When at last my mind drifted back into my body (What fantastic dreams this place evoked in me! Real enough to touch and smell and feel loss over once they were gone) I felt immediately the full brunt of the ache from the journey. It pulled me in every direction like a taffy stretcher, each muscle twitching when I tensed it. I felt shaky from head to toe, could feel my limbs buzzing against the sand with agitation.

But then, just beyond that, there was something rather pleasanter than the way I'd fallen asleep. I tried to identify it, taking inventory of every bit of my body until I came to my torso and began to realize that the feeling was warmth.

I cracked my eyes open with effort, dragging the lids apart. My body felt leaden, hesitant to respond to my thoughts. As I blinked at the open space around me, I couldn't make out a single shape. Cool wind tousled my hair like a stranger's hand, sending a chill down my spine, and I hugged the coat closer to my body.

Ah, I thought, fingers closing around the edges of the cloth. That was the warmth -- a strange new coat covering me from neck to thigh. The fur Odysseus had caught for me had long since grown damp and molten, shed into the ocean unceremoniously on one particularly helpless night. The new jacket felt like a warm cocoon, swaddling me gently as a blanket around a baby. I shivered and pulled my knees to my chest.

My muscles rejoiced in the repose of the beloved solid ground. The scent of salt on the wind brought me a hint that I'd reached my target, the beach around Neverland. Sand on my cheek felt soft and unreal.

Only then did I think to question the coat wrapped around me. I ignored the moans of my aching muscles and pushed onto my elbows. "Odysseus?" I whispered. It sounded like a hiss against the gently lapping waves. "Are you there?"

"Odysseus? You wouldn't want to be mixed up with that lot, trust me, darling."

My body jerked away from the voice, chilled from head to toe. In the swallowing, convulsing darkness, it seemed to come straight from the void, a bodiless entity like God. He spoke with an accent I couldn't decide on, one that gave me a quick buzz of pleasure anyway. I felt pulled and pushed at once, both from inside, wanting to hear more and sprint away with equal fervor.

I tried to force my eyes to focus on something. "Who's there?" I asked. "Who are you?" I clutched the large buttons along the lining of the coat and tucked my knees inside of it, feet complaining of the cold outside.

"Nothing to fear," said the voice, mildly, almost. "I have no intention to hurt you."

Shivering, I closed my eyes again and tried to gauge how far away the stranger was. Four feet, maybe, two yards. So close. "I -- well, I didn't think so," I told him. "Is this your coat?"

"Yes, ma'am."

I felt the fear becoming less sharp, sort of a dull buzz climbing around in my bloodstream. "Sir," I said. "Can you see anything at all? It's so dark here."

I heard him give a brief chuckle, some fabric rustling nearby. All around me was dizzying black. "I can see you," he told me.

"Can you, really?"

"Yes. Pretty thing you are, long hair, maple skin." He sighed, rustled around some more. "But if your eyes are too weak, I suppose I can spare us a match."

Then I heard the quick, familiar striking of a match. Immediately, the tiny light jumped to life and sizzled in the stranger's fingers, farther away than I'd imagined. I'd thought I could feel his body heat when in fact, he sat a little ways down the beach from me like I was a dangerous beast he was stalking. I couldn't see his face with the weak glow of the match, but the light revealed broad shoulders and long legs.

"I can see you now," I told him. I pushed up onto my hands and knees, forgetting the aches in my muscles in the midst of my fearful excitement. I felt the wind rifling down through the neck of my silken nightgown, a straight shot across my stomach and out through my thighs. Pulling the coat shut around my shoulders, I scooted toward him with the hesitance of a child going to pet a new dog. "But not your face."

He grunted, maybe, or was it the wind? The match sizzled and twitched between his fingers. He guided it down to the sand, shielding the flame with his other hand, and lit the wick of the candle in the glass-paned lamp beside him. The glow of the tiny match grew stronger, a shrivelling plant repotted in the sunlight. He held it out to me.

If that wasn't an invitation, I didn't know what was. I crawled toward the mysterious stranger with stilited movements, trying not to stretch my sore joints. My legs and arms shook like piano strings and my vision blurred as I neared him. The idea of crawling into his lap and falling back asleep seemed quite appealing, no matter who he was.

He was so close. The glow of the lamp showed me a firm jaw and the curve of a sweetly protruding chin under a soft pink lip. The lovely stranger held out the lamp, holding onto it under my fingers were wrapped all the way around the handle. I watched his finely sculpted fingers unravel from the lamp, tiny muscles unspooling above his wrist.

I sat down near him with my legs pulled to my chest. He turned his head away. It occurred to me that he was embarrassed by the way my nightgown slipped down to my waist as my legs formed a steep uphill slope, gathering to reveal black panties beneath. I flushed and laid my legs flat. "Turn this way," I said. "Want to see you."

"Why?" he asked. "I am no great sight."

I held up the lamp, illuminating a sharp cheekbone, the start of a short beard. "You're quite frightening, actually, keeping yourself in the dark like that." I blinked at my own precociousness. This is the point in normal conversation where a woman is meant to back away before things go south. But the winds breathing across Neverland inflated me with some sort of loud new confidence. "Let me see you."

So he turned his face toward me and as promised, gave to me a sight neither stimulating nor greatly uninteresting. His eyes, tapered lids folded one on the other, blinked at me with apathy from their amber depths. Thick brown brows and sharp cheekbones, small square forehead and delicate lips. His skin, bronzed, shinier, more luminescent than my dead chai hue, sparkled in the light of the lantern like he was a trophy man presented to me for completing my quest to Neverland. But somehow, I felt as though he was only the beginning.