Perdita (A Peter Pan OUAT Fanfic)

CHAPTER TWO: The Cages and Strange Boys

A/N - Okay, so I'm updating again but I'm considering turning this into a Peter Pan book properly, not just an imagines book that features him. But I don't know. What do you guys think?

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My fingers dug deep in the sand and my heartbeat sped thrice up.

What's going on?

The emerald eyes stared down at me, almost probing for something they could not seem to find. My eyes could not break away from them either. It was as though there was an invisible tie that connected them, not allowing either of us to glance away and ease the mounting tension. To extricate myself from the eye contact seemed almost dangerous, as though it would shatter some kind of ancient law that would bring the world crashing down on my head.I could do nothing more than peer up at my... my what?

Who was this person? My captor? My saviour? I had no way of knowing. And what might be exactly the right thing to do in the face of my friend could be the exactly the wrong thing to do concerning my enemy. Again, I was lead to the conclusion that I could not, for my own safety, break away from the gaze. I was at a total loss for what else to do.

My heart continued to pound in my ears like it wanted to fly free of my chest and escape to somewhere safer, less intense.

Luckily, to my extreme relief, a slight breeze fluttered past then, blowing the pungent briny scent of the sea through my nostrils and causing two tendrils of hair to dance across my face. This seemed to distract the eyes for they suddenly flickered to my cheek where my hair was, before finally looking away completely and glaring at something a few feet behind my head. I was at least released from my metaphorical bondage and the unbearable pressure that had captured me dissipated away to almost nothing. A gasp of air burst through my lips and I realised I had been unconsciously holding my breath throughout the entire ordeal.

I took the next moment to evaluate my surroundings, to calculate my next move. My eyes slid hastily over the person, now preoccupied, hovering above my body.

He was young: that was my first impression. His cheeks still hinting at childish roundness and his wrists thin and bony as a boy's. He could not have been more than eighteen. His mahogany hair, which glowed slightly in the afternoon light, was cut messily, untidily framing his face as though it was a hastily completed work of art. His eyebrows were strong and thick, like scaffolding that held up his face. And of course, there were his eyes. His incredible eyes. I forced myself to look away from them for fear of losing my will again.

His top half was clad in deep green swathes of fabric that hung off of his body as though they had been made haphazardly, though his legs were sheathed in cracked and aged leather which hugged their curvature and accentuated his muscular calves. I hadn't time to look further before he began to move.

His hand reached up to motion to something out of my eye-line and my attention was brought to it simultaneously. His hands were odd. They did not match his slim wrists in the slightest. They were course, calloused things, as though he'd spent years - far more than his lifetime could possibly be worth - in the toughest, most demanding physical labour. Those hands seemed as though they knew their way around a weapon.

As he was motioning, he began to speak. His voice was, again, boyish and youthful in its nature, but held an incomprehensible age that made him seem far too wise for his years.

"What are you staring at? Do it!" he commanded, as though he had not been totally transfixed himself moments before.

I wondered what the 'it' was that he had so forcefully commanded his companions to do, and then I realised I most probably did not want to know.