John(diamonds)Davesprite: Castle in the Sky type adventure?

I lost the prompt, so I'm not entirely sure what the prompt was, I just have a fill sitting around for it.

John Egbert received his paper back with bated breath, that much even his teacher could tell. Nine years old, and so excited to get his first grade of the year. His face fell however, when he saw the red numbers next to his painstakingly printed title.

"A sixty? Ms. Lalonde!" John whined, voice trembling in time to the wobble of his lower lip. "That's not even passing!"

"Well," Ms. Lalonde said brusquely, adjusting her headband quickly, "You made up forty percent of your essay, even after my explicit directions otherwise. Clearly, you only deserved sixty percentage of the best possible grade." Judgment rendered, she shuffled the papers in her arms. "I called your father, who verified much of what you wrote. That's why it's as much as a sixty, John." She said kindly, "Just remember, John, that Skaia isn't real. Winged people aren't real."

John was silent, angry, disappointed, and defiantly sure he was in the right all at once. "He was real," John told himself as he went to his class. "Skaia is real," he reaffirmed to himself after school was over.

And then, after rushing off his school bus and up the stairs to his room, he upturned one drawer in his dresser. Holding orange feathers to his chest he whispered, "Ms. Lalonde is wrong." It was comforting to know, that despite what his teachers and father thought, that what he remembered was real.

He really did meet a bird-boy. John actually put his feet on Skaia, and actually saw its beauty. He bandaged, to the best of his meager ability, a native Skaian's broken wing. He helped him get back home! He was a hero! That's what the bird-kid had said, before they'd parted.

But when they'd met, it was hardly like that.

"Hey," the stranger had croaked, "hey, do you live anywhere close by?" He'd emphasized close, and he looked an awful lot like he was going to pass out at any moment. He'd held his left arm close to his body, and kept his face covered with aviator's goggles and a dingy bandana. It was hard to tell how old he was, or what he looked like, but it was clear he wasn't too much older than John.

And well, stranger or not, he was injured and John felt bad for him. So he had invited him into his house, which had only been a little over a five-minute walk away, and sat the guy down at the table. "So…what's your name?" John had asked, curious about so many things, but starting out with what he thought was the obvious.

"Name's David St- Sprite. But you can call me Dave." Dave said quickly, from underneath the bandana. He'd taken the goggles off once he'd entered the house, letting strawberry blond hair fall into scary red eyes, but he'd not moved the bandana from it's place. His hands were sort of clawed, which was weird, but John wasn't going to judge him.

"So what's wrong with your arm?" John asked, tired of outright staring at the bandana fabric. And Dave had mentioned he'd broken it, falling from his…plane. Which had pissed John off because they were about the same age, and John wasn't allowed to have a plane of any size until he was twelve!

But, he'd dutifully called his father in from the study to help them bandage Dave's arm. And, because Dave couldn't tell them where he lived, it was decided that Dave Sprite would share a room with John Egbert. And over the next week, the two became fast friends (though Dave would never take the bandana off his face, waking or sleeping) through the glorious and noble pursuit of exploration. Of course there were a few slipups on Dave's behalf, the child was hiding things after all.

"Are those…feathers on your arm?"

"Are you mocking my medical condition, Egbert?"

But in the end, the truth became clear. Not because Dave chose to share though, oh no. It was because John saw something he shouldn't have. "Dave, oh my God. You have a beak!" And, red eyes wide, Dave looked shocked to be caught with his bandana hanging down about his neck. And sure enough, where his lips should have been, a tiny beak was instead. "You're a bird-man!"

Dave looked mortified, and his hair stood on end in his embarrassment to reveal strawberry blond feathers hidden in the little layers. "Ugh," he'd sort of yelped, obviously trying to find some sort of excuse to make the excited look in John's eyes go away.

"You live on Skaia, right? The flying castle? How'd you leave? When are you going back? Can I come?" John babbled, hands flying as he wiggled in excitement.

Dave frowned, and stood in silence for a long time before tugging the bandana back up to his nose. "I fell…because it was storming. Bad for flying," he explained, and sort of waggled his arms for effect. "I don't know where it is, the stupid pendant won't work." And he flicked a medallion that John hadn't noticed out from underneath his shirt collar.

"Is it broken?"

"Dunno. Normally it lights up a little beacon…it's just sort of been glowing weakly at night."

"Well, if your pendant thing isn't working at my house, maybe I can help you find a place where it will work!"

They ended up having to walk fourteen miles out of town, where the pendant suddenly began working again. John tagged along with Dave to Skaia, where he literally got to see it in all its glory. Together they stole an aircraft, and Dave disembarked to the happy embrace of his girlfriend Jade Sprite (apparently Sprite was a sort of title for young adults). John flew home and returned the "borrowed" airplane, before returning to his own home.

He'd never gotten scolded so badly before by his father, but the feathers in his drawer and the memories of that day were more than enough to have made it worth it.