"And they lived happily ever after." The young mother said as she closed one of her daughter's favorite fairy tales. Her daughter, who was tucked into her tiny bed, looked at her with eyelids heavy with sleep and eyes wide open. Suddenly, as if drawn out of her fantasy world, the girl looked at her mother.
"Mommy, I have something to tell you." The little girl said as she sat up further in her bed.
"Yes sweetie?" her mother asked.
"I just want to let you know that if you come into my room one morning and I'm not there, don't worry." The girl said as she looked down and fiddled with her blankets.
"Why should I not be worried?" the mother asked although, she already knew the answer.
"Because, I went to Neverland with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell! I'll fight pirates, swim with the mermaids, and fly!" With this said, the little girl grabbed her wooden sword; which she had gotten at a Renaissance Faire; and began to jump up and down, slashing at the air.
The mother chuckled at her daughter's antics. She could remember a time when she was like her young one. "Now, now dear. Come, it's late and you do have school tomorrow."
The little girl dropped her sword on her bed and crawled reluctantly back into the covers. "Oh mommy! We forgot to say prayers!" The little girl cried as her mother began to stand up.
"Why yes we did. Come, let's say them." Her mother said as she tried to kneel down.
"Dear God, please make my mommy better, please help daddy do his job correctly, and most of all…please let me go to Neverland!" The mother smiled as her daughter said 'Amen'. Her daughter all ways asked for the same thing each night.
"Good night dear." Her mother said as she bent down and kissed her daughter good night.
"Night mommy." The little girl said as she kissed her mother's bald head. As her mother was heading out the door, the girl asked her a question. "Mommy, will you always be here, even when I'm older?"
The mother smiled, "Yes dear. Of course I will." With that said, she shut the door and the little girl drifted off to sleep.
******************************11 years later**************************
Alexia woke up in a cold sweat. She sat up and realized that she had been having the same dream again. She picked up her stuffed animal that she always slept with and gave it a squeeze. It had been 11 years since her mother had passed away from cancer and Alexia missed her every day. She would soon be celebrating her 17th birthday and her mother would not be there to experience it.
'In fact,' Alexia thought, 'she hasn't experienced a lot of things. Like my sweet 16 or me getting my license.' She heaved a sigh and looked at the bed beside her, where her father was snoring contentedly. Her and her father had to move around quite a lot and that meant at the tender age of 5, Alexia had to grow up. Something she really did not want to do at such a young age. Since her father could not bear to live in the house where his wife had died, they kept moving around and every month they were at a different place. They stayed in hotels, since they moved so often, and Alexia was home schooled, thanks to the Internet. She never made any real friends and her father realized this when Alexia was 9. So for her tenth birthday, she received a pet bird, a Hanns Macaw to be exact. Belle was Alexia's only REAL friend since Alexia hardly ever went into the town where they were staying. She bought all her clothes off the Internet so as not to bother her dad at his work.
'His work,' Alexia thought, 'is always keeping him on the go and never with me. But we need the money and so he must work.' She thought about her father's work. He was a gourmet chief and so his work demanded a lot out of him. He would leave around 8 and then come home around 7 pm or so. She was glad that he enjoyed his work because it did take his mind off her dead mother. But she really just wanted to spend time with him. He hardly noticed she was there, unless it was to tell her bird to be quiet.
Alexia leaned against the baseboard of her bed and closed her eyes. She began to think about what her mother was like. She remembered what her dad would tell her. Tess, Alexia's mother, was tall and beautiful. She had ebony hair that went down to her shoulders and pale ivory skin. She was, in fact, a model in real life until Alexia was born. Being five feet and eight inches tall, she seemed like a giant to Alexia. Her light blue eyes always sparkled with love and adoration for her husband, Xander, and Alexia. Alexia remembered how her dad would say that she inherited her mother's looks. At five feet and six inches tall, Alexia had gotten her mother's hair, pale ivory skin, and of course Tess's light blue eyes. Alexia felt her eyes start to moisten and switched her mind to what had gone on earlier that day.
Although Alexia was forced to grow up, she still remained a kid inside. She never really wanted to grow up and so forced her self to grow up on the outside, yet retain a child like view of the world. So when school on the Internet had ended that day around 1:00 pm, Alexia decided that she would play…make-believe. So she dug around in the many boxes that inhabited the medium sized room until she discovered what she was looking for. She pulled out her wooden sword and looked at Belle, who looked back at her with one eye. She grinned mischievously and took Belle out of her cage. With Belle on her shoulder, she jumped on the bed and began to bounce up and down on it. While slashing and parrying with the air, she would call out, at times, things like "Take that you old codfish!" Belle, who was on her shoulder, took off flying and acted like she was attacking an invisible pirate. Belle would also chime in with things such as, "Arr!! Shiver me timbers!" Then the bird fell from the sky and rolled over. Alexia stopped bouncing and looked at Belle who was playing dead. Then she turned back to the invisible Hook and said, "You killed me first mate!"
Then Belle, who was supposed to be dead, began to imitate a clock ticking. Alexia let out a childish giggle and saw that "Hook" was scared. So she took one last stab at him and watched him 'fall' into the water with the crocodile, meanwhile Belle imitated a scream then a loud SNAP!
Alexia looked back at her pet bird and grinned childishly. "Arrr! The Jolly Roger be ours!"
Alexia grinned and felt her eyes grow heavy. She took a look at the clock which read 2:58 am. She got back under the covers and closed her eyes.
She heaved a sigh of content and murmured, "I wish I could go to Neverland."
Not knowing that the next day, her dream would come true.