Rufio (i_cancrow) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-08-10 20:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | rufio |
Reclaiming His Own Space (narrative).
Rufio woke….. not in his bunk in the tree. He was flat on his back on a hard, cold surface…. like stone, but not. The boy sprang instantly to his feet, the golden sword appearing in a flash in his hand. He was in a room… gigantic, and dark. Too big to be a prison, and filled with old boxes and crates. Rufio looked around cautiously, crouching as he moved backward, sword still at the ready as he blew out a soft bird call, reaching out to see if any other Lost Boys were here.
Nothing. Nothing but the echo of his own signal.
The boy turned and jumped up onto a crate, trying to get a better view of where he was.
"HOOK!" he bellowed, lifting his sword in challenge. It had to be him, the pirate. This had to be something he concocted. "HOOK! Show yourself, you slobber filled flea bag!"
Again…. no answer. He was alone. Rufio turned, saw a metal door, and bolted for it, expecting at any moment to come under attack. But when he slammed into the door the bar on it pressed in easily and he spilled out and into a smaller room, this one with tile, and a counter, and big windows. Still all dark and colorless. Adrenaline surging he bolted forward and looked at the wall of glass, finding a handle and yanking it. One of the panes of glass slid out easily, and sword up Rufio slipped out onto the street outside, freezing for a moment. This…. this wasn't Neverland. There was not one bit of his homeland that looked like this. Stone, brick, and tar were everywhere, hardly a tree in sight, and those trees were pathetic saplings compared to his trees.
He turned, sword falling, heart pounding in his chest like a drum. The buildings…. they were massive, bigger than villages, and they went straight up. Rufio looked up, but they disappeared before he could see the top.
"Oh! Watch out!" said a voice. Rufio spun, sword up, and saw…. a man. An adult! Holding a large box and coming towards him. Rufio's instinct kicked in an he snarled, grinning menacingly as he lifted the sword. The man stopped dead in his tracks and apparently the box got lighter - he was certainly able to go faster.
"Big bad pirate, scared of a single sword?" Rufio taunted, following after him and smacking the packaged with his blade, leaving a long mark. He leapt up on some blue box with a window on it, letting out a fearsome crow, and the man turned and ran as fast as he could, Rufio's laughter and taunts following him.
But strange…. he didn't look like a normal pirate. He was wearing a suit, almost like Dont Ask's, but darker. Was there no color here at all? Rufio climbed down and looked into the window of the box he'd stood on, seeing some papers there. He saw a handle and grabbed it, but it was locked. Cross, Rufio sheathed his sword, looking around and finding a large rock, which promptly made a decent hole in the window. Rufio pulled out the papers, but it was lots of words, and he didn't have time to try and work it out. He'd never taken to reading, he was action oriented, a leader. Not a reader.
He glanced around again, and suddenly saw more adults, walking down the streets, coming out of the buildings…. hundreds of them! The teen scrambled backwards, keeping low, then slipped back into the building he'd come from. He wasn't nearly oriented enough to start fighting pirates by himself.
- - -
It was nighttime. Rufio had set fire to the contents of one of the crates and some extra wood he'd found in the building. He'd spent the day looking around, and even being gigantic and full of odd things, it seemed empty and abandoned. There was dust on everything, and no recent tracks on the floors save his own.
He'd fond a smaller room upstairs, with a desk and a couch and all manner of odd looking furniture and papers, so he'd shoved the desk in front of the door and made himself at home, going to the window and shoving it open to look out at the…. the paper said something about a City. Was this a city? It was nothing like the pirates' settlement, and that was the biggest one in Neverland.
There were so many adults here, walking around, acting very…. strange. He supposed it was strange. There was no fighting, no stealing, no laughing or dancing or brawls. Nobody looked or acted like pirates here, if anything they seemed much more like the fake Pan's type. Quiet and busy. Rufio scowled. That must be it. Tinkerbell knew he'd never let her put her fake Pan in control, so she sent him back to Peter's world, somehow. Well, maybe he couldn't fly, but Rufio had fallen into Neverland once already by accident, he was sure he could do it again.
"Stupid bug," he snarled, throwing a piece of wood out of the window angrily. Then he laughed when it hit somebody in the head and he heard their cry, then looked around stupidly to try and find out where the wood had come from.
Rufio turned away and put the paper down next to the flame, scowling as he struggled to read it. Most of the words made no sense, and nothing about them was familiar.
But the time he'd given up Rufio had a headache, and crawled onto the old, dusty couch, curling up slightly on his side with his back to the outside, turning in on himself as he struggled to get some sleep. He was scared. He didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but this world… this world was awful. Dark and full of stone. Right now the Lost Boys would be sitting down to dinner in their tree fort, eating and laughing and joking.
Did they miss him? Were they trying to find him? Or had Tink convinced them that he'd just left, like Peter Pan (the real one) had so long ago? That he'd left so the pretender could take over, and very likely turn their wonderful world into… into this?
Rufio felt nauseated at the thought, and curled up tighter. He'd work out what to do. Tomorrow, when he had light. Maybe after he'd found some food.
- - -
Days later and Rufio was still where he'd started, though not nearly so demoralized. He hadn't left the warehouse save to find food, which was relatively easy. Two streets down there was some kind of store, sold lots of food that was chicken and meats and a few vegetables that tasted alright. He would wait near the store and when somebody came out with big bags he'd run up and scare them. They almost always dropped their food and ran, so he got a quick and easy meal.
Inside the warehouse he'd started shoving things around, remaking the floor of the area into something he could keep an eye on, a maze of giant crates with towers of smaller ones scattered throughout and many traps to catch anybody who wasn't supposed to be there. When he opened the crates he found lots of wood, paint, and canvas, odd glass bulbs on strings and brightly colored objects. His favorite find were replicas of human skeletons, made out of some light stuff that broke easily if you played with it roughly. He'd put them up by the doors that lead to the smaller room that separated the warehouse from the outside city, splattered gruesomely with red paint that looked like blood, along with other fearsome decorations to ward any intruders off. The paint was good, too, and he'd done some redecorating with all of the colors. Reds, greens, white, oranges, yellows, a few shades of purple and light blue…. he avoided the pinks when he could, he never much liked pink. He'd painted over the floor, the walls, the crates, big dashes of color, the usual warnings to invaders and symbols to show he was a Lost Boy and that Pirates had better beware. A few symbols to bring him luck and let fairies know that they were welcome here, though to his disappointment none had come to him yet. Not Tinkerbell, not anybody else.
There wasn't enough wood to burn every night and keep his fort-like setup, but after finding some odd holes in the walls and noting that the strings of glass had the same holes at one end of the string, and little prongs the same size on the other, Rufio had made the fantastic discovery that putting the prongs in the holes on the walls, and then after the other end of the plugged in string, the glass balls lit up. There were little lights of all kinds, some that twinkled on an off, some tiny, some big, some multiple colors or just one strand of color, or just clear. He put them up on the ceilings, criss crossing until the whole place was well lit all the time, and all he had to do was unplug one strand at the end near the door to make them all turn off and on. The whole building was looking a lot more like the tree fort now. Rufio decorated the warehouse and sealed up the office he'd been staying in, taking the couch cushions and making a new bedspace for him in the middle of his maze, a covered area with twinkling lights inside to light it up. He was sleeping better with the twinkling lights above him, sort of like the stars, sort of like the fairies. The colors and lights soothed him and gave him hope.
Yes, this building was starting to suit him fine. And he was feeling better about being trapped here, too, at least for the moment. The Lost Boys had always had the policy of creating a good home for themselves before they started fighting enemies, it kept moral up and let them have a safe place to retreat to if they needed. And Rufio wasn't really that different from the younger kids in that way, except that he didn't so often retreat.
Now though, he had his home base, and proper exploration of the new, strange, and really ugly land around him could begin.