The Lost Lands

We're all here because we've lost something. Or maybe we never had it in the first place. Sometimes I think we're here because we're healing. Our lives lacked something that our souls longed for so desperately, that we fell through the cracks in our hearts and landed here. That's my theory. There's no way to know for sure though.

I don't know how long I've been here. In the Lost Lands. I know how long everyone else has been here, except for Max, and that's only because he was here when I got here. He likes to say he was born here, but I know that's not true. There are no mothers or fathers here. Only us.

When I woke up here, there was only Max. I remember the feeling of the sun branding scorching lines of heat down my body, the parts of it that the palm leaves didn't cover. Max stood a few feet away from me, his head cocked to the side; a dead fish slumped onto his spear. He was naked, but unabashedly so, even when he realized I was looking at him. Now that I know him, this doesn't seem odd to me. He'd had clothes at one point, I'm sure. I'd had mine since the beginning. He just didn't see the necessity. It was hot, clothes made him hotter. The solution was obvious.

He scares me sometimes, with his intensity, but I don't know what I would've done without him. He taught me everything I know about fending for myself. Surviving.

We developed a fierce love for each other, a predatory love. We thought it would just be the two of us forever. We didn't know others would come.

Josh was the next one that found us. I was watching Max preform backflips off of the jagged rocks staggered along the beach, and he walked dazedly out of the green-ness of the jungle into the sunlight.

It was strange, at first, having Josh here. Where Max was all hard edges; Josh was smooth sea glass. Open and sensitive as opposed to the tight, coiled ball of fire that you knew Max harbored inside.

Josh kept his eyes down on the sand as he spoke to us, drawing shapes in the wet, packed parts with a stick. He said he remembered everyone around him always talking, shouting yelling, barking. Never listening. The noise got so deafening that he just started walking away. He kept walking until he ended up here.

Max focused hard on Josh's face that day, his brow furrowed. His blue eyes took on an icy sheen. I could almost see what was going through his mind. He was weighing everything out.

From the little bit I've ever gotten out of Max, he has an intense fear of being abandoned. Not just being alone; as I'd seen the day I woke up here, he got along perfectly fine alone. But being left: that scared him. Which scared me, because nothing ever scares him. He would wake up in the night gasping, groping around for my hand. And now we had another person to add to our group. To take under our wing and love fiercely. But another boy... that equaled more than camaraderie. It equaled competition.

It meant Max stealing glances as he caught our dinner in the shallow waters, while Josh showed me how to make pan flutes out of bamboo shoots. It meant Max sprawling out in the middle when we all went to sleep at night under the overhang made of broken tree limbs that we suspended between two trees. The sharp angles of his jealousy seemed to be dulling, though, by the time Paul got here.

Paul had a lanky mop of hair that fell down into his eyes. He was the biggest yet, but also the skinniest, his bones moving visibly under his pale skin as he fashioned more spears or sharpened more knives. From his first day he held fast to me. Still, when it isn't either of our turn for chores he'll lay his head in my lap and ask me to play with his hair. He took to Josh easily too, since Josh let Paul follow him around like a puppy and taught him melodies on the pan-flute.

Max never had patience for Paul. He will still toss me weary looks as I tie dandelions into Paul's hair, or sing loud, made up songs with him. It's an unspoken fact that he needs us to hold him together, though, so once in a while Max will bark out a verse or race him to the edge of the sparkling water.

I guess that leaves me. I'm Wendy Darling with my Lost Boys. I'm a mother bear with a mouth full of snarling teeth. I tie my hair back every morning in a thick braid that is at the longest it has ever been. The ocean water transforms my arms and legs into strong muscle, lean and taught. Hunting hones my reflexes and teaches me how to heighten my senses. While my memories of people and faces are foggy, jagged fragments; I remember jokes. I remember commercial jingles and cartoon theme songs. I use them not only to entertain myself, but for the boys. To make them laugh and splash and play; not just Paul and I, but all of us. I am warmth and joy and love. For them. Everything for them, always.

The last thing I remember before waking up here was that there was no one in the world I could count on. The word "family" meant nothing to those around me. I don't remember their faces anymore, my new family has replaced them. There may be more in time; more trails of footprints leading up to our camp. But we'll take them all in. And we'll love them all the same.

Paul will ask me sometimes, "What will happen next?" as if our lives here are a chapter in one of the stories I whisper to him when he can't sleep at night.

But I hate lying, and it would be a lie to say I knew. Maybe eventually we'll venture out further; get a better grasp logistically of where we are. Josh brings it up sometimes, saying we should fan out for a bit and meet right back here. Max always tells him everyone's allowed to explore as much as they want, but he's not leaving his home.

So for now, we stay lost.