Calliope took a deep breath. Her smile widened even as she closed her eyes, relishing the scent of petrichor as rain hit the earth for the first time in months. She raised her arms, both bare thanks to the loose tan, sleeveless tunic that billowed around her torso in the breeze. As water soaked her hair, her skin, her clothes, she just smiled.

She felt the rain wash away the grime from her latest adventure. It brought new life, liquid inspiration from the skies. What a gift, to stand in the rain without another person for miles. Just her and the cracked earth. As raindrops saturated the dusty ground, it began to creep into her bare sandals. Grittiness turned smooth as it molded into the cracks of the pads of her feet.

All this, rain to give life, because she sang it into existence. Calliope never failed to be grateful for her magic, creation from lyrical word. She could help, like now, bringing life-giving waters to the parched land.

She opened her eyes. The darkened sky split from her father's lightning. Moments later, the thunderclap that shook the very bones of the earth. Such beauty in nature's chaos. Calliope wanted to stand in that open, muddying field forever. Except she didn't, not really.

She had infinite Realms to visit. She'd told her sister Urania that the stars were the limit, and even then, she would fight to find her way into the dark behind the stars. Melpomene had just smiled at her, eyes still wet from crying over her decision to leave their home. She'd begged Calliope to stay. They had everything they could ever want in Neverland, the home they'd created out of nothing but thought and imagination.

But Calliope had wanted more. She wanted to see the vast oceans, the raging volcanoes, the towering mountains each unique as the wing print of a fairy. That, she couldn't find in Neverland.

Standing there, the rain cooling off the air and her body, she did feel the pang of loneliness though. She'd met hundreds of beings in her travels over the centuries. Some with hearts as dark as the void, others with nothing but kindness in their souls, and everywhere in between. But she'd never found a true friend. They'd been afraid of her, or in awe of her, or after they realized some of her magic had disappeared into the creation of Neverland, hopeful they could subdue her.

She missed her sisters. Clio, Euterpe, and Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, lovely Erato and blessed Polyhymnia, and of course Urania, the sister who understood most her desire to explore the unexplored. She missed them terribly.

Calliope lowered her arms to her side, allowing them to rest as she blinked away the rain from her eyes. She closed her eyes again. Clearing her mind, she bent all her thoughts on Neverland. She wrinkled her nose, straining to reach it. With a whispered word, she tried to reach Urania.

Nothing.

Just blankness, a nothingness that Calliope had never experienced before. A cold shiver crept up her spine. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter and tried for Melpomene.

Still nothing. Not even a stray tear or a distant sob. She felt only a void, a coldness like Neverland was a room untouched by the sun for millennia.

Fear gripped her heart. Why were her sisters silent? They were never silent. They spent their days in the sun on the shore, teaching mermaids, nights on the highest peaks, drinking from wellsprings of life-giving waters. Euterpe would serenade them with her pan flute as Terpischore danced.

Why were they silent?

She bent all her thought on the island. The rain faded from her until it was just Calliope alone, her mind piecing together the outline of her home. Then she heard a scream.

Erato!

Calliope gasped, her eyes opening as she tried to comprehend what she'd seen. Blood and darkness, shadows and death. The Island, tainted. Her sisters, reeling in agony as their souls were ripped from their bodies. She found herself heaving broken breaths in the rain.

Her trembling hand went to her pouch. She took out a magic bean, one of the dozen she still had. Calliope wasted no time. She hurtled it forward. It exploded into a sparking circle of gold. On the other side, home.

The instant her feet hit Neverland's beach, she felt their absence. The land had shifted. In the still darkness, a sliver of a moon overhead, she could feel the cold creep in. Like a breath from the Underworld, it coated the land in fear and silence.

Her feet sank into the sand. Behind her, the lapping of the waves offered some small, rhythmic heartbeat of what she remembered once upon a time. Oceans didn't change. Not like her island had.

"I suspected you'd show, someday."

Calliope turned left. A boy, not out of his adolescence and hair the same brown as her own, stood clothed in greens about twenty feet away. A small smirk spread across his face as he reached into his pouch.

"Who are you," she demanded.

He grinned. "I'm Peter. Peter Pan."

She'd never heard the name, but she sensed the darkness in his heart. And more than that, she knew the pan flute he drew from his pouch.

"What did you do to them," she hissed. Calliope felt tears stinging her eyes as she moved a few feet forward. "You evil little child!"

"I didn't do anything. My shadow, on the other hand." He didn't move a muscle as she drew closer, just watched and waited. "We made this island our home."

Calliope felt a wave of pain wash over her, like the waters to her left. She could feel them, the memories. She could feel the pain. Clio had left that for her, the history. They'd died years ago. She'd never known. She'd left them alone.

She glanced up, forcing away the agony. This was her home, and she wanted it back. "You will leave this place. Now."

"Or what?" He gave a single, short laugh. "Your sisters are dead. The Island responds to me now. It's mine."

"It will never be yours," Calliope said. She sneered, feeling the anger building, rushing like fire through her veins. This boy, this child of darkness, had brought evil to her island.

A dark shadow, black as the void, rose from his body. Calliope's eyes widened. She'd met a Dark One once, and this, this seemed cut from the same cloth. Fear gripped her heart. What if he really did have the Island. She would die screaming like her sisters.

As it flew at her, she raised her arm. She would not die today, not from this child or his shadow. She had built this island. It had her magic in its bones, its veins were filled with her energy to give it life. It was hers, and she would not allow her sisters' memories to be so disgraced as to be wiped from existence. She would not see Hades, not today.

An explosion of golden light threw her back. Her body slammed into the sand, it feeling almost like stone until she shifted, propping her arm up and causing the sand to mold to her shape. Her head spun. But she saw the boy on the sand as well.

The shadow hovered by him as he, too, struggled up from the sand. Calliope hauled herself to her feet. She wanted to destroy him, this boy child. The ground cried out with the blood of her sisters, cried out for revenge. Calliope moved forward, jaw clenched.

She held up her hand. "You will leave this island, or you will die." Heat filled her palm as it glowed golden, her eyes seeing into the depth of his child before her.

He wasn't a child. He was a man. His heart had been darkened, evil filling every nook and cranny. She saw his hate, his bitterness towards his son. She tried to reach further, to his soul, to where she could tear him apart.

But she couldn't. It was just a void. Her magic didn't work.

Calliope glanced up at Peter Pan. He watched her too, the smirk gone from his face. The Island was hers, but he had found a way to control it too. The screams of her dead sisters echoed through her mind again. He had taken their power, their connections.

"Well, well. Guess you won't be avenging your sisters today after all." He smirked again. "I don't know how you plan to live with yourself, knowing the very island you created is no longer yours."

"It is mine." Calliope glanced up at the shadow that still lingered behind his head. "Nothing you or your Darkness can do will change that, Pan."

His smirk grew. "We'll see about that."