Fairy tale: Pan's Sphere (or The Lost Forest)

In the time before heaven and hell, when human beings were mere play things to the whims of gods and demons, there was a forest where children could play in peace. It was referred to as the Lost Forest. In that place they were never hungry, never thirsty, never injured or sick and they could laugh to their hearts contents. They were protected by three spirits: Eagle, Wolf, and Lion.

Eagle flew high overhead, looking for the adventurous and those that stood up for themselves. Wolf sniffed out the abandoned and the lost. And Lion felt out for the sick and the weak. They would bring the children back to the forest and watch after them. For the most part the children soon became older in their hearts and would return back to their homes.

The Goddess of fertility, Doracus, was not pleased to have the innocence of the children taken to a place out of her reach. She plotted a way to destroy the forest. And in her travels she came across a blind boy named Pan. Doracus caused him to be very ill, then went into his room one night before Lion could find him.

“You are about to go to a place where you will get well,” Doracus told the boy. By now the story of the forest was well known and the boy thought perhaps one of the spirits had come. He could not recognize the goddess. “Take this necklace with you. When you arrive, open the sphere. It will give you the power to never grow up.”

Pan was eager to receive such a present as he didn’t have much to return to in the outside world. The power to remain a child forever in the forest was appealing. He was over joyed when Lion finally arrived to take him to the forest. In the excitement he had completely forgotten about the sphere.

On the fifth day Pan spoke: “I wish I could live like this forever!”

Uttering those words he recalled the necklace Doracus had given him. So he took the little round pendant and twisted it to open it.

It did not, of course, contain a way for Pan to live forever. Instead it held the horrors of the world that the spirits kept from coming here. Hunger, disease, war, pestilence, fear… the list of terrible things now set loose upon the forest went on. Children ran aimlessly, some turning vicious and killing another other. Some fell over from some foul disease.

And all the while, Doracus waited for the last defense of the forest to break so she could bring her power back to sway over the children that were her birth right.

Realizing the trick, Pan made a desperate move and broke off the sphere, choosing to swallow it. With that act, the devastation of the sacred place came to an end. Pan could now see but with that came the price of knowing quite intimately the darkness mankind was capable of. Still, Doracus had been thwarted for now. The forest was safe.

Pan never left the forest, finding that he did never age. But in his heart he’d grown up a long time ago and did not stay to enjoy his innocence like other children did. He stayed to protect it so nobody could use him like Doracus had ever again.

He chose to remain Lost.