”

“It’s a simple mind over matter. If you believe in me I will be real.”

Kairi jumped down and extended her hand saying, “So if I believe you then I should be able to feel you?”

Zefferia grabbed Kairi’s hand. For a moment it looked like the two hands grasped each other, then Zefferia’s hand passed through Kairi’s.

“You need to believe I’m real before you can feel me, not feel me to see if I’m real,” Zefferia said, a bit saddened, “Perhaps if you were blindfolded and heard my voice long enough.”

The group heard thunder rolling in the distance. They gazed out to the horizon to see dark clouds moving in fast.

“We better get back home,” Sora urged.

Kairi looked at her male companions, “But what about Zefferia, where will she stay?”

“Oh, pretty much anywhere should be fine,” smiled Zefferia, “As you can see in my current state, I can’t touch or be touched, so the weather has no effect on me.”

Sora, Kairi, and Riku began to feel the drops of the oncoming storm as a chilly wind set their hairs on end.

“Well lets get going, guys,” Riku directed to the others.

They took off across the beach. More thunder could be heard at a closer distance as they neared the dock. A flash of lighting hit a nearby tree, splitting a great chunk of it off. The rain fell heavier.