A Neverland Tale - HOOKED (eng)

Chapter 1.1 - Luke

Lukes POV

'Luke' had always thought of herself as very adaptable. Until the day, when she gets picked up by Peter Pan from one of London's grimy streets in the docks and he brought her to Neverland. However, she had admittedly not faced... such things.

In fact, Luke had to deal with some new challenges since she had first set foot on the soft sands of Neverland. 'Reality' and 'impossible' were rapidly becoming very blurry words in this place and often enough in the last few days, 'Luke' the supposed 'boy' had had to wonder if he was really in his right mind. He, that is... SHE, hiding under the dirty layers of scuffed clothes, still wavered remarkably often between realism and enthusiasm for the new world to which the mysterious flying boy named Peter had brought her. Back then, there in the pelting rain among the dark, dirty alleys of the London docks, she had taken the hand of a stranger, but she had no regrets - even if she had no idea at the time what the promise of adventure would bring.

Peter brought her together with her brother - because she had insisted on it - to Neverland to the 'Lost Ones'. A motley bunch of young men and boys of all ages. Luke was not the youngest of the Lost Boys, but far from the oldest either. Since it was better to stay undercover as a young lad - and that was equally true in London as it was here - she had posed as a 15-year-old lad. Just young enough that one could perhaps overlook the lack of beard growth. She was curious and open to everything the lost people told her, and there was often a fascinating play of light in the blue eyes when they told her about mermaids and pirates, natives, and crocodiles. Some were more willing than others to explain the rules to the new boy. Well... There weren't many rules (at least that's how they tried to sell it to her).
Luke understood quite quickly that most of the rules were set, changed, and thrown away by Peter as the leader of the Lost ones saw fit. At least she had grasped the most important three very quickly:

1. Do not play with pirates

2. Believe in fairies

3. Never grow up

However, these were only the three oldest - and rule 3 was still a very special thing. There were other rules as well, but they were not tangible and visible to everyone and had been carved into a particularly meticulously maintained area in the trunk of the Hangman's Tree. Things like the fact that the youngest was at the bottom of the food chain of the lost and had to be content with the tasks that those who had been there longer being happy to do - washing clothes (which rarely happened anyway), washing up bowls and mugs, carrying away and burying hunting waste, occasionally mending torn clothes or the unpopular guard shifts. If you won a fight or a fight over something, you got to keep it - which, admittedly, was especially common among the younger ones, who liked to fight over trifles and settle the matter that way.
The newest members were called 'Pips' and had to work their way up the ranks. It didn't matter how old the boys were that Peter brought over from the other world. And so there were also tests of courage that they had to pass and they explained to her sternly that she would only really belong and have a say once she had done that.

She had been here for a fortnight now. At least... she thought it must have been about that time. A fortnight or so was a time that blurred in Neverland and sometimes felt shorter or sometimes longer. Days were not fixed in hours as she was used to in London and they didn't have summer or winter time here or a repeating cycle of seasons. When she had arrived, swaying in the air more drunkenly than a clumsy fledgling in a storm on its first maiden flight, the sun had beamed warmly down on the bright flakes of puffy clouds from the sky. Her first glimpse of Neverland had taken her breath away with silent rapture.