Thank you for all of you who have reviewed/favorited/followed this story! I didn't expect to get any feedback at all for a least a couple days, and it's only been less than 12 hours! You guys made my day :)

That said, here's the next chapter! Enjoy!


Pan flew lazily about the island, floating on his back as if he were floating on water. He had his pan flute resting on his pouting lips as he watched the stars appear in the sky, searching for the small, dim one he had been visiting every night since he first found that girl. She intrigued him. None of the other children he had ever brought to Neverland awoke when he extracted their dream-selves; in fact, they remained almost catatonic until they set foot on the shore and Pan flew off. So why did that girl wake up?

Biting his lip, Pan did a back flip until he stood straight up in the air, slowly rising until he was hundreds of feet above the highest tree. It had been many days since he had even glimpsed the Shadow, nevertheless spoken to it. The one time he tried to follow it about the island, to try to figure out what exactly it was doing, he followed it straight into a cliff face, leaving a nasty bruise on his forehead. He hadn't made that mistake again.

Finally the star he was looking for was bright enough to see, and he grinned, flying towards it at full speed, leaving the Shadow and Neverland far behind.

He found himself on the same shoreline as always, the soft ocean waves lapping against his ankles. Breathing in the cool night air, he took off for the same wood-shingled house as before, but this time finding the window wide open. He landed on the sill gently, a little suspicious of it, and looked around.

She was lying in her bed again, facing him, buried up to her neck beneath her covers. All lights were off, all books put away. Nothing out of the ordinary. Stepping off the ledge, he floated towards her. He hadn't attempted to extract her dream-self since their first encounter, afraid she would wake up, but this time he was going to attempt. He wanted to speak with her, find out her name, find out why she woke up that one time. He reached in front of her lips, and then frowned. He couldn't see her dream self, and that was odd. His eyes widened. Something was wrong –

Her hand shot up and grabbed his wrist, yanking him down to her as the windows slammed shut and latched. Her eyes opened immediately, a fiery brown the smoldered with shock and anger as the light switched on.


It had been almost a month since she had last seen the shape that leapt out of her window, but she knew it kept returning. At first it was just things overturned, or finding her book or her phone in a different place than she left it. Nothing big, most people wouldn't have noticed it, but the shape made her nervous. What did it want with her?

One night she sprinkled sand across the window sill and cushion. A pain in the ass to clean up? Absolutely, but it was worth it. The shape had come again, she found in the morning, as she discovered a few boyish footprints in the sand where the shape had landed. But how did he get into her room? As far as she could tell, there was no way to climb up, especially without making a racket, and she never found a ladder or anything leaning against the side of her house.

After the 3rd week of visits, Lyra decided to do something about it. She was never able to catch him or get a glimpse of him; if she woke up, he always dove right out the window again. It was almost as if she were a character in one of her favorite books, and that prospect scared her. In books and movies and TV shows, when these things happened, they hardly ever had a happy ending.

She wanted answers. Finally, she decided to lay a trap bigger than mere sand on the window sill. Creeping downstairs, she grabbed a spool of twine and scissors from the garage, cutting two long strands before tying one to each handle of her window and carefully pushing it open, trailing the string back to bed. The twine was long enough that it draped easily over her bench, floor, and mattress, and could hardly be seen in the dark. She put the remote that controlled the lights in her bedroom next to it, turned off all the lights, and climbed into bed. She checked the clock: 2:39 a.m. If he came tonight, he would be here soon.

She lay about restlessly, fighting the urge to toss and turn, carefully keeping her eyes shut. It felt like an eternity before she heard a soft swoosh and the patter of footsteps on the sill. Laying very still, Lyra tried to regulate her breathing, counting backwards from 30 as she felt something hovering over her. The lightest of fingers brushed against her lips as she reached 1 in her head, and her hand shot up to snatch his wrist as her other yanked hard on the twine, forcibly pulling the window shut until she heard the latch snap shut. She quickly pressed the button on her remote the turned on her bedside lamp, and came face-to-face with the shape that had been haunting her room for a month.

A boy…? She thought incredulously, their faces inches apart. Neither moved, scarcely breathing, as they studied one another. He had dirty blond hair – in both senses, she saw dirt smudged across his cheek and in his hair – with moss green eyes and soft, plump lips. He looked to be about 15. Her nose crinkled incredulously, what was he doing in her room?

It was then that she noticed he wasn't standing on her bed, but floating above her. Her eyes widened and she cried out, shoving him away and backing up into her headboard, hitting her skull on a sharp edge. She cried out again, but never took her eyes off the boy who had landed at the other end of her bed. She wielded her remote like a weapon. "Who are you?" She whispered, terrified.

He just stared back at her with the same terrified expression as her own, mouth hanging open slightly. They stared at each other for a long time until Lyra decided he wasn't a threat. If he were, he would have done something by now. She slowly lowered the remote to the bed and shoved it to the edge, holding up her hands to signal she wasn't a threat. She tried again. "Who are you? Why are you in my room?"


Peter landed with a thud on the edge of her bed, hitting his tail bone on the foot board. He grunted, looking back at the girl in front of him, wielding a remote control and poised to throw it. He froze, staring back at those fiery brown eyes. Crap. How the hell am I going to get out of this? He thought, inwardly panicking. When she asked who he was, he inched back almost unperceptively, unsure of how to respond. It wasn't until she lowered her make-shift weapon that he relaxed slightly. She asked his name again, and he glanced about. There was no way to escape.

"My name is M… Peter. Peter Pan." He said carefully, wary of her every movement. When she guffawed, it caught him off guard.

"P-Peter Pan? Like the fairy tale? You've got to be kidding me!" She laughed, but stopped when she noticed his puzzled expression. "You're being serious, aren't you…?"

He sat up, glaring at her. "How could I not be, it's my name!" She was no threat to him, he realized, and that made him bolder. "What's your name?"

She glanced at him warily. "Why should I tell you?"

He pursed his lips, close to a pout but not quite. "I told you my name. It's only fair."

It took her a little while to answer. He could tell she didn't trust him. "Lyra Hall."

Lyra. He liked that name, it had a sing-song quality to it, and he smiled, more of a smirk if anything. He went to ask another question before glancing at the window, his eyes widening as he saw light trickling onto the horizon. Jumping out of bed and running towards the window, he attempted to open it, to no avail.

"What are you doing?" He heard Lyra's voice behind him, heard her shift on the bed. He pushed the window harder, grunting. He had to leave, had to leave now. How much time had he spent here? It couldn't have been more than a few minutes, couldn't have… And yet when he came it was full dark, and now the sun was rising.

Finally he remembered the latch and quickly pulled it loose, throwing the windows open and jumping out into the air. He heard a gasp from behind him, heard Lyra shout "Wait, wait!" as he flew off towards the slowly dimming second star to the right, but did not look back.


Lyra ran towards the window just in time to see Peter fly off towards the horizon, and she rubbed her eyes to make sure she was seeing it right. He was flying? She stayed at the window for a long time after he had vanished from view, unable to really process what she had seen.

"Peter Pan…" She murmured, sitting down on the window sill. She had just met Peter Pan. She laughed at her own stupidity, one leg dangling out the window as her head rested against the window pain. "Peter Pan." She repeated again as her eyes closed from exhaustion, only to fly open once again at the shrill beeping of her school alarm.


Peter landed on the shores of Neverland, gasping for air at the effort it took to get back so quickly. He looked at his reflection in the water and sighed in relief. Nothing looked different, he decided, and sat back on his heels. He stared up at the sky. "Lyra Hall…" He murmured. She interested him.

Suddenly he cried out in pain as his legs and arms burned from the inside, his extremities growing by a few centimeters until the pain subsided. He groaned and leaned back on his hands, then looked at his reflection in the water again. He didn't look very different at all, but that didn't change what he had felt. He had aged, he knew. Biting his lip, Pan stared hard at the sky again, thinking of Lyra, unsure of what to do next.