NeverWonderLand – a world where creatures roam above us, in cloud islands filled with contraptions, and stark stories to be told. NeverWonderLand consists of key loactions, with characters – each with a story to tell.
These Tales were collected in an effort to restore NeverWonderLand. The StoryTeller travelled to collect them, through time, matter, energy, and space.
This context is a set course from The Agency.
But more on that at a later date.
The Noise
The Bubble
The Anchor
The Quilt
The Flood
The Key
The Chase
The Collapse
The Agency
Sir Do wanted a world of knowledge. So they turned to Cogs, The City’s finest cyberneticist.
A machine was built—a system to spread education and information. To guide The City. To prevent ignorance.
But after the misconstrued instruction leading to group think and FreeFall being jettisoned into the sky, Sir’s thought it best, only information approved by Sir Do was included.
Cogs designed, to Sir’s specifications. The Eyes that watched. The Bots who spoke. Every fact, every lesson, curated, selected, deemed ‘relevant’ by Sir, was broadcasted on The Channel – directly delivered to The Citizens.
Cogs followed orders. That was the job.
They didn’t plan on FreeFall. An apprentice Cogs had certainly NOT asked for, another of Sir’s initiatives.
FreeFall wouldn’t stop questioning. Wouldn’t stop tinkering. Cogs grumbled and groaned. Especially when FreeFall’s tinkering led to smoke and talking goobers.
When given the blueprints of The Machine though, FreeFall’s questions caught Cogs off guard.
“Do you really believe this is education?” FreeFall muttered one day. “This looks like control.”
Cogs grunted. “The job is follow instructions. That’s what machines do.”
But doubt itched under Cogs’ metal plating. So they built an override component, buried deep inside The Machine.
And The Eyes saw.
Without a word from Sir, The Bots came. Cogs was arrested.
“You really built it too well, huh?” FreeFall said, gripping the bars of the prison cell.
Cogs exhaled, gears whirring in thought. “Design matters. But so does intention. The Machine did what I built it to do. That’s on me.”
FreeFall’s eyes burned. “Then tell me how to fix it.”
Cogs was proud. FreeFall was not just a tinkerer, but a solver who had learned to listen, and grow. “There is an override switch. We just have to get to it.”
An Eye rounded the corner, lens flashing.
FreeFall ran.
They crashed straight into Sir Do.
Sir blinked and looked past FreeFall to the swarm of The Eyes and herd of The Bots, “Why are you running?”
“The Machine arrested its own creator! I need to get to the override switch.”
Sir didn’t hesitate. They swatted away the encroaching Eye, and turned to fight off The Bots.
Drawing their sword, they urged FreeFall, “GO!”
FreeFall reached The Machine.
FreeFall unleashed every tinker they’d ever made—a storm of tiny contraptions, flooding the room with chaos and creativity.
Sir Do and Cogs burst through the doors. Cogs reaching for the override, activating The Switch.
The Machine sputtered and made beep-boop noises.
And suddenly, The Channel broadcasting to The Citizen’s was no longer just Sir’s voice.
It flooded with knowledge. All knowledge. The seemingly good. The seemingly bad. The incomplete. The contradictory.
Because real learning isn’t one voice. It’s all of them.
The Eyes recalibrated. The Bots became friendly.
Sir Do looked at Cogs and FreeFall, aghast at the near disaster, then laid his attention to The City—The Academy, The Bots, The Eyes, all recalibrated, learning anew. He watched as the city absorbed the flood of new ideas. Sir’s voice was no longer the loudest—but, as they reflected, they realised that had never been the true goal.
Cogs and FreeFall sighed in relief.
Cogs grumbled, “you and your bothersome questions, FreeFall.”
FreeFall grinned. His words sounded gruff, but his mechanic eyes shone proudly.
Sir Do was called a hero, a savior of the shadows—but he knew better.
He had once set a city ablaze with his ignorance. He vowed never to make that mistake again. The Academy was his answer—a place where consequence ruled, where knowledge was sharpened to precision, where failure was unacceptable.
Which was a problem for the young student called Fall.
Fall didn’t specialize. Didn’t fit. They explored, experimented, followed every wild spark of inspiration, leaving behind half-finished inventions and impossible ideas. The Academy had a different name for that. “Fail.”
One day, their classmates played a prank.
They locked Fall inside The Canon—a towering machine built to eject failed projects beyond Academy grounds.
When Sir Do arrived, his own invention in hand, the students hid. The lever was pulled.
And Fall was launched into the unknown.
They shot through the sky, through the clouds, and the sea bed of The Sea of Simplicity, their breath stolen from their lungs.
A creature emerged from the depths of an underwater temple, its form shifting like liquid, its eyes old and curious.
As Fall floundered. The creature held out a pearl pointing to their mouth.
Fall took it. Swallowed.
And suddenly, they felt weightless. Free.
It wasn’t a fix. It was an internal light. They were not broken, their unfinished ideas were simply works in progress, a need waiting to lose constraints.
The creature smiled, gesturing to a path through the sea floor.
Fall followed—until they broke through the clouds and saw it.
A field. Lush, golden. Like the Fields of Hopes and Dreams, once burned, now reborn in the sky. Fall thought, if The Dreamweaver could begin again, so too could Fall.
Far below, in The City, a landing balloon waited.
Sir Do and her classmates were watching the skies, anxious for her.
The creature gave a sly grin and nudged Fall. Fall took their meaning and leapt from the cloud to The City below.
They were in freefall, feeling as though they could breathe.
Fall landed gently.
The classmates rushed forward, apologies spilling out. They hadn’t meant harm. They hadn’t thought.
Sir Do looked at them. Looked at Fall. And realized, with a sinking heart, what he had built.
A world where fear of failure had outweighed the value of life.
The system had to change.
“You were in freefall!” someone gasped. “How’d you do it?”
Fall smiled, feeling the pearl’s warmth still in their chest.
Sir Do stepped forward, studying Fall as if seeing them for the first time. Not as a failure. Not as a mistake. But as something else entirely.
“You’re not Fail,” he said, voice steady. “You’re Free, FreeFall.“
The name rippled through the crowd. A hush. A shift.
Fall straightened, the weight of the past slipping away like the wind that had carried them through the skies.
“FreeFall,” they repeated, testing it, feeling it take shape in their chest. It felt right.
The Celestial was not quite the heavens—but close.
Dreamweaver woke on the rocky shore of the Sea of Simplicity, their body weightless, their purpose gone. The fields they had once tended were ashes, and without them, who were they?
A hand reached out.
A figure shimmered—first a web of starlit connections, then a man, dressed in a top hat, suit, and cane, like a magician plucked from a dream.
He called himself Mirror Man.
They walked together along the cliffs, and Dreamweaver spoke—of loss, of emptiness, of a self that had only ever existed in service to others.
Mirror Man listened. And when he spoke, he did not give answers. He gave reflections.
The two of them sat upon The Sands, whispering into the night. Dreamweaver had never been seen so completely, never been understood like this before. Their connection felt destined.
But something was happening.
With every truth Dreamweaver unearthed, every hidden thought made known, Mirror Man’s constellations ebbed beneath his skin—turning, instead, to glass. His body was becoming a mirror.
Mirror Man knew he was on borrowed time and turned to Dreamweaver.
“I see you.” He lay his hand on her cheek, Dreamweaver covered his with her own hand. “It’s about time you were able to see yourself.”
Mirror Man took Dreamweaver’s hand and pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles before looking to the stars reflected upon the still ocean before them.
Leaning into Mirror Man, Dreamweaver drifted to sleep, feeling, for the first time, whole.
When they woke, The Sands were empty.
Only a top hat remained.
Mirror Man was gone. Dreamweaver felt her heart break.
He had given her what they needed—a way to see themselves.
In the vast expanse of the cosmic tapestry, stars danced and shimmered, painting the universe with their brilliant radiance. Each star had its own path, a celestial choreography that wove together the story of the cosmos. Among these luminous performers, one star stood out—a star with a destiny yet to be unveiled.
The star in question was a peculiar one, for it seemed to defy the cosmic order. Instead of following the graceful curves of its celestial dance, it shot upward, as if driven by an urgent purpose. Its trajectory was erratic, as if its world were ablaze with an unquenchable fire. In its reckless ascent, it collided with another star, minding its own celestial business.
The collision left both stars in a state of confusion and disarray. The offending star, flabbergasted by its own rudeness, froze in its tracks, and an awkward pause hung in the cosmic void. Uncertain of how to proceed, they exchanged a momentary gaze.
Then, a glimmer of understanding sparked in the harassed star. It shone a bit brighter, like a friendly wave. Relieved not to have upset their celestial counterpart, the offending star responded with a twirl of light, an acknowledgment of their own.
As if choreographed by fate, the stars began to engage in a cosmic dance. One would lead, and the other would follow, weaving a celestial tapestry with their synchronized movements. Their twirls left trails of sparks in their wake, painting the heavens with fleeting patterns of light. And together, they continued their ascent, destined for a celestial rendezvous.
But fate had a different plan for these two wayward stars. As they danced high above, their trajectory led them beyond the bounds of the cosmic stage and into uncharted territory—The Celestial. In a spectacular twist, they descended from the heavens, their brilliant radiance turning into a blazing comet.
The shadows came when The Legend was forgotten.
They slipped between buildings, soft as whispers, wrapping NeverWonderLand City in quiet gray despair. Most creatures learned to live beside them.
But not Sir Do.
The dodo knight took to the streets, torch in wing, chasing the darkness away with fire and fury. Every night, he burned back the creeping black. Every dawn, they returned.
Until one night, the shadows cornered him.
In his desperation, Sir lit a blaze too great, too wild. The fire roared, leaping from rooftops, swallowing streets whole. The city burned.
He fought to undo what he had done. Evacuated as many as he could. When the fire reached the outer land of the Fields of Hopes and Dreams, The Dreamweaver, who had tended the fields for lifetimes, fell to their knees in grief, with their last hope and dream. Everything was lost.
She was joined by The MindLibrarian whose nearby archives were devastated. The richness NeverWonderLand embedded through word, illustration, art, life, and memory, was engulfed.
At a loss, Sir Do ceased fighting the flames, handing over to the destruction for which they were responsible. His eyes brimmed with tears, they fell to the land.
The puddle upon the ground turned rainbow. Embers gathered and a spark rose. Sir Do stepped back in awe of twirling flames.
A bird emerged. A Rainbow Phoenix.
Phi.
With wings of shifting color, Phi grew into a large fiery-shadowy figure and flew over the ruined city, singing a song of rebirth. The shadows of the land did not flee.
They listened amongst the burning city.
Phi welcomed them, granting them their power of rebirth. The shadows approached the city fire, not with fear—but as part of it. The shadow tamed the fire, becoming embedded in the structures they saved. The City was rebuilt before The Citizens eyes. As Phi was reduced to ashes and sprinkled upon The City.
And so, The City was saved.
Not by fear. Not by fire.
But by learning to let the darkness belong.
A father and his daughter, laying in the grass, cloud watching, the sky their canvas.
Every Sunday, her father would point and ask, “What do you see? A dragon? A ship? A castle in the sky?”
She’d start with something simple. “A bunny.”
The pair didn’t know the clouds were listening. With every imagination, the clouds were gaining life. The bunny would stretch, fur turning silver, eyes glowing with mischief. It would bound off toward candy-colored hills, where rivers ran thick with ink, waiting for stories to be written.
The world—NeverWonderLand—began to finish the thoughts of the father and daughter, and whisked them away into the sky.
The father became known as The Ideas King, built wonders beside his daughter. Floating libraries. Staircases that led to nowhere—until you decided where they should go. Here, ideas weren’t just thoughts. They were real.
Every Sunday, they would return to the lands of their creation. Laughing, imagining, dreaming into existence.
Then, one day, the King stopped coming.
Reality called him back. Permanently.
The daughter, known to the NeverWonderLand locals as The Idea’s Princess, tried to return on her own, but her ideas wouldn’t finish themselves anymore. The castles crumbled. The ink rivers dried. The bunny waited for her—but she didn’t know what to tell it anymore.
The pain of returning to memories, once bright, now darkened.
So she forgot.
She grew up, became a teacher. Told children to focus, to color inside the lines.
And somewhere, in a half-crumbling world, a silver bunny sat beside an empty throne.
Waiting.
At least, that’s how The Legend goes.