Never

Chapter Fifteen

The next day, early in the morning, Lily returned to the riverbank where she'd met Baelfire the day before, searching desperately for him, digging through the various piles of rotten brown leaves leaves, whispering his name as loud as she dared.

"Baelfire," she murmured quietly, "Baelfire, are you here?"

Lily continued her search throughout the morning, digging and tramping through the mud until her hands and feet were covered with the tar like substance. The mud congealed under her fingernails in thick, dark crescents as she smacked yet another pile of blackened leaves out of the way, breathing heavily, up to her ankles in dirt and sticking leaves.

And there he was.

Baelfire lay curled on the ground, half swallowed by the mud, his clothes brown and sticking to his skin as he looked around wildly, shaking leaves from his black, tangled hair.

"Wha-" he gasped, his eyes meeting Lily's "Oh. Hi."

"Baelfire," Lily muttered, falling to her knees in the mud. "I have been looking for you everywhere."

The younger boy groaned. "Why?"

"Um, you kind of showed up out of the blue? And I'm curious as to how you came to be on this island if you weren't... ah... brought here by somebody."

"I sort of was," said Baelfire.

Lily sat straight up. "But you told me you aren't a Lost-"

"I'm not a Lost Boy, whatever that means. Is that what you are?"

Lily grinned. "Well. Lost Girl, technically."

The boy smiled shyly, lighting up his small, dirty face. "Oh, right. Yeah, I should have got that."

"It's okay. But now can you tell me how you got here, kid?"

"You won't believe-"

"Uh, yeah, I definitely will. I've seen a lot of pretty unbelievable stuff on this island."

Suddenly Baelfire leapt to his feet, his body making a strange sucking sound as he jerked himself out of his little mud pocket. His eyes darted around wildly as he stumbled back, tripping back towards the river once more.

"Oh, no, don't run off again-"

"I-" Baelfire gasped. "It's that-"

And he ran once more.

Lily knew there was no way she'd catch him; every time she'd tried to follow the little boy on his escape attempts, her throat had closed, her lungs contracted, and she'd found herself unable to move with the speed that was necessary to catch him. Usually Lily was quite fast, her long, muscled legs pressing her forwards as fast as she could go, but whatever kind of power Baelfire possessed - and Lily was certain he was very powerful - made him impossible to follow.

She sat down on a rotting stump, head in her muddy hands, defeated. Her long, lean arms were sore and aching. Lily groaned internally at the thought of never finding Baelfire again, never quenching her curiosity. So many questions ran through her mind, the wheels turning in her head, trying to find answers to all of her queries. If he wasn't a Lost Boy, but he had been brought here by someone... she had no idea how this worked. She didn't understand how her island worked the way Peter did, she couldn't grasp the deeper meanings that her true love found in everything he did. She would have to ask him.