Double-Slit Experiment

She opens her eyes to a sunless sky.

The sand is familiar under her fingers. Slowly, she sits up, limbs still weakened by her sickness. The lighthouse greets her from afar, casting shadows like a giant blinking eye.

She should not be here.

“Dagomon?” she calls, softly. The waves rise in response; he is listening. “Why did you call me here?”

He’s not like anything else Hikari as ever met. Dagomon, that is. He has a physical body, like her and Taichi and those creatures no one but her can see. But he’s not confined to it, if that makes sense. He’s Dagomon; but he’s also so much more- the very Ocean batting these shores, every drop of water and every violent current. He’s bigger and larger than any living creature could ever hope to be.

Just like you. He’d told her, an eternity ago. She hadn’t understood, then. She was too young to know she would regret ever doing so.

The waves retreat, curling into typhoons. Dagomon has a voice, but the ocean does not. Hikari doesn’t care either way. She spent so long with a whistle for a tongue. She gets the message.

Something’s wrong.

And, Hikari realizes, it’s the truth.

She knows. Like one knows how to breath, like one knows how to crawl. An instinct, a voice, in her bones. A certainty.

Her brother is not coming home.

“What can I do?”

The waters turn dark, as if it had started swallowing the very light. Of course it would. Dagomon is a lot like Taichi in that regard.

“I won’t hide.” she says. And she means it. She may be a kid, but there is too much empathy in her to stay idle. “I will fight. You can’t stop me.”

There is a beat. The waves come and go, thinking. But Hikari already knows he will let her. Dagomon was always the one who listened to her, after all.

The water pool together, tightly- tighter.  Finds shape and finds weight. Darkness incarnate in a deadly weapon.

Casually, Hikari bends over, and picks up the trident.

“Thank you.” she says, because of his gift, and because of his trust. “I won’t die, I promise.”

The lighthouse blinks a silent goodbye.

When she slips back in Tokyo, trident in hand, the sky is filled with bats.