Innocence (OUAT/Peter Pan)

Chapter 38: Shadow Dance

So here is an update I did not plan on giving until later in the week, but I have two reasons to celebrate and thus release it today.

#1) OUAT IS BACK!!!!!!! CAPTAIN SWAN ALL THE WAY BABY! They're all back the hiatus is over!!! :D I have been so excited all day, and it's on in half an hour (my time)!!! I did manage to slightly distract myself though, anyone heard of the show Merlin? It's good, Colin Morgan and Bradley James are two fiiiiiiiiine specimen ;)

#2) THIS STORY HAS 20K READS! OMG! I freaked. I seriously never expected that and it makes me so happy to know I can write something people like!

A shout out to my girly, vanessa5836, for your love and support and creativity and amazingness--and Sunday faces ;) stay gold!

This chapter is dedicated to ToffeeCrunch123 for all your lovely comments--and I feel SO VIP in your very exclusive reading list ;) hope I continue to please you and get comments from you!

Everyone else: I read your comments over and over again and I love them, and I already have two more people I'm dying to dedicate the next chapters to! <3

ELLE’S POV

“It’s difficult to remember, princess, it has been so long,” the Shadow reasoned. “Do you remember being born? No. I don’t remember being created, except darkness and pain and then, suddenly, I could move, and there was no pain, and I was here, and he was standing before me, panting and shaking but smiling triumphantly.”

            “So you don’t know before that?” Elle asked, a bit disappointed.

            “No,” the Shadow said simply. “You would have to ask the mermaids, they were created with the island, long before the fairies or he or I.”

            Elle opened her mouth to ask more, she was trying to learn of how Neverland came to be. There were no stories of it, not even legends, in her library in the tower. Then again, those had always been limited due to the mistress not wanting her to get ideas about escaping.

            “Wait here,” the Shadow ordered suddenly, floating completely still in the air, hand raised, voice almost a growl. His glowing eyes narrowed, and Elle stopped her aimless saunter inside his enclosure. She stared up at him, eyes wide and heart beating fast. He seemed agitated, alert like she had never seen him.

            “Stay hidden,” he called as he swooped toward where the entrance was. The two had been climbing and twisting in the branches deep in Dark Hollow, in the dome of twisted, dead tree limbs. Two shadows swooped out of the ceiling, making Elle shriek in surprise. She knew he had victims, their shadows imprisoned in his home, but she had never seen them. They looked exactly like him, but with different builds and their eyes didn’t glow. They had no eyes at all, it seemed. She had never seen him call them…someone must have come. Someone important. She knew more people were in Neverland, Felix had completely forgotten to realize that him seeing her meant she wasn’t dead, because he had immediately insisted that she hide. Perhaps the Shadow was off to stop them from something, or they had come too close.

            Elle slipped on her hood, pleased Felix was so much taller than her since the cloak covered her entire body down to her knees and the hood fell down past her eyes. Keeping quiet, cloaking spell secure, she kept her footsteps quiet but fast as she followed him, trying to go faster every time she heard a faint yell from ahead.

            She was slower, so by the time she climbed over the last wall of fallen tree trunks, the two shadows were flying back towards the depths of Dark Hollow. The Shadow was nowhere, she didn’t even hear him. She felt his magic around her, of course, but it all seemed normal. She was sure it would have changed somehow by now. Standing upright on top of a pile of trees, Elle’s mind went blank in shock and confusion.