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Disclaimer: The whole Peter Pan concept doesn't belong to me but to JM Barrie and that is good; if I were him, I'd have already been dead for the half the century.

Chapter one: Ice Peter

Once – but when was it? – he was a little boy from the sunny Neverland. Together with a group of loyal friends, he used to spend whole days splashing in the warm waters of the Mermaid Lagoon (from time to time, in a sudden surge of courage, teasing its inhabitants) and roaming the Neverwood in search of a new great adventure.

Those times already belonged to the past. Nibs was a grown up now: tall and fair-haired, dressed in some kind of strange white coat which was the only white spot in the blackness he was drifting through. "It's a smock, a doctor's smock," thought the Lost Boy (man?) to himself; all of a sudden he just knew this word, not having heard it previously. Nibs knew something else too, this new awareness suddenly just filled his head. He realized that his consciousness somehow… existed on two planes, like he was split into two versions of himself, both able to observe each other in horror but not without some fascination. One of them identified him as an adult, a man whose job was to help the sick, while the other one knew that he was just a kid, a member of the group of the Lost Boys and that something was wrong. As wrong as could be possible. The latter half had an unpleasant feeling that the boy's childhood was leaving him, oozing out of him drop by drop for the benefit of this man, this other Nibs was. The boy was experiencing odd vibrations like this part of him which still belonged to a child was slowly being torn away from him. The temperature of this dark place in which he was floating became colder and colder.

"No… I don't want to…"

"Nibs!" Someone's warm hand tugged at his sleeve, bringing him back to reality. In one moment the boy/man was exploring the mysterious space in which there was nothing except him, feeling scared and alone and the next he was lying in his bed in the underground home he knew so well.

He remembered that while Peter and the rest had set out on a journey in search of a potential new and great adventure that morning, only he and Cubby, both not feeling very well, had remained behind. Now his companion was sitting at his side, looking at him with a solicitous face. "You screamed. What were you dreaming about?"

"I don't remember much," Nibs lied in a whisper as he recovered from his… nightmare? If he thought about it, maybe it wasn't exactly a nightmare in the full sense of the word and it was evaporating from his head surprisingly fast. However it left behind an impression of stupendous reality and strange terror, quite like it deserved the status of reality while merry moments in Neverland were merely an illusion, an extremely realistic deception that they were all taken in by. For a moment Nibs felt overwhelmed by fear and sadness like something was coming to an end and he couldn't stop it.

"I was an adult. I was a… neurologist." he added, pulling the word, now almost forgotten, out of the chasm of his mind.

"Who?"asked his friend, surprised.

"I don't know myself. It was just a dream and dreams are weird and…untrue." This last word was spoken a moment later but without any hesitation, as if the boy wanted to assure himself of its truth.

The boys were alone in the underground house. Tinkerbell, Peter and the rest of children, including young Tiger Lily who was given permission from her father to spend the day with her friends were out. They had set out on a Great Adventure journey. In Neverland, an adventure lay in wait for the bold eager to make the acquaintance with it behind every tree in the Neverwood, you only needed to find it. The adventure could be pleasant but also as scary as in the case of Nibs' dream. Even if, objectively speaking there was nothing about it he should be scared of.

"Let's go to look for others," said Cubby, trying to console his companion. Nibs wiped his eyes with his hand, getting rid of the remnants of the sleep and nodded. Joining them was a much better idea than thinking about bad dreams which weren't true after all. Both of them knew where their friends were going to play and searching for the Greatest Adventure Neverland could ever have up its sleeve with them, seemed the best solution for them.

Half an hour later, both boys were walking in the Neverwood, with every step leading them closer and closer to the place where the Lost Boys usually camped, taking pleasure in the humming emerald green grass coming up to their knees and the sun shining straight in their tanned faces. They found the place that they sought easily enough. It was in the form of a small clearing, shaded by the circle of trees that surrounded it. Normally, the silence there was broken only by the chirping of birds and the playing kids's cheerful voices, now though Nibs, still shuddering a little at the memory of his dream had an occasion to find out how much truth there is in the old saying, when it rains, it pours.

The first thing they saw after their arrival at this oasis of fun and pure joy that was known only to the children, was a gloomy procession the sight of which made the boys' hearts stop for a moment. At the head of this sullen parade of scared and pale children were the Twins, carrying Peter Pan's body. The golden silhouette of Tinkerbell shedding a flood of tears was twirling above their heads. Wendy and little Michael were also weeping. Slightly and Toddles were holding some mysterious items but Cubby and Nibs had no time to take a closer look at them because their whole attention was directed on Peter, motionless and looking as if he were only asleep.

"Is he…?" asked Nibs softly.

"No, he's alive," answered Tiger Lily. She must have been as scared as the rest of them, but managed to remain composed. An Indian princess had to learn to keep her feelings under control. On the way to the underground house Nibs and Cubby heard the whole story about what had happened to Peter.

Their leader, together with the whole band had set out in search of the Great Adventure farther than usual, believing that it was awaiting them at the Mermaid Lagoon. If it was indeed waiting for them there, it was then going to be the prologue to an adventure, yet interestingly or not, it was going to be a very bad adventure as something was wrong with the lagoon.

It had dried up.

The friends found its inhabitants scared and begging for help. In the face of danger, the mermaids gave their usual tricks up and didn't feel like playing with Wendy in a cruel way like they had during their first meeting when they had tried to drown her. Even if this idea dawned on them though, its realization wouldn't be ever possible. "Let's throw this human girl into the water!" But to what water? They would only be able to arrange a mud bath for her at the very best. Thick brown mud filled the lagoon as far as the eye could see. The once beautiful place was now a boggy swamp in which the terrified fish girls were stuck. The mud that the crystal clear water had turned into wasn't the only foreign element in there. While trying to pull the mermaids out, the Lost Boys noticed a few strange items sticking out of the quagmire. They pulled them out as well and these were the things Toddles and Slightly now held. Wendy and John were able to recognize some of them. They were the items from their world.

Tinkerbell, not without some virulent comments used her pixie dust on the inhabitants of the lagoon (well, ex-lagoon, now it wasn't anything else but a disgusting swamp) to make them able to fly and the mermaids flew away to a different, better place where the water was still clear.

Having completed their task, the group decided to take a look at the mysterious objects. According to what Wendy and her younger brother said, they belonged to their world of London. Peter, always curious decided to touch them. And it was the moment when the Great Adventure turned into a Very Bad Adventure. The boy's eyes widened and then his eyelids fluttered close while his face became deathly pale. Then, Peter staggered and not without some ghastly grace, fell on the ground. For the next several minutes, his friends made some futile attempts to revive him but their efforts were for naught. They picked him up then and decided to carry him back to the underground house to deliberate on what should be done next when they met Cubby and Nibs in the Neverwood.

As they neared to the house and Nibs listened to the story, he started to recall his dream again. The story moved something in him. It seemed that a Bad Adventure turned into the Bad Day, the official inauguration of which was initiated by his nightmare. Yes, this day had to be really bad and this suspicion turned to certain dread when the Lost Boys (and three girls, one of whom was additionally a pixie and still resentful of the fact that she had had to use her precious dust to help the mermaids) finally entered their house.

During their absence, something had changed. An ice statue stood in the middle of the underground home. There had been nothing like it in the house before they had set off to find their Great Adventure but now there it was, reaching almost up to the ceiling. The very presence of it wasn't the strangest thing, however. It was its face. In an amazingly (and ghastly) realistic way it resembled the face of their now ill, leader. Yet it wasn't exactly Peter as a boy; it was a face belonging to a man very stricken in years that resembled how Peter Pan would probably have looked like if he had reached old age. The statue's eyes hid in the folds of wrinkles carved by the passing years and the cheeks covered with furrows were droopy. The Ice Peter was smiling slightly: a roguish smile which was so well known to his young companions and to all children who ever met him in their dreams about Neverland.

The children looked at the ice man with a mixture of surprise and shock and not at all sure of what they should do. They didn't dare to touch it; after all it was touching an unfamiliar thing which had made their leader sink into a state of catatonia. It couldn't be only ordinary fainting, the Lost Boys couldn't deceive themselves about this anymore.

Then, unsure of what else they could do, they decided to put Peter to bed. His eternally young face was a sharp contrast to the one of the old Peter made of ice. The mysterious objects taken by his friends from the Mermaid Lagoon where they had appeared there so suddenly were placed on the table, carefully laid there by Slightly and Toddles. The band distrustfully started to inspect them – if the boys could safely touch them with no harm in spite of what happened to Peter when he had, they couldn't be that dangerous.

Wendy spoke up first. "As I already told you at the lagoon, I recognize them very well. These are from the world where I and my brothers come from. I don't know how they arrived in here and how touching them could harm Peter but they are rather usual things that people from our world use." Pointing one by one at the items covered with the drying up mud from the lagoon, the Lost Boys' mother explained their application to them.

Among the objects, so ordinary for the inhabitants of the world the young Darlings arrived from but so foreign to the members of Peter Pan's circle, there was a pair of children's winter gloves, made of dark green woolen yarn with a P.P monogram.

"P.P. like Peter Pan," explained John as none of their friends from Neverland could read.

There was a pair of skates with shining sharp blades. The Lost Boys had to be instructed what use they were of as the concept of snow and ice was completely unknown to them; there was eternal summer in Neverland. Although the figure which appeared in their house so suddenly, even if not touched by any of them gave them at least some idea of what ice was. There was a doctor's stethoscope (Nibs with a sudden shiver recalled his dream once more time, now sure that there must be some connection between it and what was happening before his eyes now). A brochure advertising Great Ormond Street Hospital. A worn out photo of a young boy about Peter Pan's age, very similar to him but wearing clothes resembling that children from the Darlings' world wore. Among the objects there was also found a strange rectangular shaped one made of black plastic, with a small glass screen at the top and a row of buttons with digits below. Above the screen the mysterious inscription "Nokia" adorned the item. Neither Wendy nor her brothers had ever seen anything like it before. They didn't even try to guess what it could be.

The children had never before felt so helpless. Not only did their leader lie pale and unconscious (any attempts to wake him up from something that only at the beginning seemed to be just ordinary fainting were completely futile) but they had absolutely no idea as to what should be done and what connection existed between the objects found in the mermaids' realm that had become a quagmire, the Peter like figure made of ice and finally Peter himself. Because it was obvious it had to exist. And that something about it was very wrong.

If even they didn't have such a feeling, what happened next made them certain of this. The temperature of the air got colder. Tiger Lily went outside to see what happened and came back very excited. "Look at this," she said softly when she returned and the children followed her outside to witness what she had. Nothing could have prepared them for what they would found once they climbed out of their underground home.

In the place of the former eternal summer, as far as the eye could see, spread out a white surface. White… and cold. Something was falling from the sky, now gray and gloomy not blue as it used to be before the sinister change took place. These were white flakes, melting in contact with the children's warm hands as they reached out to catch them. The inhabitants of Neverland would've looked at this amazing spectacle of Mother Nature much longer, since they had never seen anything like it before. But suddenly from behind them, Peter Pan who, up until that point, had been lying in a lethargic torpor, moaned softly.