#memoryx01;

Getting to his feet should make him feel stable, safe. It doesn't. 

Rather, he's nauseated. The insides of his cheeks are faced with needle-esque sensations as his back teeth graze them; he wants to clear his vision, but it takes a moment. Knuckles dig into the sockets of tired eyes and he ambles to the window, he moves the drapes with ornate patterns that have yet to cross his memory and in washes the scent of fresh pine and warm air. 

"This isn't…" Groggy and hollow vocables make the boy's eyes narrow. Where are his friends? Where are the strangers in a state similar to his own? Where is his brother?

Loneliness doesn't suit him-- nor will it ever. 

Down the staircase he goes, each railing threatening splinters against balmy hands and calloused fingers. Temporarily, the stairs to somewhere else feel typical, but when he blinks, the steps turn to wood. A shack with a series of timber treads forces the brunet to attempt backtracking, but his heel doesn't catch firm ground. Whether or not he's still doesn't seem to count. The way his appendages are being forced weighs heavily - he's running with a languid head and by the time a doorway comes into vision, there's nothing left. 

The sky-- his sky, atop an island that comes apart and shatters like any remnants of comfort leaves in chills running over tan flesh. A tattered, wooden sword makes a home of his palm and looking down at it makes him wonder… just what on earth is going on? 

Evidently, 'earth' isn't the only variable at hand. After crossing a bridge he can't place a name to, inky black encompasses the isle that reaches the opposite side. What he should be doing is taking the gloved hand extended to him, offered by someone whose face is pale and fogged. Everything at an arm's length is shrouded in black. Darkness. If it'll ever come to an end, he won't be the one to see it.

Even if that feels right… an abandoned notion suggests otherwise. But why would he be the one to see a means to an end? Nothing belongs to him, anymore. Not this island, not this person, not anything, but why should it? He's never seen it before, he doesn't know its name, and as a golden handle fits quite like a missing piece of a puzzle into his hand and shadows consume his body and mind, silence blankets the vast field. 

As someone passionate about astronomy, this might be two steps past a fantasy - but it's a whole lot more like a waking nightmare as nothingness surrounds and contains him all at once. It might be too little, it might be too much, but everything is vague and the safe haven he lands in is anything but. 

A sign that says 'Traverse Town' alerts him to the name of aforementioned location, but he hardly knows what to call the last place. Whatever it was-- wherever it was, is gone now. And somehow, his insides have gone cold. Hollow. His throat aches, eyes burn and a lapping texture nags at his cheek until a dog is what awakens him. From a dream within a dream, perhaps… Whatever one might call it.

Its tag reads Pluto, but two blinks later and the canine disappears. He's fallen down the staircase at this point, equally unfamiliar and colorful carpet not having softened the blow by much. Head aching, spinning, and God knows what else, the spiky-haired male makes his way to the edge of a davenport before letting it fall into each hand. Distant is the tale of the Russian Cosmonaut that someone told him at a party within the last 24 hours. 

While it isn't necessarily relevant in Sora's head, his subconscious weaves enough assumptions together so that he recalls the girl's face as she recalls its entirety. 

"He's the first man ever to go into space. Stuck in a place about as big as a closet with a portal window, the first man to look at the planet he's from. And all of a sudden, there's a ticking." She's tapping a table with the bottom of a pen - artful mimicry pulls him in all the more. "And it goes on and on. Pretty soon, he knows he's gotta stop this sound. But he can't find it, he can't stop it. It doesn't stop. Hours, days pass by. It'll drive him mad. There's no way out - he's alone for twenty-five more days with this one sound! So Cosmonaut knows that the only way to save himself, and his sanity, is to fall in love with this sound." 

To an intoxicated teenage boy, this doesn't make much sense… but he's intrigued - or he was, anyways. "So he closes his eyes. And when he opens them, he doesn't hear ticking anymore. He hears music." Fuzzily enough, the corners of her lips curl upwards. "And he spends the rest of his time in bliss, and in peace." 

For now, it doesn't connect much. He's not sure of what the last memory was - nor if its even his own, and certainly not if this story ties in with it in the slightest. But the suffocating bewilderment that left him adrift in thin air seems like a hero's tale. It's exciting, and even if it's just a vivid hallucination, he's grateful for it. 

Akin to the Cosmonaut, were it not for his passion towards intrepidity and fiction that heightens the soul's true capabilities, surely he would fear the worst. For now, though, his veins pulse with adrenaline… the threat of an unjust truth draining the bitterness away. A surge of confidence brings him to full consciousness and he's up in little to no time at all. 

It'd be a colossal lie to claim that he's not confused (he'll linger belatedly on this impossible revelation and exhale any negativity that makes his shoulders heave), but it's not enough to slow the boy. 

There's no time to go at a leisurely pace, no time to fall behind, so he goes ahead with a broad smile and attempts to understand today's strange mystery. How it is that he wound up in Paralia is still undecided, but he'll handle this before anything else. 

Look ahead, not behind. That's how he's always done things.