The phrase 'tragically beautiful' isn't used often due to its lack of appropriateness in most situations, but the first case it can actually apply to that springs to mind would be the innocence of a child. The beauty is easily seen in the way those eyes, so wide and unmarred, will sparkle as the curiosity draws them out from under the covers and to the knock on the window halfway across the nursery with a tiny cock of the head and a small anticipating smile before they climb up onto the ledge and throw back the lock. The tragic part comes in the excited giggle as the pixie dust runs their length and floats them from the hardwood, entwining their fingers with the stranger's own and fearlessly flying out to the second star on the right, straight on 'til morning.
Then one day, years later after living an adventure every day with the nicest of kids on the coolest set of land their eyes had ever glanced upon, a yearning for home dips over their subconscious and they ask to return with the sincerest of apologies and thanks. The tragedy drags on though, after a morning of gliding through the chilly night sky only to find that the nursery window was closed and locked. There was no going home, no putting their arms back around the loving parents who had waited, and definitely no more beauty. There was just a lost child and a land that never was supposed to exist to house the wayward until it could no more.
But restlessness drives those with wings from their nests and drives stories all over northern New England about the flying redheaded boy with the star beside him, usually only told by the tragically beautiful children who stayed up until morning in hoping that curiosity would bring them to the knock on their window. The last taken child, noted at least, was a ten year old Wally West with a heart set on staying a kid forever, but that was nearly a decade ago as the parents would remind their waiting children, oblivious to the redheaded boy with the star at his side listening in from outside of the window with a heavy heart.
"One day, Megan," a Garfield Logan reported having heard outside his window after his parents had bid him a bedbug biteless sleep and kissed his forehead, "I'll have someone to tell me that."
His parents reported him having leapt from bed, throwing open the window and hollering, "Sleep tight! Don't let the bed bugs bite!" to a boy they had only just seen the surprised little smile on before he had disappeared, his star chiming after him.
Other parents reported having seen a small redhead on their window sill with a sad expression etched deep into his seemingly new features, his palm pressed to the glass in longing. And then, just like that, he had disappeared, almost as if he had flown off.
"He's... I'm not saying I believe I saw him out there... But I am saying that if I did, his story is... so tragically beautiful. I almost wish he had stayed so I could've let him in and help him find his parents, if they live still," a Clark Kent admitted.
The lost child never did though; stay that is. The longest he had couldn't have been longer than a minute, according to a Barbara Gordon who claimed he had said, "[He] wasn't lost. [He's] just winning a long game of hide-and-seek against people who weren't aware they were supposed to be looking in the first place."
And he kept hiding, years of stories passing on until they distorted and twisted into fun fairytales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, up until May 5th, the day the Wayne Manor lost three out of its five heirs with nothing but an open window and a golden glitter like substance inside the carpet fibers left for evidence.
