Lost Kids part 1

All children grow up and the way Wendy knew this was that adults are inconsiderate of children and talk about mortality in front of toddlers. 

Some children avoid growing up by remaining forever children, though, perhaps not, technically speaking, human.

It is a well known fact that a small percentage of children walking down lonely footpaths in wild woods or unkempt fields of shoulder-high wild flowers, that little boys and girls hiding in wardrobes among the tall smooth and buttoned coats that hang like vines in a jungle, that those hiding behind curtains or under beds or in bushes so large they have a space by the root which is almost like an inverted nest, the bare and brittle limbs like a poky cradle, have hid so well that they have hid from the eye of reality, slipped beneath the skin of perception and fallen or perhaps climbed or else woken up in some place very different but in many strange ways quite the same. Search parties find nothing, or rarely anything. Occasionally a missing shoe or a torn pair of pants, none of which are very convincing to anyone but the police who, it should be noted, would very much like to be convinced and then out of the cold and back in the station around an electric heater.

STARS AND TREES
Birds, we learn on the radio, migrate from one place to another, very distant place because of something to do with their skulls and bones and magnets making them sensitive to occult energies.

Children of ages 8 to even as old as 16 are possessed of skeletons whose proportional characteristics render them susceptible to similar effects and fields as our migratory birds.

For example: a child now lost in a strange and difficult land may be able to navigate their way to a safe place by following the stars (second from the right, straight on til morning) or by testing the moss growing on trees for any clever, well-read child knows that moss and other wet, dark green things hide from the sun.

Children lost and wandering in this manner usually find themselves at one of several places: the Fort in the Woods; the Castle in the Caves; the Ship on the Island. On the way there or once they've arrived, they find themselves a bit changed. Perhaps a bit grey or scaly and possessed of eyes larger than normal and teeth which are certainly sharper than they used to be. The change isn't dramatic, just enough that they might appear like-themselves-but-not-themselves should an adult compare their photos to a registry of missing children.

GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE
These lost children have the same stats as goblins, though they have greater variety and many of them are missing a shoe or a pair of pants or are wearing a magical scarf and use kludged weapons and wooden swords to attack (doing damage as normal).

More on variations, each of the places the children live, and on Wendy, Peter and terrible elves in another post (or two).

attributions: Nintendo, Berserk