She stood there like an ivory statue frozen in the relentless rain. The little drops should have felt like icy pinpricks buffeting her skin, but the young girl didn't seem to notice them. The rapacious wind whipped around her, tearing at her little lacy nightgown and tugging at her honey hair. Her eyes stung; she should've been very much obliged if someone could have just shut her eyelids for her because it was quite impossible that she move at all.
The sights and sounds that enveloped her were quite foreign, having never seen a battle before let alone one that took place on a pirate ship. The clanging of swords, the shouts of the men to regroup, reload, or retreat sounded like some sort of brutish foreign language. And all that the sopping little girl could do was stand there and watch the little Lost Boys be slaughtered, captured, or thrown to the briny depths where the sharks awaited their cherubic little corpses.
It must be something entirely masculine, this war, because all of it's quite beyond me. John and Peter seem to understand it, as do all the other children so I suppose it isn't my age. I-
And then she saw him. His cropped golden locks clinging to his forehead, the impish features crumbling in despair, the sanguine little mouth curled in to a delicate little pout. Through the miasma of sound and smell, the girl could see the reason for Peter's desperate visage: a curved, glimmering hook was pressed against the delicate arch of his neck. She followed the blade up to a long, silken clad arm, a curving shoulder, a graceful neck, and the most perfect physiognomy she had ever seen. Thin cruel lips rested beneath a black curled mustache, an aquiline nose was framed between sculpted cheekbones, and eyes as blue as forget-me-nots shone in the darkness, slowly turning to a crimson, bloody ruby red. But the jeune fille knew better: those eyes were bluer than any flower, bluer than any sea or sky that had ever existed. Topaz, sapphire, and cerulean were made insipid by those entrancing, erotic spheres of Neptune.
Surely such a lovely man couldn't kill. This is, after all, only pretend.
However, the naïveté of the young ingénue was soon to be shattered because the innocence of youth was never intended to last. She had a choice. The clever girl knew what Peter needed, a thimble, a kiss, somethingto return his boyish vivaciousness to him. What she didn't realize was that this decision was more than just a strategic move in a mock battle; it was a turning point in her life. Peter was her childhood, her simplicity, her puerile state of existence, while the Captain was her future, a life with lust and forbidden wondrous things that she had only experienced in violent and sporadic visions.
She wasn't quick enough and that little girl, who was no longer little, was the downfall of the invincible Peter Pan. Her reluctance, her hesitation gave James Hook the opportunity to slice the boy's throat with a flourishing swipe. A light spray of blood hit the immediate surroundings, marking the young woman's chemise with a delicate pattern of scarlet. She blinked and stared at the tiny body of the child. The brown eyes were dull and glassy, finally having lost that glimmer of joie de vivre.
She was numb. No tears came, no sadness. Only some unnamable longing to iss those parted petals of cherry one last time. The fighting had stopped, the rain had stopped, and time had stopped. Then again there was no time in Neverland.
Boots thumped against the deck of the finest ship to ever sail the cyan waters of Mermaid Lagoon and Skull Island. A hand rested against her shoulder, thin fingers digging into the impressionable flesh.
"Wendy," the man crooned softly. "Won't you come with me?"
She glanced back at Peter one last time, marking his triumphant smile, hopeful that even in death he would be able to defeat the nefarious Hook.
I suppose that's the price of growing up.
Wendy looked up at the sinister looking man, the murderer of perhaps the greatest companion she ever had, and took the Captain's awaiting arm. She stepped forward into adulthood, into a foreign and fantastic unknown leaving the nursery tales and jejune romps of her past behind. Perhaps this foppishly dressed seraphim incarnate would be able to do what Peter could not: steal the kiss in the corner of Wendy Darlings' mouth.
I should like that very much. Stealing kisses must be an awfully big adventure.
Wendy didn't know it at the time, but that kiss would never be returned.
And so ends the Tale of Peter Pan