Innocence (OUAT/Peter Pan)

Chapter 10: Rumpelstiltskin

Looking back, she realized it only took her only two months to call Neverland home, and the Lost Boys her friends—perhaps brothers, even, though a few still didn’t talk to her. She knew almost all of their names, and had settled into a general routine with them. She hunted almost every day with them, herself only killing as much as she needed to eat while they often continued for sport. But they never commented or teased her for it; she suspected she earned their respect with how accurate a shot she was.

            She still only fought one-on-one with Felix during training in the separate clearing. She was improving rapidly in hand-to-hand, but he still wasn’t fighting her one hundred percent himself and she had never fought anyone else. Her arrow shooting and dagger throwing surprised even Pan, making up for her rubbish handling of swords and spears. That was how the boys measured themselves, by fighting and survival skills, and she slipped into that easily. She didn’t really know another lifestyle, so it was an easy adjustment. And she was happy. Neverland was officially her home, the Lost Boys her family.

            When she wasn’t hunting with them, she was training with Felix, or swimming in the pond Pan showed her, or practicing her magic. Sometimes, Pan would free himself from the boys’ games and teach her something new or help her with the swimming, but she was good at teaching herself—she’d spent her life doing so. She loved magic lessons with Pan, he showed her all kinds of things to do. She now could subconsciously use magic for details like heightened senses. He taught her to keep her twisted hair floating slightly so it didn’t tangle or get dirty as much, it also resembled how it looked underwater, so the sight of it at her side was constantly calming. She also improved her sensitivity to others’ magic: each person had an individual aura, like a fingerprint, from which she could interpret how much magic a person had in them, what kind of magic, and, thus, she could recognize a boy from it.

            At sunset, she skinned and cleaned and cooked her kills, Felix showing her increasingly messy ones of his own on purpose, keeping his end of their deal to help her develop the stomach for it. She was pretty sure he enjoyed it more than she thought he should, and had had the nerve to actually slap him when he suggested eating a badger raw once. At sunrise or midday, depending on where they were and what they were doing, she gave him reading and writing lessons. These had only been going for a week, but he could now write all of the boys’ names in unexpectedly neat handwriting.

            She stuck around Felix as much as she could when he wasn’t off doing some obscure task of Pan’s. Honestly, she didn’t really want to know. She knew the boys weren’t always good people, and she knew Pan was less than friendly when he wanted to be, but she hadn’t been harmed so far and he always did what he thought was best for the boys, so she trusted them anyway. Felix tried to tell her as much as he could, but either Pan or she restricted him. Still, she stayed with him; she even slept in his tent, although she did make herself a thin mattress on the floor. He didn’t mind, he seemed to like the company.

            This afternoon, she was hunting alone. It was more relaxing than she predicted, and she was excited to go kill something herself and bring it back to show, just to prove to the boys that she could without their help.

            She knelt on the branch and pulled back her bow string, just as Pan had taught her. Following the line of the poison-tipped arrow, she focused on the raccoon. It was unusual to see one in the daytime, she had been with Daniel and Robert when they saw it, and she had taken off after it instantly. Not worrying about where the boys had ended up, or how far off she was from familiar territory, she had kept going until it stopped. She let the arrow fly, not bothering to use magic to help the arrow find its groggy target. Her arrow hit straight in its eye, and she jumped down from the tree and ran to it.