What if...? Book One, Part 2: The Game Begins...(A Peter Pan rewrite, by Jae)

17-Mermaids...

"Oh, my god!" I squeal out.

Never have I felt excitement like such in my life. The ground is has become a stranger. The air feels like dangerous, warm water. The sky is the most daring aspect embracing me, welcoming me. Breathing becomes easier. My stomach is doing flips into my chest, thrilling me and I want to scream. This feels so hazardous and so exasperatingly terrifying. There's nothing holding me up, nothing stopping me from hitting the ground, this seems like such a bad idea, but I wouldn't ever give this up. I hear Pan laughing somewhere behind me.

"I told you." he shouts through his laugh.

I look back at him to see him running off the cliff I just gave my life to in pure faith. He spins as he jumps so swiftly into the air, to collide our gifts of flight by meeting me in the ever so devilish clouds. He reaches out for my hands and I let him take them so he can pull up higher into the air, higher from the ground, closer to the heavens. Higher and higher he takes me, soaring up and down, gliding left and right, showing me how easily I can stop straining and relax. I'm too exhilarated to stop him, so away he leads and as hard as I try to hold in my screams I just can't so I them into laughs, loud, thrill-filled laughs. The more we fly the easier it is to stay happy. 

I lose track of all time, all problems and stress. Pan pulls me further and further from our take off site. Passed the soft meadow over the forest behind it. I watch as the forest beneath us turns into a valley. A deep valley with meadows, flowers, wildlife and delicate fields. Pan releases my hands for only seconds at a time to show me a flip, or a twirl, or a fancy glide. He comes back to grab my hands and he only does it to lead me into copying what he just did. And copy I do, sloppily and unsteadily I copy. Laughter filling the air around my spins, I never knew frightful enjoyment like this before. 

I loose all sense of hatred for him or anything he's ever done, it simply doesn't matter, the clouds around us would never let it. I loose all anger for anything anyone has ever done to me. I loose any discomfort from being in an unknown place and I loose all uncertainty of my future. This is what I want. And I think this is what I've always wanted. Nothing matters in the air. 

Our figures are descending from the clouds, coming into view to those down below but only to glide by, fast and scattered, then head right back up. Almost like dancing, we never stay in one position of side by side or arms length apart. There's simply too many things to try. I have too many ideas to practice before he ends this flight. He shows me too many features of the land below to ignore a swirl through the cliffs or a front flip through a rainbow that ends up staining my white clothes some magical how. 

It isn't until we've gotten to a point of adventure where a lake lays quietly underneath us, between mountain ranges, that I begin to feel the magic fleeting. And fleet fast it does as the warmth of the dust quickly fades from my skin. I begin to feel the cold wind of the setting sun biting my skin. Pan releases his fingers from mine to show me a high dive and as soon as he lets go, the doubt hits me. Just one second, it only took one second of doubt to drop me from the air. 

I gasp in fear, begging the thought of how happy I just was to stick. Pan bolts upward in his dive and only notices my loss of the gift as he is finishing the perfect skill but I'm already far from reach. He's already so much higher and I grab hold of the happy thought, gripping it best I can through my fall. The air allows me to rise, just a little for just as he said the longer I feel happy the longer I can float. But once doubt is planted, it's there. Just being there is all it took because a sharp gasp from my heart chokes me when I drop again. It was only just the single thought of how I almost fell. It's completely engulfing me until I can find the positive emotion again. Over and over it goes. The dust leaving less and less bits of its magical self inside my skin.