TW! Death!
"I can't do it! I'm too scared, sissy!" a young boy of age 5 whimpered. He had blond hair and blue eyes, and was standing in front of a cliff. To get to the other side, they had to go on a zip-line like structure, and the young boy was too afraid to even look at it. He cowered in fear at the mear mention of it.
"It's okay, love... Just try... You're brave. Come on, you can do it..." a girl, older than the boy, urged. She too, had blonde hair, but her eyes were an emerald green. She looked somewhat identical to the young boy, so she was probably his sister.
"No..." the boy refused, clinging onto the girl.
The girl tried a few more times to convince the boy, but when all failed, she gave up.
"It's okay... We'll take the other path" she said, rustling the boy's hair.
The scene soon changed, into a darker setting. It was night time, and the same girl was talking to the same boy.
"Come on, love! We have to get to the market quick to get some good sales!" the girl said, walking hastily.
"Sissy! Wait up!" the boy called, trying to keep up with his sister.
The boy heard a gasp from his sister, and looked up. To his horror, a huge bear was standing face to face with her. Sharp claws and teeth could be seen, and it didn't look friendly.
"Sissy..." the boy said, or whispered in fear.
"Love, be a good boy and run to the house..." the girl said, knowing that if something were to happen to her, she didn't want it happening in front of her brother.
"No..." the boy said weakly, tears forming in the corner of his eyes.
"Go on... I'll be right behind you" she comforted. But she knew that it was a lie. That bear would either take her, or him.
"Sissy!" the boy said, or cried. He wanted to help her, he wanted to run to her and grab her hands and drag her away. He wanted to fight. But his body said otherwise. He was frozen. With fear.
The girl pushed him away, shouting for him to run. She was trying to stop the tears from coming, but she couldn't.
"Run! Run and don't look back!" she pleaded, her voice cracking with sadness.
He didn't want to listen to her. He wanted to step inbetween that evil bear and his sister and FIGHT! But he couldn't. His body yet again, was not under his control. He turned around, running, and wiping tears from his eyes. He could hear the bear roaring. He could hear it swiping it's claws. But he kept running. Running, until he reached his house.
He went inside, and went to his bedroom. Kneeling beside his bed, he sat with his head touching his knees. He cried, he cried so much. The tears wouldn't stop coming.
Maybe she escaped, he thought. So he waited. One hour turned into a day, and soon a week. He knew. He knew that she wasn't coming back.
Bolting awake, Cubby sat upright on his bed. He was back in Pirate Island. He was back in the safety of his friends. It was just a nightmare. But he was sweating, and for some reason, he saw creatures lurking in the dark. He closed his eyes, but opened them again only to close them again in fear.
"Cubby? What happened?" Izzy asked, also sitting upright. She had heard Cubby gasping, and woke up.
Hearing Izzy, Jake and Skully too woke up.
"What happened?" Jake asked, rubbing his eyes to get adjusted to the light.
Skully lit up the lamp, to reveal a frightened Cubby.
"I... I'm fine. I just- I just had a... a nightmare" he said. But, his expression said otherwise. He was not fine.
"Hey, you okay, bud?" Jake asked, climbing into Cubby's bed.
"Mhm..." Cubby nodded.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Skully asked.
Cubby said no, so they assumed it was a touchy subject.
"I'll get you some water" said Izzy, getting up and going to the kitchen. Returning back witha glass of water, she gave it to Cubby.
"Thanks" said Cubby, before taking a sip of the water.
"It's almost time for us to wake up, so I'm not going back to sleep" said Izzy, heading to the bathroom to continue on with her daily routine.
"Yeah, me too" said Jake, before turning to Cubby. "You can get some rest, if you want"
Cubby gave a small smile, and finished gulping down his glass of water.
"I'm getting some more sleep" said Skully sleepily, and returned to his perch.
"Cubby! Catch!" Jake shouted, throwing the frisbee to his friend.
But, instead of catching it like he always did, Cubby missed it. Jake gave a glance to the other two, and they all looked concerned. He's been acting quite strange ever since the morninv. Did it have to do with that nightmare?
"Hey, Cubby? You doing okay? You can be honest with us, you know.." said Jake, going up to Cubby.
"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention" Cubby apologised.
"It's fine. You're just acting different" Izzy said, concerned.
"Yeah, sorry. Let's continue" said Cubby.
They continued their game for a while, but were inturrupted by a familiar face.
"Hey, you guys!" said Nibs, smiling and landing on the ground.
"Nibs!" everyone exclaimed joyfully.
They small-talked for a while, the usual "How are you?" and "What have you been up to?", before Nibs started explaining what he actually came for.
"I came with your last mission" he started, which got the attention of everyone.
"Once you complete this mission, you'll officially become sub-protectors!" Nibs said, smiling.
"So then this must be a hard one" they all thought.
"You have to travel to the realm of nightmares and retrieve a magical map that was lost there" Nibs explained.
"Map?" Cubby thought, his face lightening up. He always did like maps and exploring.
"Any information on the map?" Izzy asked.
"There isn't much..." he said, thinking. But then he remembered something.
"There's a rhyme on it!" he exclaimed.
"A map that's hard to understand but easy to read
It leads you to places you truly need
A map that is easy to hold but hard to find
Takes you to places that are oh so devine"
"That tells us nothing..." Jake whispered.
"Uhh... Anything else?" Skully asked.
"Well it's tied with a red ribbon" he said bluntly.
"A lot of maps are tied with a red ribbon" Skully said a bit impatiently. How were they going to find it if they don't have any information on it?
Cubby was unusually quiet. He always spoke up when his favourite topics cam up, but he wasn't uttering a word right now. What the others didn't know was that his mind was turning like the gears of the huge clock tower at Neverland town. The words kept repeating.
"Hard to understand... easy to read. Easy to hold... hard to find... places you truly need. Places that are divine..."
"The Yarbrough map!" he exclaimed at last, startling everyone.
"Yarbrough? As in Archer Yarbrough?" Jake asked after finally realising what he said.
"Yes!" Cubby said, happy that some knew what he was talking about.
The others, Izzy, Skully and Nibs, stared at them blankly. What were they talking about?
"Archer Yarbrough was a famous adventurer who travelled a lot of places while marking them down" Jake started.
"And after he decided to stop travelling, he looked at his markings and realized that he had created the map of all of Neverland" Cubby inturrupted.
"So he settled down and started redrawing the map more clearly. After he completed, he published the map to the rest of Neverland and he became a very famous cartographer" Jake completed. "Surprised you don't know about any of this, Izz" he added teasingly.
"Well, what does this have to do about the map we're looking for?" Izzy asked, avoiding that last comment, and giving Jake a nudge.
"Well, there was once a legend that Yarbrough created a magical map that fits the rhyme that Nibs recited. It was said to take you to places that the holder wanted to go to" Cubby explained.
"Wow..." Skully said, impressed.
"So I guess you have a place to start" said Nibs, proud of them for finding something out so quick. "I'll leave you to it, then. Good luck, you all! And be careful!" he called out, flying away.
"You know... This realm of nightmares seems kinda scary" Cubby said, leaning onto the railing. They were on their way to Skull Rock, where the gateway to this realm was said to be located.
"Oh, don't worry Cubby! We'll be with you the whole way!" said Izzy, looking up from watching the sea.
"Yeah, and there's no going back now. We've arrived!" Jake said, docking Bucky.
"Down we go!" said Skully, leading everyone down.
"So the passage is said to be hidden..." Izzy said, looking around. They were inside Skull Rock, which was more like a cave.
"So maybe a secret lever or something?" Jake suggested.
They all continued looking around for some clue, until Skully came across a weird looking rock on the ceiling.
"Hey, look!" he said.
They all looked up to where he was, and spotted what he was pointing at. A rock that had some kind of carving on it. Skully brought the rock down, which was quite easy to take out.
"Hey... Doesn't this look like a part of the Neverland Crest?" Izzy asked, turning the rock around to what she thought was the right way.
"Yeah..." Jake agreed. "There must be other rocks with the other parts of the crest! Let's look around"
"Found one!"
"One's up there!"
"Got it!"
"And another one found"
"I think this is the last one"
"Nope, there's one more and I found it"
"Okay. Now we just have to assemble it" said Skully. "Who's best at puzzles here?"
"Me" said Izzy, rolling up her sleeves. She started moving the pieces up and down, right and left, replacing one with the other. Soon, a beautiful symbol was revealed.
"There!" she said proudly.
Just as she stood up to look at her work, the rocks started glowing between the cracks. But only for a second, and then it stopped. No changes happened to the crest, only that all the individual rocks combined into one big one.
"So what are we supposed to do with this?" Cubby asked.
"I dunno..." Jake answer, scratching his chin.
He was about to walk around the cave to look for something when they heard cave moving. Or, part of the cave, specifically.
They looked over to where they heard the noise, and saw the wall moving. It moved to two sides, and revealed a slot that would fit the rock.
"I guess we have to do some lifting now" said Jake, and he started trying to lift they very heavy rock. The others joined in, and somehow, they all made it across the cave to the wall and put it into the slot.
After putting it onto the wall, the ground starting rumbling again. It soon revealed a flight of stairs, which they all went down. They soon reached the end of the stairs where a single, old looking door could be seen. It looked very old and broken, with the handle threatening to fall off any moment and the half termite eaten wood. A small sign could be seen, where the writing was barely understandable.
"Do not enter. Danger" it read. A pathetic way to keep out intruders, really.
The group entered anyways, with Jake bravely volunteering to go first. They had suspected that there would be some kind of spell to keep them out, but no such thing was there. Jake slowly opened the door, cautious for traps, but when nothing of danger could be seen, he just went through it. What lay on the other side surprised him.
When you think of a realm of nightmares, you imagine a dark place, with scary overgrown plants and shadows all over. But this... This was different. It was as if the goddess of night herself came, took the night sky into her hands and gave it to this world. Billions of stars, big and small, far and close, lit up the whole world. Nothing else could be seen. The nighy sky truly did hold so much magic.
When Jake entered the world and started walking, it was as if he was floating! He was skeptical when he took his first step, thinking he would fall, but was amazed when he started walking. He wasn't flying like when pixie dust was sprinkled on him, it was almost as if every step he took, the realm felt it. It felt it and then it made an invisible pathway for him to walk on.
The others soon followed him, and they kept walking for a while, gazing at the beauty. It wasn't until someone spoke up that they all came to their senses.
"What do we do now?" Izzy asked, stopping in her tracks.
"I don't... I don't know... The stars just seem to go on forever!" Skully said, looking all around him and only seeing what he had just described. The night sky till the eye can see.
"How are we supposed to find anything?" asked Cubby.
Jake was about to suggest to keep on walking when a voice started speaking.
"Who goes there?" the voice said. It was sweet, youngand feminine, but still had a feeling of authority in it.
The group was startled by the voice, and couldn't say anything. When no reply came, the voice asked again.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Jake, and these are my friends Izzy, Cubby and Skully" Jake introduced. They couldn't see anyone, and could only hear the voice. And the voice didn't come from a certain place. It came from everywhere. They couldn't pinpoint where it actually came from. It was as if the universe was actually speaking to them.
"What are you doing here?" the voice asked.
"We're on a mission" Jake answered.
"You should go back. It is dangerous here" the voice warned. It seemed worried for them.
"I'm sorry, but we can't do that" Jake said.
"Very well. Go along on you journey" the voice said, and then it fell silent.
"That was... weird" said Skully.
"Yeah... So what should we do now?"
"Maybe keep walking?" Jake suggested. He had no other ideas, and it seemed that the others didn't have any either.
The continued walking for a few more minutes, but all was in vain. They just kept going, and going, and going, and going.
"Okay, I don't think we'll accomplish anything by walking" Izzy said finally. The others too agreed, but what could they do?
The realm of nightmares seemed too peaceful. Were they even in the right place? Maybe they should have asked that voice earlier...
The silence was interrupted by a screeching noise, almost a scream. They all turned around to see what it was, and it was not good.
"Not good at all!"
Author's note:
Hi! Hello! How are ya? I hope you're doing good, and I hope you liked this chapter!
This actually seems a bit different from what I usually do. The starting was a bit dark, and the whole chapter itself seemed a bit different to me. Maybe it's just me, but please do leave an opinion! When I wrote the part near the end and stuff, I felt a little lazy and sleepy, so maybe you could feel that in the writing. I dunno, maybe
Yavuz, thanks again for the review!!! Really happy you liked how I wrote your OCs. I was a bit nervous when I wrote them, but I'm glad you like it! And true too, Zafer has an eye for money!
And also, fun fact! Yarbrough means earthworks or fortifications, and I guess that somehow made sense to me when I was researching last names because he was a cartographer and he made maps of the earth... or neverland...? I dunno, maybe I was just dumb!
Well, that's it! I hope you liked it, and see you again another day! Bye!