So...yeah. This is one of the numerous stories I'm working on and I'm just testing out an idea. I'm pretty sure there will be at least four chapters, and then it might go south, I don't know. This is honestly a test to see if a certain thing would work and I would love to have you guys review to let me know what I should improve on and if nobody does that, I'm going to assume it's not working and I'll just take it out. So, yeah, I only own that which is mine and hope you enjoy! ~A Keeper
"Henry,"
Henry Mills looked up at the sound of his name; thinking it Pan, he braced himself for another game, but nothing moved.
"Henry,"
It was a woman's voice...or a girl. Whichever of the two. Could it be Wendy? Henry sat up and looked around, but again found no difference in his surroundings. It must be his imagination.
"Come silly boy, I want to speak with you!" She laughed, as though his confusion was either cute or funny. He stood up and looked around once more and realized why everything was so strange: The Lost Boys were sleeping.
No one was on watch. No one was playing around the campfire. No one was stirring because their "guest" had risen. Pan was in his personal tree house, probably wide awake, but there was no sign that he would come out any time soon.
"Who...who are you?" He asked.
"I can't tell you, not yet, not here. Go the the beach of the Lost Things and you will find me there. I will answer your questions then."
"What about Pan, will he catch us?"
"No, the boys will sleep for a long while and Peter is too busy wallowing in his grief to notice."
"Grief?"
"Too many questions, Henry, come! Hurry, we won't have long."
He didn't know why he trusted her—he didn't know her name or anything about her. But she wasn't overstating her kindness and he couldn't feel any magic. Pan would have surely come out if he sensed a dangerous magic and he was still in his house. She just seemed so...something. He didn't know what. Maybe it was because she reminded him—with however much he knew of her in their brief meeting—of Snow White, his grandmother.
Regardless of trust and such, he let his body relax and moved in whatever direction the wind pushed him in. In no time, literally, he was on the beach of the Lost Things, watching the waves as they crawled upon the shore and pushed old trinkets and desires on to the everlasting sand.
"It used to be so sunny out here," He spun around and met the dark brown eyes of a girl who looked to be seventeen years old. Her eyes were like looking into melting chocolate churning in a bowl while the rest of her body was a pale tan which seemed to have faded over the years. She wore no shoes and had a light peach dress which cut into a diamond towards the bottom and overlapped at the top. Her hair was long and pulled into a braid at the back. She smiled at him. "Now there is only night."
"Who are you?" Henry asked, not entirely lowering his guard, though he did feel a comfortableness with her he had not felt in such a long time.
She grinned and nodded her head towards the beach, "Shall we go hunting? It was one of my favorite games." She went to the very edge of the water and dipped her hands in, scooping out a teapot. Her smile weakened and she set it back into the sand beneath the waves. "Lost Boys don't come here anymore. I wonder why. Perhaps you could tell me?" She looked so hopeful; he didn't want to let her down, but he shook his head.
"My name is-"
"Henry, yes, I know." She gestured to the water and took a seat in the dry sand, "I suppose Peter has ruined the meaning of 'game' for you, hm?"
He nodded sat beside her, burying his fingers in the sand and running his thumb over a toy he dared not uncover. "What did you mean by 'it was your favorite game'?"
She reached out for his hand and, expecting to feel warm flesh, was surprised to be met by a foggy distortion of her hand. He looked into her calm, welcoming face in surprise, "Are you...are you dead?"
She chuckled lightly, "No, not yet. The Lost Boys say I suffer a fate far worse than death, but it is really not that bad. I'm just asleep. I've been saving my energy for a very long time to be able to talk to you at this moment."
"Why?"
"We'll have to see, be patient with me, Henry, it's been a while since I've walked these shores." She gazed fondly at the stars and closed her eyes, breathing in the fresh air and lifting her shoulders with pleasure before saying, "It is time for me to tell you who I am, but I am afraid that is all we'll have time for."
"What's happening? What's going to happen to you?!" He exclaimed worriedly.
"Nothing bad," She replied with a wave of her hand. "I just have to go, Peter is on his way." Henry's face grew pale. "Do not worry, I will stay long enough for him to see me and that will make him curious. He will not hurt you because he knows that I have been speaking to you. You can tell him anything you wish, nothing will make a difference to me, but you must understand that I can not appear when you please. I will come every two nights for the next two weeks, but after that, I can not guarantee returning at all."
"Does it hurt?"
She stood and beckoned him to do the same, "Now is not the time for that question, Henry. Now is the time to answer your first question." He could hear the crashing of the brush and trees as Pan and a few of his Lost Boys broke through the jungle in search of him. "My name is Pocahontas, but the boys like to call me Tiger Lily."
The crashing stopped and the pair looked up to see Peter Pan staring wide-eyed at them. It was a strange expression he bore, one of anger, confusion, surprise, fear and, for the first time Henry had seen, pure happiness. A happiness that came from the rare and beautiful things in life and not from the games he played.
Her name was about to grace the boy leader's lips when Henry looked beside him and saw nothing but a fog rolling across the waves and swamping them, causing the land and the water to disappear.
Henry felt his arms be grabbed by Felix, who was looking around frantically for the path away from the beach and back to the camp.
"Where are you?!" They froze, their ears perking at the sound of none other than Pan screaming to the fog. "Show yourself! Come back!"
"Oh, Princess," He heard Felix mutter. "What have you done?"
Henry sat on a log before a great, roaring fire, watching as Pan paced back and forth, shaking his head and stomping his feet and punching trees wherever he went. "Hey," Felix grabbed his leader's shoulders and stopped him from digging a trench into the ground. "It might not have been her."
"It might not have been her," He spat. "You saw her as much as me, there's no mistaking her. It has to be her!"
"It makes sense for us to dream about the things we've lost and the things we've hoped for, but eventually we find new things to dream about, you said so yourself!" Felix insisted as Pan attempted to push him aside. When that didn't work, he punched him across the face with such a force that he was thrown on to the ground, clutching his jaw as blood slithered down his chin from a cut in his lip.
"But this wasn't a dream!" He shouted, then looked to Henry. "It wasn't a dream, am I right Henry? You were with her, you spoke to her, what did she say? Did she give you a name? A purpose? Anything?"
Hesitantly, he nodded, but kept his mouth shut. Pan grabbed his shoulders, gripping tightly, but not enough to make him feel pain, just insanely uncomfortable. "Tell me."
"She said...she said that her name was Pocahontas and that The Lost Boys called her Tiger Lily."
Pan looked as though he had been struck across the face as he pulled away. Looking to Felix, he said with some victory in his voice, "You see? It was her." Was it possible that there was a quiver in his voice? He couldn't tell, for Pan left in the direction of his tree house and did not bother to look back.
Felix looked down upon Henry, almost sympathetically. "Did she tell you why she chose you? Did she tell you anything about her past?"
Henry shook his head, "Not much. She just said that she was saving her strength for a long time to be able to talk to me."
Felix nodded, then snorted, a half-smile reaching his face. A real smile, though it was only on part of his face, as though he had not smiled in a long time. "You're an evil minx, Princess."
"Could you tell me about her?" He asked, frightened that he might be harmed for asking about her.
His eyes lit up, "Those were the best of stories, lad, it's a shame when we stopped telling them."
"Why do you call her 'Tiger Lily'? Why not just call her by her real name?"
"Well, that there is partially my fault." He replied, chewing on a stalk of wheat. "This was recently after Pan told us she was going to be apart of us. He said that we should treat her as one of our own and that's exactly what we decided to do. So Thomas and I thought that in order to 'initiate' her, we would put a snake in her bed while she slept. It was a poisonous snake, sure but we knew Pan wouldn't let her get hurt so we let it in. We waited to hear screaming for an hour, but heard nothing.
"Naturally, Thomas and I start to get worried, because if we killed her, we'd get killed ourselves. Finally, she comes out with none other than that stupid snake wrapped around her shoulders as her new best friend.
"Thomas said something about how she looked so innocent and lovely on the outside, but was a downright dangerous and fiery one on the inside. My reply was that she was a natural Tiger Lily and thus her name was born."
Henry grinned upon the thought of the only girl in camp coming out, holding the poisonous snake to the boys' faces to show off her good work. His smile faded as he came up with another question, "What happened to her?"
Felix's own face fell as well and he looked into the pits of the fire before murmuring almost unintelligibly, "She got sick."