kh_drabble | Fragile Challenge: Insanity

Challenge: Fragile
Title: Insanity
Word Count: 349
Notes: It started with the lyrics, and the idea of fragility, and then got bombarded with some Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland influences. And then it carried on from there...

Insanity
By Katla Asriel

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Selphie is still there, all bright green eyes and sunburnt skin, her yellow dress quietly rustling in the seaside breeze in the midday heat when Kairi decides to approach her, when she decides to give the entire island a chance again.

Her heart wrenches painfully as she realises that Selphie—oh, dear Selphie, her nature still as innocent as Kairi remembers it was—doesn’t remember a thing about Sora, Riku, or any of the islanders who were spirited away by the ethereal destruction of this place, so long ago and so painfully near to her hollow heart.

She can see the questions forming in Selphie’s eyes as the sweet-faced girl watches her talking, talking of things that had been wonderful. She can feel, all too strongly, the uncertainty running through her blood as Selphie approaches her, half-scared and half-sympathetic.

“Have you been out in the heat too long?” she asks at last.

Kairi had not expected Selphie to believe her when she could scarcely believe anything that had happened herself, but the way she had said it was so…apathetic, so lonely and cold, that she whirls on her heel, taking herself away from the girl’s small dock and ignoring the voice that calls her back.

In the shadows that are not really shadows, hidden high above their heads in the yellow-green palms, Kairi later discovers Selphie huddled next to the attentive boys in a semi-circle, her eyes darting in sharp glances that manage to miss her in her hiding-place.

“It’s awful, what’s happened to Kairi. She was so very confused when I talked to her today. She’s gone crazy, I think, since she’s speaking of things and people that never were real…”

“I’m not crazy,” Kairi whispers loudly above Selphie’s words, snapping her eyes shut to keep the tears from coming. “I’m not crazy, I’m not, I’m not.” Her voice breaks as she murmurs the weak reassurances to herself, and she feels the universe breaking all over again as she loses her delicate balance and falls to the sandy, roughened earth.

“I’m not!” And then painful blackness consumes her.

*