Monster // Peter Pan (Robbie Kay) (OUAT)

Chapter Forty

sorry for the delay ! i posted a conservation but then i had a new idea and i had to change the chapter a bit. hope it was worth the wait <3 sorry for so many mini flashback things. i just want to show a bit of contrast :)

full authors note at the end, along with answering some of reader questions!

Quick question for you to answer-- What are some of your theories? Where do you think the book is headed?

Chapter 40

Day 99

It began to feel like forever since I stepped foot inside the training clearing.

The familiar bang of the targets as an arrow slammed into their inviting centers, the smell of sodden grass overturned by boots, the bows clanking in the trees like a noxious wind chime. Maybe, if I really thought about it, I could smell the embers that peppered the clearing the day I wanted nothing more but to watch Pan's entire world go down in flames, to see his face fall like the targets did--head first.

But now, as I watched him remove his quiver from the weapon tree, and his automatic bow, I just wanted his happiness. Everything was so much better when he was happy...or as close as he could be to it.

I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He was a conundrum, the most beautiful enigma. He caused me so much confusion and anguish. But here and now, and developing slowly, he was the most ensnared interruption in the universe--perfectly entwined in the cosmic lace, separating space with every step he took around the clearing.

And then, I noticed the most confusing thing about him--the abstruseness focused in one on the patch of grass behind his body. The sunlight was hitting him directly, so....where was his shadow?

I couldn't focus on him anymore. The thought that he wasn't even a being began to shake me.

We all stood in a line, waiting for direction. Except Oliver, who stood on the other side of the tree, hands still cuffed, lifting conjoined wrists to throw knives at the target. The slam of the blade to the wood softened into the sway of the trees, that familiar clanking of the bows in the weapon tree, the sun crossing the sky like a water bug. I remembered the dread I used to feel at training, the way we stood in an uneasy line so stiff, only the jitters clambering in our chests. But now, we stood still, relaxed, maybe the tension of Oliver...but Pan's presence didn't pull at the thread of me anymore.

He stood in front of us, quiver thrown like a quilt over his shoulder, bow leaning against his leg, and a closed wooden bowl with a small hole in his hand.

"Today," he began, dipping an arrow into the center of the bowl, "I want you guys to practice with our favorite plant Neverland has to offer."

Gale nudged me. "Don't inject it this time, love," he whispered, "I'm trying to keep you around."

I smiled lightly, a flare of anxiety coiling around my veins, then dimming.

"All I ask," Pan said, putting the dreamshade bowl by his feet, and then snapping the arrow into his bow, "is that you retrieve arrows after you shoot. I don't want dream shade arrows laying around for someone to find later by stepping on it. I also don't want any animals coming across them and getting infected."

He had each of us dip a couple of our bows into the dream shade and line up at a target. It hadn't been long since I was last face to face with them, and yet it felt like it had been. Maybe that tends to happen when you leave one world, and briefly enter another. When you slip into cessation, and not the first time. When life becomes suspended and you dip your toes into what was supposed to be the sloe of sempiternity. But when you come back, everything so normal in your life was just going to feel a little further away.