forever a lost boy

I woke with a start, my eyes open suddenly, instantly awake and without the slightest bit of grogginess that sometimes followed me into the morning. In Darrow, I had allowed myself to relax. When I slept, especially the nights I snuck into Eddie's room, I slept heavily. I slept like someone who felt safe, but this morning as I came awake, I knew everything had changed.

Somehow, I had known it even before my eyes were open, but now that they were, I could see everything in the dim sunlight that filtered in through the roots of the tree.

Slowly I sat up. The animal skins and furs piled on top of me fell away and it was a strange sort of relief to discover I was still wearing the t-shirt and striped pyjamas pants I had fallen asleep in. If nothing else, that meant Darrow hadn't been a dream, I hadn't gone there in my mind in some desperate attempt to escape Peter. Darrow was real and I was no longer there.

The very thought of it broke my heart.

I inhaled shakily, stifling the sob that wanted to slip out, then looked to my left. If I was here, it would be time to wake the other boys. Time to tell them what Peter was really like, but as I reached for the shape I thought would be Charlie or Nod or Crow, I realized the person lying next to me was familiar, but not for the reasons I would have thought.

I gaped at them, then turned to my other side and flung back the animal furs. I stood, stepping over shapes, pulling back the furs and skins so I could see those around me and another sob almost slipped out of me as I realized I wasn't alone. My friends were here. My friends from Darrow. I was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude for just a second before an absolute terror the likes of which I had only felt once before replaced my pleasure.

If they were here, they weren't safe. Not a single one of them. Peter would know I cared for them far more than I could ever care for him. He would see them as a threat.

As if my very thoughts had summoned him, a shape from the other end of the tree moved. Peter, holding a sharp blade in one hand and a rough piece of wood he'd been carving in the other, stepped into the midst of bodies, most of them still groggy, having just been pulled from sleep. He looked them over, a king surveying his domain, then smiled at me.

His teeth were perfect, tiny white pearls; his baby teeth. The ones I had knocked out the last time I'd seen him.

"Hullo, Jamie," he said cheerfully. "Welcome home."

[Initial post for anyone under 18. Feel free to use this for explanations, adventure, run-ins with fairies or mermaids or Peter, who will be outwardly cool to everyone, but won't be violent yet. In a few days I'll post a new top level for Jamie and Peter's fight.]

we will grow up

On the coast of Peter's Island was a dock and at the dock was a ship. The Jolly Roger. A boy named Jamie would captain it one day, though he didn't know it now. And he was far away this morning, waking under the roots of a tree he hadn't seen in over a year, a tree that had once been home.

The pirates had no captain. A boy named Jamie had killed their last captain and none had been willing to take his place, because that boy always killed their captains and always took the right hand of the first mate. None of the pirates wanted to die. They wanted to go home, to sail the Jolly Roger away from these shores and find a new place to be, but every time they tried, they would return here instead.

They didn't know, like Jamie, they were cursed. They were playthings for a boy named Peter.

As the sun came over the horizon, the pirates began to wake. They grunted and groaned and cursed. Spit over the side of the ship, relieved themselves where they could. They ate what they had plundered and what animals they caught. They didn't realize at first that not everyone waking up aboard the Jolly Roger this morning was a pirate.

What Peter didn't know was that sometimes his lost boys came to join the pirates when they began to grow up. When they couldn't stand Peter any longer. The pirates were used to new faces. It wasn't surprising to find strangers among their number. Sometimes they welcomed the newcomers. Sometimes they liked to give them a hard time. It depended on how they were feeling that day.

Most of the pirates weren't sure how they were feeling just yet.

[And the post for everyone over 18 plus Eddie. XD This can be used for figuring stuff out, confrontations with pirates, running into the crocodile or mermaids or the Many-Eyed. Hopefully someone can work out where they are and what the connection is.]