Author's Note: So. This story is inspired by Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M. Barrie. If Peter Pan was a girl. And that girl's name was Jade. And Jade (Peter Pan's) Wendy was a boy. And that boy's name was Beck Oliver. So this is going to read a little bit like fairy tale. Which is more true to how I really write, I think. And yes, I do have a thing for fairy tales. I suppose it's because I still believe in them :)

Hee. :]

This is a two-chapter story with a possibility of a third, depending on how the second chapter goes. I won't promise a hasty update with this as I would like to finish Little Darling first before I work on this one.

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Oh, the cleverness of you and me...

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Sometimes, Beck Oliver wishes that dreaming as a seventeen-year-old comes just as naturally as dreaming when he was seven. It used to be so easy, you see. All he had to do was close his eyes and imagine a different world where he was king or pirate or knight. All he had to do was believe, to think it in his head and his heart would soon follow.

Nowadays, it's a little more difficult. Which is rather ironic, seeing as how his dreams are now nowhere near king or pirate or knight. He wants to be a writer. Both mind and heart are in agreement with this desire. Words are all he knows (all he wants to know) and his head is always so full of them that he has to write them down all the time lest he forget. He finds himself inspired by the smallest things, too. The sky in light and darkness. The old man across the street (he always did smell like peppermint and despair). The old trellis in the backyard and how dilapidated it is from neglect. He wants people to read his words and say 'Yes, this is what you're meant to do' and not 'Stop wasting your time, son.' Is that too much to ask?

Apparently, yes.

Sometimes, Beck wonders if he should just give up this dream. Perhaps no one wants to know what goes on in his head. Who is Beck Oliver, after all? Just another seventeen-year-old boy. He suffers, quite unfortunately, from being born to the most unimaginative pair of parents one could ever wish for. His parents are accountants and while Beck is very well aware that boring accountants are a horrible stereotype, someone obviously forgot to inform his parents of that.

'Honestly, Beck,' his father would sigh, 'How can I put this in a way that you won't be offended...' and he hates that his dad says that because he unfailingly feels offended anyway but because his dad explicitly asked him not to, the offense is often muddled by feelings of guilt. It's rather unfair.

His father will tell him about how he should think about a more... 'appropriate' profession. Like a doctor. A lawyer. An accountant, perhaps? (And this is said with a good degree of enthusiasm that cracks along his father's normally stoic face.) 'Men aren't meant to live with their heads in the clouds, Beck. Eventually, we all must accept the reality of our lives,' his mother once told him. Beck thinks that his mother must have had some spectacular dream of hers crushed to hear her say something so heartbreaking in such a poetic manner.

His friends aren't much help either. They are good for certain things. Weekend romps, Friday night hangouts, talking about girlsgirlsgirls. But connections are shallow and Beck has never found the opportunity (or desire, really) to open up to his friends about his ambitions. He finds that he is often expected to act a certain way. That Beck Oliver who gets all the girls. Beck Oliver so brooding and mysterious. Beck Oliver who will always give you a ride home. Beck Oliver and his magnificent head of hair.

So Beck keeps his stories to himself, writes them all into his little notebook—his eighth notebook thus far—so he will never forget that they once existed. Then when night comes, he slides his little book of stories beneath his pillow, closes his eyes and tries his best to slip into a world where dreams come true.

Then morning comes and reality sets in.

He is, once again, neither king nor pirate nor knight. He is merely Beck Oliver. Seventeen years old. Aspiring writer.

Except on this evening, instead of sleeping the entire night through (as he usually does), a bit of a draft in the room nudges him from sleep. He thinks twice about opening his eyes as sleep is always such a lovely activity to indulge in and does he really need to close that window that had somehow blown open? But the cold is stubborn and pricks his skin, forcing him awake. When does open his eyes, he finds himself looking into another pair of eyes. But these are a cool sapphire and not the dull brown that he and the rest of his family are in possession of.

Quickly, he presses his back against the familiar wooden headboard of his bed, pulling the blanket up to his chin. He doesn't mind at all the way it bites into his shoulders because sitting on his bed is a girl. There's a girl on his bed.

There is a girl on his bed.

An attractive girl.

And that, really, is a more pressing matter. Not bad exactly, but pressing nonetheless.

She seems to be about his age, possibly younger (Beck's always been a little awful at telling one's age) and dressed in... leaves. In very strategically placed skeleton leaves that—he notes with more than a slight blush—leave almost nothing to the imagination. Thankfully, the waterfall of dark hair helps to protect her modesty somewhat. However, there is still a good amount of pale and pristine flesh that peeks at him. She holds his gaze for a moment before turning back to whatever it is that she is holding in her hands.

But yes. A girl he's never seen before is sitting on his bed.

Once he's able to digest that bit of information, he then notices a tiny sparkle of light flying about the room at a maddening speed.

'Oh don't mind her,' the girl says as if they were already engaged in conversation. Her hand waves gracefully in the air yet her attention is still focused on what her other hand holds. 'Cat's always like that when she gets a bit of sugar in her.'

'That's not a cat,' he attempts to state the obvious.

The girl huffs, still not looking at him. 'It's not a cat,' is her condescending reply. 'It is Cat. My fairy.'

'Your fairy,' he echoes, still sounding quite dumb. Because... fairies aren't real.

'Yes, my fairy.' The girl sighs and finally tears her eyes away from whatever held her attention up to that point. 'I have a fairy and her name is Cat,' she explains and her tone is quite bored as if she's had to explain the existence of her fairy (whose name is Cat) a number of times before.

At this point, the tiny sparkle—erm, fairy— realizes that she is now the topic of conversation and rushes over to perch on the girl's shoulder. 'See.' The girl gestures to her tiny friend. 'Cat the Fairy. Now hold out your hand like a proper gentleman and introduce yourself to Cat.'

He wonders if he should point out that they've yet to introduce themselves to each other but Beck, ever the obedient boy, holds out his hand as he's told. 'Okay... But you must know that fairies aren't re—'

Obviously what he was about to say was very wrong because he finds his mouth muffled by a pair of feminine hands, the force of which sends the back of his head slamming into the headboard behind him.

'Was that necessary?' he asks, when he is able to pry her fingers off his face. Beck rubs the back of his hand gingerly, wincing when his fingertips come across the beginnings of a bump. For someone who looks so delicate, she has the finesse of an elephant. Cat the fairy is nowhere in sight and it makes him feel rather guilty having been instrumental in her sudden disappearance.

The girl looks almost defensive as she glares down at him, standing on the side of his bed. 'Well. You shouldn't say such stupid things.'

'But you didn't give me a chance to say anything,' he points out.

'But you were about to!' she snaps before dropping to her knees and... looking underneath his bed? Honestly, Beck has never met such an odd girl before. 'And you were thinking it. And that's equally as bad.'

'Yes, I apologize. But, erm, are you looking for something?' He can't help but ask. Especially since she has her bottom sticking up in the air and half her body stuck under his bed. This view is far more strange than having a girl on his bed.

There's a small shout of triumph and the girl wiggles her way from beneath the bed to sit on the floor. Immediately recognizes the object in the girl's hand to be his notebook. She turns the pages quickly, her eyes darting left and right as she skims page after page.

'Here we are!' The girl shifts a little until her back is against the side of the mattress, shifts a bit more until she's comfortable and then continues reading.

His notebook.

Beck's unsure of how to go about this. First, he feels rather uneasy at the prospect of this girl (who seems all too familiar with his belongings) reading stories he's never shown anyone. Second, the girl appears to have done this before—seeing as how she near the middle of the notebook and not the beginning where stories usually start. And third... well. There's a girl in his room.

'That's mine.'

The girl waves him off once again with that hand of hers. 'I am aware. I'm merely borrowing your book of stories.'

Beck runs a hand through his hair. Obviously there's some sort of mistake here. 'That's not a book,' he attempts to explain, 'That's a notebook. It's my notebook and I wrote those stories.'

That seems to catch her attention. 'Your stories? You wrote these?'

'Yes, that's why it says Property of Beck Oliver inside. I'm Beck Oliver. I wrote those stories.' He feels a certain pride as he says this, stating ownership over his words.

The girl tilts her head to the side and considers him for a moment. 'Hmm... I thought that was the title.' She stands up suddenly only to sit back down on the bed this time. 'So you wrote these stories?'

'Yes, I wrote those stories,' he replies while trying not to sound as exasperated as he feels. How many times must he repeat himself? And honestly, now that someone has read his stories, he's a little anxious to know what she thinks of them. 'So how did you fi—'

'Where do they come from?' she cuts him off and there's something in her eyes—excitement, perhaps?—that catches him a little off-guard. She inches toward him and he notes a subtle floral scent as she moves closer.

He shakes his head. 'Where do what come from?'

'Stories!' She throws her hands up in the air, clearly exasperated at his slow comprehension of her confusing blabber. 'Where do these stories come from?'

Well. That is certainly a question. Where do his stories come from? He's never thought of it really. He gets inspired by the smallest things but he never fully understood how inspiration transforms into words. Of course, it does strike him a bit odd that they're talking about where stories come from when he hasn't the faintest clue where she comes from. That and—

'Hang on. Aren't you going to tell me your name?'

'Jade.'

'Jade...' It's rather fitting, he thinks. There is a hard quality to this girl yet tempered with something exquisite and inspiring.

'Yes. Jade. Now will you please tell me—'

'Jade what?'

'What?'

Beck shakes his head. 'That's it? That's your name? Just Jade?'

'Well, I'm sorry if my name somehow offends you.' Her tone is biting for such a lovely girl and it is accompanied by a very dark scowl. 'It's not like Beck Oliver is any better, you know.'

Beck's never had anyone insult his name before someone try to do so is quite perplexing. Although, there was that time in elementary school when his friends would tell him that if he had a twin, his parents should name him Call (Beck and Call, geddit?) but the joke had been so horrible that it wasn't repeated more than a few times.

'It's not that, I was just wondering if you had another name. A last name? A surname? A family name?' he tries to explain himself, desperate to get back into her good graces.

Scowl is replaced by a puzzled look. 'Does everyone have one?'

'Around here, people generally do... What about where you're from?' he asks, hoping to glean at least a little bit of information about the girl.

'I'm not sure.' Jade pauses and her forehead wrinkles in thought. 'I don't even know if the mermaids have names. Mostly when I see them, I yell 'Oy, mermaids! Get out of the way!' Because they're always together, you know. So it's easier to just refer to them as a group. The Piccaninny tribe, on the other hand, well... I don't know all their names. We don't get on that well, you know. Princess Tori—' and it's a little interesting how Jade says princess with unhidden animosity, but Beck figures he can ask about that later, along with the mermaids '—is very irritating. She wants to be friends and has, on more than one occasion, attempted to follow me around. At least I can fly away from her but imagine if I couldn't? Now, the lost bo—'

Beck holds both his hands up (it's really that kind of situation). 'You can fly?'

'Do you do this often?'

'What?'

Jade gestures at him, clearly annoyed. 'Be rude and interrupt people. First, you interrupt me while I'm reading. Then you do it again while I was asking you about where stories come from and now that I'm telling you about Neverland—'

'What's Neverland?' he asks before he can stop himself.

'There you go again!' Indignantly, Jade shows him exactly how she can fly because she does so to get to the window clear across the room, leaving a trail of golden sparkles that melt almost immediately into the air. 'Honestly!' she huffs. 'You should learn how to treat guests better! Come along, Cat!' The fairy pops out of his sock drawer and perches once again on Jade's shoulder. 'We're leaving!'

Beck watches helplessly as both flying girl and fairy jump off his window sill and soar across the night sky. A heartbreaking sort of loss settles over him as he walks towards the window from where he can barely make out two shining dots in the atmosphere. He follows them with his eyes until they blink out of sight and he is left to wonder if all of that actually even happened. But he can't have imagined it all.

He wonders if he will ever see Jade again and, in a moment of whimsy, he resolves to leave his window open, hoping that that will serve as a clear sign of invitation.

In the following days, Beck fills up notebook number eight and half of notebook nine. He writes about a girl. A girl with such an innocent face but calculating eyes. A girl who dreams about flying and living in the clouds. A girl filled with questions that no one can answer.

He writes all his stories about her, hoping that she'll come back.

Two weeks after that fateful night, she does.

...