Pan's Tiger

Chapter 23: The Novel with no End

'Yes?' Pan breathed out cockily, trying to regain his composure. When I was feisty, I was not one to be messed with, even though I would never hurt him and would cry seas even if I harmed something as trivial as a a fly.

'Jealous of a book, Pan?' I teased, smirking at him. It was true, I had been reading it so intently it wouldn't surprise me if he wanted my attention on him and not some fiction, regardless of how amazing this fiction was.

'No,' Pan said defiantly. 'I'm just playing a little game, you know how much I like games.'

'Alright, I'll play too.' I concluded. I held my hands out, gathering all of the energy from my deepest surroundings and rubbed my hands together. This generated kinetic energy, which I absorbed into my hands. I felt the power from the rest of my body centre at my hands, all my energy surrounding my palms until they shone a crisp gold, glowing in the glistening light of the sun. I could sense Peter's lingering stare on me. His eyes were full of surprise, shock, amazement and bewilderment. They twinkled in the dim light of the fire, lost in astonishment at my miraculous progression with my magic.

Just when the energy was at its optimum, before it dissipated, I pushed my fingers apart widely, pushing all of my energy out and into the book he was holding.

'Is that book not feeling a little warm?' I sang, my eyes twinkling mischievously, in the way I usually used when being mischievous and not usually against Peter Pan. Pan groaned, knowing exactly what I was going to do before he even noticed.

Peter squatted my away with his hand, before dropping the book in horror. 'Ouch.' He screeched

'Tiger, you can't use magic to heat the book up, that's cheating.' Peter groaned as I whisked around to the sight of a me giggling and scampering across the room, clutching my precious novel to my chest as if it were made of pure gold and the pages more important to me than anything before.

'I believe I just did!' I squealed excited.

'I'm coming.' Pan warned, darting after me faster than I had ever seen him run before. Peter could run faster than I could, but not when I was able to dodge around the furniture of the room, giggling and laughing all the while.

I opened the book pouting and I felt Pan silently, intriguingly observed the way my forest green eyes scan the pages hungrily, absorbing as much of the information as I possibly could before Pan attacked again. Occasionally I would pause from my enthusiastic reading, when I hit a phrase that confused me, but this was usually unnoticeable.

Pan strode confidently towards me and snatched it from my grasp. 'So this is what your reading: "Wuthering heights" again? Sounds awful.' Pan teased, flicking through the pages until he reached to the place where I had got to.

'It's a classic, Peter, not that you would know or understand the importance of such things,' I sighed, watching him tentatively scan the pages. Pan knew this was my favourite novel, something she has read hundreds of times, and it was for that reason he had chosen that book to bring to Neverland, but Pan pretended he didn't as it was hilarious to see me so offended by his lack of knowledge of literature and my passion within it.

'"You teach me now how cruel you've been-cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this.".' Pan peered up at me slowly, confused and amused by this extract.