Young Writers Society

Kate looked at Lyla, at first disbelieving, then, as she realized she wasn't joking, patronizingly angry.

"You don't know what a seat belt is?!" she exclaimed, then didn't wait for an answer. She rolled her eyes and shoved Lyla into the nearest seat. Kate leaned over her, trapping her with the arm that balanced on the side of the seat while the other one grabbed the seat belt.

"This," she said as though speaking to a child, "is a seat belt. It keeps you from dying in the event of a crash or a sudden stop. It might be the reason you die if we happen to land in water, though, so make sure you know how to unlatch it." Once she'd finished explaining, Kate tossed the seatbelt against Lyla's chest and stalked over to her own seat.

Lira didn't exactly understand the importance of the seat belt, but she quickly buckled it to avoid gaining more of Kate's wrath. As she waited for the ship to start its journey, her gaze drifted down to the charm dangling from her wrist.

She was going to find Levi.

And when she did, she would finally understand what had happened to her world - and what had happened to Levi.

Meanwhile, in Neverland...



Terra had run off.

Again.

In retrospect, he really shouldn’t have been surprised. Terra had a tendency to do that; his pet always ran away at the worst of times. He shouldn’t have taken Terra with him, even though it had been a long time since they had last gone to a world together - especially a world mostly free from heartless.

He let out a low, irritated groan.

The lost boys hadn’t seen Terra. Tinkerbell hadn’t, either. The lost boys might have noticed Terra, but Tinkerbell had always been more observant than the rest of them. She was observant enough to notice certain details of his appearance when the boys completely ignored them - to the point where he decided it was best to hurry off to the shore.

Terra didn’t like water. Mermaids were out of the question. He wouldn’t waste his time there. But there was a very high chance that Terra had gone to the only other place with people that he hadn’t bothered to check.

Hook’s ship.

A short - reluctant - costume change later, and he was on his way to the ship.

Baba happily plopped down between Lira and Kate, and strapped themself down, just like they'd seen Kate do it. Ooh, straps. Were they going to be making monsters?



Baba stared at the prickling lights in the endless space, trillions more blinking into view with every second they flew. This was the world outside Halloween Town, it was big. These were the colours, they were plentiful. Baba was entranced.

They were not alone, in the cold beauty of the cosmos.

First they met only sprays of meagre meteors, which Baba could have sworn had angry eyes on them. Cute little ghosties with hungry mouths. These were easily fended off by Donald, manning the Gummi Ship’s lasers.

Goofy, veteran road trip dad, put on the flute instrumentals, and brushed swiftly past a swirling vortex.

He threaded through the mouths of great spinning rings, double dutch looping through each other.

He swivelled past enormous spinning starfish flowers that spat lasers.

All the while Donald provided counterfire, and advice.

“THE LEFT, THE LEFT-’ ‘THROUGH THE-” “NO THAT’S TOO NARROW oh you made it-” “WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO FL- oh that was a good one actua-” “NONO TAKE THE RIGHT, THE RIGH-”

“-Donald, why don’t you check on the children?” said Goofy, through gritted teeth.

Donald gulped, and turned his head to do so. They looked fine. Shook, but fine.
Donald gave them the thumbs up. “Keep those seatbelts on, kids.”

The ship dropped like a snapped elevator cord, to make a wide swoop underneath a spinning rod covered in drills.

Goofy resurfaced to meet a giant ghost galleon, with the red emblem of the Heartless on the ragged sails. Iron, sharklike jaws adorned the prow. And a spike, of course.

“Donald, turn the volume up.” said Goofy.

In the soothing blaring of gentle flutes, and the ceaseless spitting of the Gummi Ship’s lasers, Baba mixed up the sensations that followed, but in no particular order, they included falling upwards, jerking double dutchwards, barrels rolling into lights and babbling ducks and the flutes being turned up, louder, and louder.



The Gummi Ship, having decimated the Heartless vessel, was embedded face first in the rocks of a picturesque lagoon.
Donald and Goofy extracted themselves from the smoking airbags that swallowed their shaken bodies, and looked up to the kids, hanging from their seatbelts in the air.

“Okay, just undo yer seatbelts, carefully, and we’ll catch ya,” Goofy called out.

She knew it was bad to think, but Lira was almost grateful when the ship finally crashed - between the music growing louder, the attack from the pirate ship (!) and the bickering, Lira was in desperate need of some peace and quiet. And while dangling from her seat belt after a crash wasn't the calm she had wanted, she was really happy to take it.

Especially when she realized how close they were to the water.

She undid her seat belt, landing on the ground without any help from Goofy and Donald. It was only when she was wading in the water that she realized her clothes had suddenly changed - her sundress had been replaced by a loose, white shirt and plain light brown pants. Her sandals had been replaced, too, with a pair of hardy black boots. Her hair was suddenly in a ponytail as well, but Lira didn't mind that.

She stared for a moment. If this hadn't been one of many strange things that had happened to her for a day, she would have spent more time questioning it. But Baba had looked like a human earlier, and definitely wasn't, so maybe this was just the normal thing for traveling to other worlds-

She caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye.

It was hard to tell from where she was standing, but it looked like there was some kind of fin sticking out of the water. A second later, she saw the head of a girl popping up and watching the ship, the fin peeking out of the water behind her.

Lira's heart skipped a beat.

Was that a mermaid?

They made awkward eye contact before the mermaid ducked back underneath the water - just long enough for Lira to get a little blush in embarrassment. She tried to shake the thought of the mermaid out of her head. She had to focus. She needed to make sure Kate and Baba were okay, even if Kate didn't like her-

There was more movement, this time from the shore.

She walked back out of the water, water dripping off of the bottom of her pants as her boots left wet footprints on the rocks and sand. By the time she reached the source of the movement, sand was clinging to the bottom of her boots.

There was another flash of movement.

A small cat jumped out from behind a little bush. Blue met blue as they stared at each other. And while Lira was still trying to figure out why the cat was there, the cat just plopped itself down on the rock and started scratching behind one ear.

But the cat didn't look right. The fur on its tail and around its neck was rainbow and interspersed with stars, and it had a golden star right on its forehead-

Understanding dawned on her.

She couldn't help it - she gave an excited little noise. The cat-kitstar was unfazed. "You're a dream eater," she whispered. "You have to be a spirit - nightmares have darker patterns."

The kitstar tilted its head.

"Do you have a name?" she asked. She wasn't exactly sure if dream eaters could understand people, but it seemed like this one could - it gestured with a paw at the blue collar hanging around its neck. She crouched down in front of it. "Terra?"

It gave a meow in confirmation, and then took the opportunity to jump right into Lira's arms.

When Lira turned back to the group a moment later, she was on the verge of tears.

"I think I'm in Heaven," she said - both to herself and to the others if they were listening. "A pirate ship, mermaids and a dreamer eater? This is too good to be true!"

Baba was safely caught, and placed on the ground. Baba hugged Donald and Goofy, and ran outside to see where they'd landed.



As soon as Baba touched the sandy ground, there was a poof, and their usual outfit was replaced by a hooded onesie made of badger skin. Baba twirled in circles, and watched the tail swoosh.

When Baba saw Lira and her little starry creature, Baba could not resist sneaking up on her to look at it without frightening the thing.

"It's adorable," whispered Baba.

Kate fought the strap that kept her in her seat for what felt like hours, but was probably only a minute or two, and finally got it to release. What was it about seatbelts and never releasing when she wanted them to?

She muttered her colorful feelings on that matter as she wadded through the impossibly blue waters of wherever-the-fuck-off the dumbass talking farm animals had stranded them.

She was out of the ship and on her way to shore where little-miss-peacemaker was doing something with the talking sack of whatever they stuffed scarecrows with wherever that thing was from when she was suddenly face-down in the water. She spluttered and shot back up to her feet. As she looked down to ring out her sweater, she almost screamed to discover that her outfit had received a few additions. Over her sweater (which was, thankfully, still exactly as it had always been) was a large, black knee-length pirate's coat and on a thick black belt that she did not have before was a wicked-looking cutlass.

She was distracted from this development by the thing she'd tripped on, namely, a fish. A very large fish with...fuck.

Kate had tripped on a fucking mermaid.

The mermaid, a lovely red-head, splashed her fins in the water and darted off, leaving Kate to deal with being slightly more soaked than before.

Muttering a true rainbow of profanity, Kate trudged her way to shore to see what the hell the others were gawking at.

What they were gawking at was, apparently, the most adorable...something, Kate had ever seen. Though, with her increasingly foul mood and the fact that the others absolutely did not get to see her show weakness, all Kate could do was scowl.

"It is," Lira agreed, breathless - she didn't even notice Kate coming over. "But it's not just cute. It's a dream eater. Levi told me all about them. Spirits eat bad dreams, and nightmares make them. Terra's one of the spirits."

"OooOOoh," said Baba. "This isn't like any spirit I know. This one's... soft. Not only physical, but soft. And it eats nightmares? How terrifying. Baba likes it!"

The sound of dripping and grumbling announced the arrival of Kate.

Baba looked over to her. She, and her new nautical adornments, were wet.
A splash was heard- Baba swivelled their head to observe- and the badger hood was in its face. Oops.

Baba rotated the rest of their body, and looked.

A smooth-skinned, red-headed woman swam away, her long shining fishes' tail twitching in agitation.

Baba stared. They had never seen a fish woman like that. They were more familiar with creatures from black lagoons, hard and crusted.

Baba pointed, and called out excitedly.

"There's more of them! On the rocks just over there!"

Immediately Baba jumped into the lagoon, went limp, and resurfaced, floating flatly with unnatural ease.

"Let's go see! You can use Baba as a raft!" said Baba. It was a little unnerving, the way that words came out but nothing moved.

Kate rolled her eyes and turned to walk away, not even gracing that with a response. She was not going to climb on top of some beady-eyed sack of flour to go see a bunch of fish-tailed supermodels. No way. Even if it would work, it was stupid.

She marched off into the woods in search of some sanity.

Lira held Terra a little tighter.

"I don't know if that's a good idea," she hesitantly said, glancing from Kate to Baba. Kate hadn't even spoken before leaving. Lira really didn't want to get in trouble with Kate again, but something told her it wasn't a good idea to get separated on other worlds.

She glanced back at Baba. "We should go catch up with Kate," she suggested. Terra gave a meow in agreement.

Then Lira went following after Kate.

Baba decided Lira knew what she was doing, and floated downstream beside her.

Kate marched right into the woods and didn't look back. Or up. Or around. Or anywhere, really, save down at the ground where she glared like it was responsible for all of life's sins. Life was a sinful, sinful thing, and she glared at the ground for all it was worth.

Those stupid, stupid people and their fucking mermaids and their fae-touched, glitter-infested attitudes like everything was cupcakes and rainbows all the time. She had enough of their pastel fuckery. She was done. Just, done. She could figure out what to do from here on her own.

That was, of course, when she slammed into someone. All she registered was general tallness before she launched into a colorful tirade of words that may or may not have been invented or strung together in such vulgar ways in the whole of human history. The gist of it boiled down to 'fuck off' in many, many more words.

Lira skid to a stop when Kate bumped into someone, and felt her heart race when Kate started swearing at the man who easily towered over her. Lira thought that Kate and her had outfits that resembled pirate's clothes, but this man's outfit looked far more convincing. Maybe it was because he was clearly older and larger than both of them, of maybe it was because he had a peg leg.

His clothes were dark: his coat, his boot, his shirt and his pants. Even his peg leg was made of dark wood. An eye patch covered one eye, and the other was hidden underneath the shadow of his large pirate hat. His skin was tanned, and his long, silver hair had a few braids in it.

Lira stiffened when his gaze swept from Kate to her. She hadn't even been the one swearing at him!

He strode over to her.

And then Terra was suddenly jerked from her arms, now dangling in the air in front of the man's face. She still couldn't see his eyes, but the thin line he had drawn his mouth into made it seem very likely that he was glaring at the spirit.

"Terra," he said, irritation and frustration in his voice, "you little shit."

Terra tilted its head, a completely innocent expression on its face.

"Don't give me that look," he hissed. "You're the one who ran off, and the one who went to Mermaid Cove. Do you know how long I spent sneaking around Hook's ship trying to find you?"

Baba heard the voice of a stranger! Speaking words that promised intrigue, like sneak, and ship.
They couldn't see too well from where they were but he looked a shady character.

Excited, Baba splashed and flopped about in the water, forgetting they were a better floater than a swimmer. They didn't really feel the water, after all.
In the end they gave up, and went limp again, to let the current take them to the bank of the lagoon.

Baba the wet and sandy scarecrow crept up like living furry flotsam upon the darkly nautical man.

"Terra is yours? Are you a dream-eater, too?" Baba blurted, from behind his back. Oh. That was rude.

Baba ran to address his front, bowed their head in apology, and resumed interrogation. "Who's Hook? And what's a 'little shit?"