Night rolled over London and smothered the sky with a blanket of stars and space. So much space that Wendy had yet to experience. Tonight, like many nights before, Wendy sat in the window seat in her old nursery, legs drawn to her chest and eyes gazing over the river Thames. The peaceful silence calmed Wendy's mind as she replayed the conversation she had with her father earlier on in the day:
"And just what exactly is wrong with Charles?" Mr. Darling snapped. He drummed his fingers on the table and tried to keep his anger in check. Sir Charles Lumley wasn't the first of many fine suitors his daughter had turned up her nose at, although he was the richest. God knows why his was the only daughter in all of London who would chose to marry the jester, not the prince.
It took every ounce of Wendy Darling's self-control not to roll her eyes at her father. "Besides a suspicious lack of hair and enthusiastic appreciation for alcohol?" Wendy crossed her arms and frowned into the fireplace. "I would simply DIE from boredom. I could more easily watch water boil for the rest of my life and still find it more entertaining than Sir Charles."
She heaved a sigh and slid a silky dressing gown over her nightshirt, cinching it in at the waist. Marriage. No thank you: Wendy Darling had other plans.
Admittedly, her only other real plan was to avoid marriage for as long as possible. Already 19 years old, many of the conversations she had with her father played out the same way—the two of them butting heads over her personal life. Each argument hardened her resolve to do something before she was forced to be tied down, although she had yet to figure out what that something was.
Wendy turned her eyes away from the window and scanned the old nursery. She felt a sudden pang of loneliness as her eyes grazed the old beds and ragged stuffed animals. Both John and Michael had left: John to University in Oxford and Michael to boarding school further in London. They visited whenever time permitted and wrote often, but still Wendy missed the understanding companionship they brought into her life. Oh she still had her friends, and the parties her parents dragged her to in order to meet young men were fun, but it wasn't quite the same. A profound longing for the otherness in life was something Wendy felt more heavily as time passed by, and she knew her brothers were the only ones who truly understood that.
Well, Wendy supposed there could be other people who had travelled to Neverland, but she had yet to meet any. Talking of adventures with pirates, mermaids, fairies, and boys who never aged was not exactly polite dinner conversation. There was one time she had tried to explain the experience—it was to a young man a year earlier. He had attentively smiled and nodded at Wendy, encouraging her to go on with her stories. It was later during a dance when his hand slid down to cup Wendy's thigh that she decided her stories were wasted on men who clearly had suspicious motives.
Wendy gave her head a brief shake and mentally scolded herself. "You're far too old and sensible to still be thinking of that," she chastised. Wendy couldn't count the nights she had spent in this same window seat, watching the sky in hopes of seeing the silhouette of a flying boy, or maybe the shape of the Jolly Roger in the horizon. Her heart ached as she glanced one last time out of the window before leaving her seat—she could almost make out the ship's shape in the milky clouds tonight as well.
Wendy had thought she had grown out of daydreaming of a place she would never see again. Striding over to the mirror opposite the window, she made a face at the girl she saw there. The dressing gown emphasized that Wendy had indeed grown up—she had grown from the bean pole shape of her days in Neverland to a slender hourglass figure. The tight curls she suffered as a child had loosened into long waves, curving around a heart shaped face. Wendy desperately searched for the happy girl who had flown with the Lost Boys. Her mouth, she decided, was exactly the same: thin lips of a mother that easily curve in both pleasure and anger.
A sudden gust of wind from the window drew Wendy out of her inspection. Tightening her dressing gown over herself, Wendy crossed the room and started to draw the curtains when she felt the cool kiss of a steel point on her throat.