Never Land

Chapter Five

        Her teeth chattered, rattling the inside of her mouth and echoing loud enough for those around her to hear. She sat mere inches away from the bonfire allowing the heat of the flames to warm her nearly frozen toes while a blanket hung around her shoulders and body. Peter sat next to her with one arm over her shoulders pulling her into his side.

        The Lost Boys surrounded the bonfire, resting amongst logs as if they were tanning. Nobody had spoken a word since Peter and Wendy’s arrival, startled and shocked by Wendy’s dripping frame. Peter had given the boys a glare when the twins muffled a giggle beneath their hands; fearing them all to speak about Wendy’s incident.

        The forest surrounding the group was silent. The only sounds that could be heard between them were the rattling of Wendy’s teeth and the crackles of flames burning the wood. “Nothing like a bonfire,” Peter chuckled softly looking at Wendy, who was oblivious to his attempt at easing the tension. Wendy looked at him from the corner of her eyes with a soft glare. Her teeth continued to chatter as she pulled the blanket tighter around her frame.

        “What are they?” she mumbled, her eyes boring into the orange flame, watching it pop and rise into the air. “Mermaids,” Peter chuckled following her gaze while watching her from the corner of his eye. Wendy broke her gaze from the bonfire to look at Peter in annoyance. Her blue eyes glared into his while her lips thinned into a pressed line, her teeth together stopping the chatter. “Seriously Peter,” she breathed. “Your stories were different than,” she paused thinking back to where she was hypnotized by Holly’s beauty and almost drowned. “-That,” she emphasized with wide eyes.

        Peter sighed dropping his arm from her shoulder, “I know,” he whispered staring at the other boys. Since Wendy and Peter began chattering, the boys took it as an okay to quietly talk between each other, sharing laughter. “They’re not regular mermaids,” Peter said quietly turning towards Wendy. “No kidding,” Wendy scoffed focusing her gaze back on the fire. Peter ignored Wendy’s attitude and continued, “they weren’t always mermaids.”   

        “Huh?” she questioned, her head snapping in Peter’s direction causing a slight pain in her neck. “You heard me, the girls weren’t always mermaids,” he repeated. “Then what were they?” she whispered staring at him like a deer in headlights. Peter sighed and looked down at the twigs and brush underneath his feet, “humans.”

        Wendy gasped taken back by his response causing the group of boys to snap their heads and stare at her. She looked between the boys, watching their curious eyes before landing on Fox, who was glaring. Swallowing the nervous lump in her throat she nodded her head at him before turning back to Peter with a whisper, “how?”

        “It’s a long story.”

        Wendy groaned softly, just loud enough for Peter to hear. She knew the boys were curious about her, especially Fox, who’s shown to not taking liking towards her and she didn’t want to draw more attention towards herself than she already had. Wendy lowered her head towards Peter until her lips were hovering a few away from his ear. “How?” she repeated in a whisper.

        Peter groaned internally for opening his mouth about the mermaids past identity. It wasn’t something Wendy needed to know nor was seeing the mermaids and interacting with them; however, Peter failed from keeping her away from both. “Did you notice anything odd about the lagoon and mermaids?”

        Letting the blanket fall from her shoulders, Wendy’s arms found their way over her chest hugging herself in thought while nibbling on her bottom lip. Thinking back towards her time at the lagoon, Wendy couldn’t have noticed right away the oddness and eerie feeling the area held. As she thought back the more she could obtain to what she was blinded by. “The water was blue but everything was dark,” she said “but they were just beautiful, memorizing, their face was flawless,” she paused, “including their hair.”