There was something almost poetic about the emptiness of this place. If he thought about it, Pan might have seen the town somewhere in a dream – somewhere which might have explained its vacant desolation. Perhaps in his dream, there had been bustling life here. There had been shopkeepers and patrons. Girls dancing in the square to a musician’s lute. Boys dipping their braids into inkwells in a classroom while ignoring a teacher’s lecture. But this was not a dream. It was magic, pure and simple, raw and empty. The dreamer in him was pragmatic enough to know that life was a delicate thing, and that it could be erased in an instant, leaving only the bones of an abandoned city in its wake.
He walks alone, down the alleys which might have been frightening to some but to Pan every twisting turn in the road offered more chances at adventure. Shadows hug his sides, humming of magic as they brushed past and left him again in quiet curiosity. And Pan presses onward, finding his way to the abandoned castle and stepping unabashedly across the threshold and into its darkened halls.
Following the rust-hued stone, he passes all wonders of places. To his left, a door swings open, revealing a room filled from top to bottom with water. Curiosity has Pan stepping into it, a bubble surrounding him as he sinks deep into the blue hues but is never touched by its wetness. Where he walks, the carrier bubble simply rolls him along in the tide as he passes all manner of strange plants and fishes. Along the far wall, he sees another door, reaching to open it and falling into a room built entirely from ribbons of mist.
He walks across them, incredulously wondering how he doesn’t simply fall through the cloud-like floor, turning to watch the way light and shadows play across the illusion. When he walks and should move forward, instead his steps take him up, up, up, until at the top of the room, the ceiling simply gives way to another illusion.
Here, he finds a room entirely made of mirrors, each a window into another place or dimension. He gazes through one to find a snowy wonderland, the glass melting at his touch to brush him with a touch of cold. In the next, a desert stretches far as the eye can see, unforgiving and harsh with heat. Another window shows a world built entirely of food – with cotton candy clouds and broccoli trees, a river of cider and tiny houses built from nuts and berries. He turns once more, finding a world not unlike this one, but built entirely upside down – with roads where the skies should be, and endless sky filling the space where the ground would sit.
As he sits and contemplates which world to enter first, the floor parts once more, giving way to a second creature. Pan grins widely at his new companion, a spark of interest meeting his eye as he gives the male a quick study. Some might have questioned where the stranger had come from, but the boy simply shivers excitedly and asks “Well, which way should we go next?”
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