The Lost
#1 of The Lost and Found
Life on earth isn't kind to all. Colin is one for whom this has been particularly true. But he finds and takes a chance to find the happiness he's been craving elsewhere
Colin couldn't remember the last time that he had a real home. Certainly not one that he had a connection to. A castaway of the foster system, drifting from job to job and apartment to apartment after that. None of the jobs had any sense of permanency, and none of the small, usually one-room apartments had felt like a home.
He never really made any friends, even as a child. Colin had no real connections. Just people that he couldn't help but feel vaguely disliked him. Not that they ever really made a point of it, but they never really... engaged with him the way they did with each other. He was just always the odd man out. Always.
Still, he had his happiness. There was a park not far from where he tended to live, where he loved to go walking in the evening... or depending on his hours at whatever his current job was, at night. He'd spend... probably entirely too much time looking up at the sky, just relaxing on one of the park benches. He was sure that he got odd looks for it, but at least no one had tried to mug him.
On a certain level, Colin figured that even though he was spending a lot of his free time just relaxing in the park, one of the main alternatives would likely have been sitting at home, either watching TV or poking around on the internet. Not that he couldn't have afforded either, he just never had any draw to them. Certainly not the draw that he had to the night sky.
He would sometimes sit there with a notebook, writing away, as though he was writing letters to the moon, telling it about his life and the things that were going on in it. He didn't really think there was a man in the moon, or that the moon was really anything other than a giant rock in the sky, but it amused him to write to it as though there was something there paying attention to him. In many ways, it was the only reliable friend that he'd had for his entire life.
One night, he was journaling away quite contentedly, even if the night air still had that little bite of winter chill to it. He looked up to the moon and blinked, trying to focus his eyes. He could have sworn that he saw a shadow flit across the moon. He thought to himself that it must have been a bat, and returned to his writing.
The shadow flitted across the moon a couple more times, and he was doing his best to just ignore it, but when the source of the shadow landed just a little ways away from him, it suddenly became a lot harder to ignore. Especially as a young man about his age stood there in front of him. The first thing that was strange was the way that the young man had simply... flown down in front of him. The second odd thing was that he didn't have any wings to be flying with. As much as he shouldn't have been flying in the first place.
The third and perhaps most bizarre thing about him is that he wasn't actually human. At first, Colin thought that he was just wearing a costume, but no, it was far too real to be a costume. From his black pointed ears to his black and white banded tail, everything moved like it well and truly was part of him. "Hey there, Colin," he said, his masked eyes gleaming playfully.
It took Colin a long moment to process everything well enough to reply to him. "I... hi... what... who are you?" He was beyond confused, trying to process everything that was going on in front of him.
"I've been called a lot of names... Puck, Robin... but usually, people call me Peter," he said with a little laugh, "And yes, I'm a raccoon."
Colin stared blankly at Peter for a long moment more. "Like... Peter... Pan? I thought... he was younger... and human..."
"No, no, no... not like Peter Pan," he said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head before he stopped and thought a moment, "Well, maybe a little bit like him, but a lot different. Mostly different," he said with a laugh.
Colin was... mostly doing a good job of not being rude in how he stared at Peter. His mouth worked silently as he tried to find a brain that just wasn't coming to him, his arms bringing his journal up to hug to his chest like the last rock of reality to a man fighting not to drown in the rapidly rising tide of madness.
"Bad as it is going to sound, but I've been keeping a bit of an eye on you, Colin. Nothing bad, I promise, but I... kind of can't help but find the people who are... lost in life."
Colin blinked back to his senses at that. "What do you mean... lost?" He wasn't entirely at ease about this, but he was doing his best not to simply freak out and run from Peter.
"Lost... disconnected... abandoned. People who this world has decided don't fit its narrow cookie-cutter idea of how people should be. The lost... the forsaken, the outcasts and misfits," he said, with a knowing, if sad, smile on his face. A smile that said he knew how it felt to be one of those lost all too well.
Colin swallowed slowly, his heart dropping into the pit of his stomach at Peter's words. That hit entirely too close to home, and Colin was starting to breathe a little bit quickly as he very quietly asked, "W...why... do you look for... the lost?"
Peter gave Colin a little lopsided smile at that, one that had warmth in it that Colin hadn't known... really at any point in his memory. "To find them. To bring them to where they won't have to feel like that anymore."
Colin found his vision growing blurry. Was he... crying? It couldn't be. But when he brought his hand up to wipe at his eyes, sure enough, they were filled with tears. He tucked his journal into his bag in order to free his hands and began wiping at his eyes, trying to get the tears out of them. There was a strange sound that it took him a long moment to realize was coming from him. He was sobbing... even laughing a little as he sank back onto the bench.
He was embarrassed. No, beyond embarrassed at the way that he was breaking down in front of Peter. But rather than get upset, Peter came over to Colin and gently rested a hand on his shoulder, smiling down at the young man sobbing on the bench. At first, that only got a renewed round of tears from Colin, but more quickly than he expected, those tears started to die down, his breathing evening out.
He looked up at Peter as he took a few deep breaths and brought his hand to rest on Peter's hand, silently thanking him, even as he couldn't help but hiccup once. "S...so... what... what happens now?"
Peter smiled and held both of his hands out to Colin, helping him to his feet. "You have two choices, really. You can go back to the life where you are one of the lost, or you can leave it all behind and come with me... and be one of the found."
Colin blinked at that, though he was really only at a loss for words for just a moment before he exclaimed, "I want to go with you!" Horrible as it was, the continued isolation here was quickly becoming unbearable, and knowing that he could be free of that... even just on a wild, crazy outside chance... it was beyond worth the risk.
Peter was grinning damn near from ear to ear as he reached into one of his pouches and drew out a handful of powder, which he blew over Colin, causing him to sneeze quite hard. He rubbed at his nose as it twitched away in a way that a human nose really shouldn't. He sneezed again and found himself rubbing at a short muzzle even as long ears flopped down over his face.
He blinked and lifted his ears, looking at their brown, fur-covered length. He then saw the brown fur covering his hands and tossed his ears back to look at them more closely before he started to feel over his face, which was likewise coated with soft fur, his face having properly extended into a short muzzle. He looked down at himself, letting out a small sound as he pushed his shoes off abruptly, his feet busy growing into rather large-toed paws. There was a pressure in his pants right at the back, just below the belt-line. He reached back and felt... a short tail there?
As it all settled out, he looked to Peter with wide eyes. "I'm... a... rabbit?" His voice was filled with awe, as his hands just couldn't help but move up to feel his long ears, which made him laugh.
Peter smiled and chuckled softly, nodding his head. "More like a hare than a rabbit, but still, it looks good on you," he said as he held out his hand, "Now, without further ado... let's go home."
No one ever really found out who the shoes in the park belonged to. There was no one to recognize them as Colin's. Simply put, no one knew him well enough to pick them out as ones that he owned. His manager at the gas station he'd been working at sighed and shrugged off his absences until he simply listed Colin as having quit and posted for a new clerk to take over in his place.
When he failed to pay his rent, he was officially evicted from the apartment, though when they went to clean it out, there really just wasn't that much there. A couple of empty bookshelves, a deserted kitchen, and clothes still in the dresser and closet. The detritus of everyday life. Even toiletries were left abandoned in the bathroom. But there were no personal effects left to be found.
No one on earth ever saw Colin again.
But that was alright.