Neverland
Disclaimer: I do not own Neverland or the wonderful J.M Barrie, that is all owned by Mirimax
A/NL Sorry I haven't updated in a while me mateys, I was sick, and then there's school, but I thank you for being patient and for all the inspiring reviews.
Dedications: This chapter is to the following people: Marissa and her mom for being my first readers. And Dawnie-7 for being my first reviewer.
And these also go out to my starting reviewers. You rock me hearties:
Dawnie-7: Thank you for being my first reviewer. And I was really flattered by your compliments. Enjoy this new chapter. Tell me what you think.
Krystie Jamison: Oh you are seriously are missing out. Go see the movie. Shame on you. Just kidding. Thank you for the review and thanks for the compliment
Nessie6: Sorry if this wasn't fast enough but I tried to update faster but you know, all the complicated things in life. (sigh) oh well. Enjoy this new chapter.
LazerWulf: I'm glad I left you almost speechless. But thank you for the profound review. lol. Enjoy the new one.
Katesparrow: Thank you very much. I love it when reviewers enjoy my stories. I'll try to update faster, but I can't make promises. And thank you for realizing that. I wasn't sure if I was completely true in his style of writing, but that was what I was going for, and it makes me feel better when someone confirms what I was going for. Enjoy the new chap.
Gee Nay Pig: I glad your welcome and thank you again for dedicating one of your chapters to me. This chapter is also dedicated to you for my dedication. I hope you love this one as well. And please update soon.
chef13: Thank you. I hope you love this chapter as well.
Shanelover1: I'm glad you look forward to more, I just hope I can meet with your expectations.
Ch.2
Meet the Barries
"Can anything harm us in the night, Daddy?" Michael Barrie asked, after reluctantly settling underneath his warm red-checkered bed covers.
He hated going to sleep, as do all children do. But what most children don't realize is that after they finally close their drowsy lids, pass the time in their dreamland, and once they are removed from that wonderful place, they fight just as hard to stay asleep, as they had to stay awake. Alas, such is another complex reasoning of a child.
"No Michael, darling. That is what mothers and fathers are for. They protect their wee little ones as they sleep." Responded the soothing Scottish voice of James Matthew Barrie as he stroked the near to dozing boy beneath him's hair.
The contrast between the two was instantly recognizable. James dusky black hair, which was usually combed straight back and detained with hair oil, was cascading over his chocolate affectionate eyes-due to his zealous chasing of his unremitting boys around the house- and stridently defined face and rich, playful Scottish voice, differed conspicuously from Michael always chaotic, bowl shaped, dirty blond hair and naïve sea blue eyes and still childishly chubby face. But despite their contrasts, you saw underneath, pushing strongly to the surface, a love that was flagrant, and the relationship didn't just consist between them two. It could be found, as well, from the three other occupants, now sleeping peacefully in their beds. George, Jack, and Peter. All loving and all safe.
"Daddy… does that mean that…mommy, watches us?"
James paused for a moment, not to ponder a thoughtful answer, but to stare fondly at his anxiously, rapidly blinking son's aquatic eyes. In it's depths, he saw a sandy beach, with crystal blue water that reflected the majestic golden royal crimson red of the setting sun, that made the gliding figure, that had suddenly appeared as from the essence of the air, seem like a goddess. A goddess that seemed to have floated straight from her heaven in the sky, or as the Greek mythologists seem to predict as Olympus.
Her long strawberry blond curls cascaded teasingly around her bare shoulders. Her white gown was made of the finest white silk, as if spun, in fact, by the rare silk worms that are found to take residence in China. It draped seductively around her shoulders, revealing a fine neck accentuated with defined collarbones. It flowed behind her in the wind angelically as she moved, although, no wind made its presence, if that made any sense; the palm trees remained lifeless.
As she sauntered closer, her hips swaying to some indistinct rhythm, her face became plain as the nose on your face. Her eyes were of no difference. They were the same enticing crystal blue adorned with light gold flecks that brightened up when the light hit it, or when she laughed that adorable laugh of hers, that he so easily earned from her every time he joked around with her. Her lips remained the same full curving shape that inspired others to smile as well. Those lips that taunted and teased him and made him strive hard for a kiss that, although apparent, was one that he could never have. And oh, when she gave him a perfect white pearled smile, full of joie de vivre and enchantment, he remembered that feeling he always felt in the deep, but not hidden, chambers of his heart, and the lightheadedness that caused him to pleasantly sway like a pirate captain that exceeds the limit of its toleration of intoxication.
She was the same. And he always remembered her thus. A perfect…radiant…angel. His angel.
His Sylvia.
But there was something different about her. Something… that he hadn't noticed before. A matchless glow. It always puzzled him, whenever he visited Neverland and he saw her. He rapped his brain vigorously to figure out what it was. It was like…
"Daddy!" impatient Michael whined-as do most five-year olds-while he pulled on his inattentive father's right sleeve cuff.
Shaking his head, to erase his current conflicts, and gazed back without dazed emptiness as he answered his restless son's question with a warm smile.
"Michael… have you ever looked up at the stars at night and seen one that catches you eye, and shines especially bright?"
"Yeah…"
"And have you ever noticed that after a few seconds of looking at it, it begins to twinkle?"
"Yes."
"Well me wee bonnie lad, did you know that stars talk?"
Michael blinked a few times. Talk? How can stars talk?
"Talk?"
"Yes, talk?"
"Daddy… Are you pulling my leg?"
" No Michael," He said seriously put reached downward toward the middle of them bed and grabbed the bump apparent there, "Now, I'm pulling your leg." And Michael laughed then, as his father began tickling unmercifully his dainty feet.
"Sto-p Da-ha-d-dy. Pl-l-ease."
"Say, "I'm a codfish." Come on, say it." He said as he proceeded to attack his laughing tots midsection.
"O-k-k, I –gi-ve! I'm a codfish."
"Louder!" James said, still unrelenting.
"I'M A CODFISH!" he screamed pathetically, waiting for his father's usual routine to cease, so he could release that fresh new passage of oxygen to his miniature, throbbing lungs.
And right on cue he stopped, as well did the peaceful sleeping of the elder three boys.
"What is he a codfish for this time father?" the eldest, George Llewelyn Davies Barrie asked, rubbing his formerly sleep encrusted eyes and looking quite a sight in with his tousled russet hair.
"Because I said so." He replied innocently with a slight shrug of his left shoulder, and left it at that.
"What are you talking about?" said the 10-year old, Peter Llewelyn Davies Barrie, with a slight yawn as he walked over to the side of Michael's bed.
James smiled at him happily. Peter was steadily adapting to his fatherly presence day by day, and was warming up to him the way a son does to a father. Even though he refused to call him father, and insisted on referring to him as James, James knew at heart that Peter loved him as he did his old father. Not in the same way, of course. He knew he could never, and would never, try to replace their father, but he knew that Peter understood this. And that was all he wanted. If anything, he wanted to be the friend to him that he could go to and talk to about anything, if that was what he wished. And since Peter was showing signs towards this, he suspected he was fulfilling his own wishes. His own wishes of showing Peter that he loved him and would always be there for him. For anything.
"Talking about stars."
"Stars? What about them?" Jack Llewelyn Davies, the middle child, asked curiously, his tiredness ebbing away as he joined the three of them on the bed.
" Well, I was just conveying to Michael, that sometimes when you look close enough, stars twinkle, and when they do, they are trying to talk to you."
"Poppy cosh. Stars don't talk." Said George from his resting place.
"Ooo, look who knows so much." Said James tauntingly and the boys played along by saying in mock reference "Oooo."
"All I'm saying is… if stars talk, how come we can't hear them?"
That was a brilliant point, and all four of them stared at James expectantly, especially George, who, getting over his flush of being embarrassed, was sitting up straight and had his arms folded neatly across his chest, with his chin held up high, as if he was regal king laughing haughtily at the court jester.
But James just chuckled slightly and shook his head, catching the four of them off guard and George to knit his eyebrows in curiosity.
"Well, if I can't just tell you, and have you believe me George, why don't I just show you? Hmm?"
And their eyes followed him; Peter, Jack, and Michael's excitedly, and George's skeptically, as he unlatched the bronze safety latch on the nursery's windows sit idly on the window seat stationed there.
Moments passed, and he just continued to sit there, not saying a word, just inhaling deeply every few moments and gazing lazily at the stars.
The clock began to strike the hour of nine, and still he was there. Finally, unable to suppress the torment any longer, George piped up, " What are you doi-?" but before he could finish the last word, James waved an impatient hand at him and said, "Shh, I'm listening."
This made Jack, Peter and George raise their eyebrows at each other and give looks of utter disbelief, but Michael, he was a different story. He threw the covers off himself, and scurried over to the window as fast as his little legs would take him, clad only in his white nightgown, and kneeled close to his father on the window seat.
"To what?" he whispered hungrily, totally awake now and staring animatedly.
James stared back at his awaiting face and smiled lightly.
" The stars." He said plainly, as if we talking about the weather.
"What are they saying?" he asked, hanging on to James' every breath and word.
"Well…" he said slowly, pointing his finger toward a group of stars twinkling particularly brightly, "those stars are talking about politics. And those over there," shifting his finger to another group to the far right of the previous one, " they are talking about that other group and arguing about how they only talk about politics," he said rolling his eyes at the emphasis of the word, earning a laugh from the believing figure, " And that one right there," he whispered dramatically and flourishing his forefinger toward a star that seemed to shining the brightest, " reprimanded in saying that you should be in bed by now, and asked me to remind ya to stop flinging porridge at your brothers at the breakfast table. It's not becoming." He finished with a grin, and it widened at seeing his son's opened-mouth reaction.
Ignoring it for a moment, he noticed that the other boys were also in shock, and he put his hand to his ear and looked as if he was listening to something.
Waiting eagerly, they noticed finally that he began nodding his head and saying, "Mhhmmm," approvingly. He finally tore nodded one finally nod toward the star, got up slowly, closed and latched the windows and made his way slowly to the door.
With a loving look, his said pleasantly, "G'night boys," and reached to flick the switch when they all yelled simultaneously, "WAIT!"
He walked awkwardly back into the nursery and with his eyes knitted together and his hands on his hips, he asked, "Yes?"
They all rambled off at the same time, so it was impossible, except for themselves, to understand what their intentions were.
"What did it say-"?
"Did it talk about me-"?
"Did you hear anything else-"?
"When's breakfast-"?
"Wait a moment!" James said holding up his hands for silence.
"I can not possibly understand a word if you're all talkin' at once. Now my sillies, get into bed and I tell ya what the star told me to tell each of you." Obediently, they all trudged quickly to their beds, covered themselves and waited restlessly for the answer to their questions.
He went to Michael's bed first, proceeded to tuck him in, and tucking his teddy bear under his left arm, said,
" Breakfast will be in the mornin' silly. We're having eggs."
Walking toward Jack's bed, he repeated this process, and said to him,
"The star says to remind ya ' to tuck in your shirt, and to finish that essay that's due Monday.'"
At George's bed, which was closer to Jack's then Peter's, he again tucked him in, but removed his glasses that he had just been diagnosed with, he said,
"It said, 'to stop being so serious all the time and to have fun.' And it also said to 'stop leavin' your socks everywhere for the dog to find and chew up.'"
Finally, making it to Peter's bed, he tucked him in and sat down on the edge.
"She is very proud of you, and she wishes that she could be here with you. She hopes that you will continue to write the story you are currently working on. She says she loves it."
Peter glanced back toward the window at the star, still blinking bright, but growing dimmer by the second.
"Mom…"
"Yes Peter. That's your mom."
The other children were asleep, already in their dreamlands, but Peter was still not satisfied and wanted to know more.
"But… how can I talk to her? How can I talk to the stars?"
"You can't."
"How can I hear her?"
"You can't."
"But… then how can you?"
"It is a mystery. I've been talking to stars for years."
"But… how..?
"Some things, Peter, cannot be explained. You cannot talk to your mother by the stars, Peter, because you don't know how, " he said placing a finger to his lips, to prevent him from asking the question he already knew before he said it, " And I cannot teach you. It's something that cannot be taught. You have to find out yourself."
"How?"
"Just believe. Believe you can, and you will. But don't fret on it tonight. Tonight, go to Neverland, for you don't have to be taught to got there."
Peter yawned tiredly and his eyes began to droop.
"She's waiting for you Peter. Go to her, and talk to her. Perhaps read her your stories. She can't wait to see you."
His eyes finally gave away, and he slipped slowly, and peacefully into his Neverland.
James leaned forward, kissed him lightly on the forehead, and sighed deeply as he pulled away.
He stared at his face and whispered, "Oh, why can't you stay like this forever."
He got up slowly and walking toward the switch, he flicked it off and turned back to be greeted unintentionally, by his children's deep sighs and breaths of sleep washing over them.
"Why can't you all stay like this forever?"
'But they can't', he reminded himself, 'they must grow up.'
And with that final thought, he retreated out the door, and closed it noiselessly behind him.
Dreams.
Dreams, along with the light that shone from the moonlight and talking stars, and soon also, they too would retreat to their homes and sleep. This was brought on by the dawn.
Time.
Time passed on unheard of. Ignored entirely.
But the clock still chimed faithfully the hour.
Dawn.
Dawn would soon peek over the mountaintops, signified symbolically by the sun awaking from its slumber and pushing back its covers, known as the horizon.
Awaken.
Soon the boys would be awaken from their dreams, whether fitful or full of happiness, by their father, and would struggle, as do all children, to be pulled back into their warm imaginings.
Remembrance.
Jack, George, and Michael Llewelyn Davies would absentmindedly forget what they heard last night, for they wished, unintentionally, not to remember it.
Peter.
But Peter would not forget that night, for he willed not to. He would never forget about James' teachings of the stars and the ability to talk to his mother through them. And he wouldn't forget what James had said about believing.
But what no one knew was, that before he had slipped through the portal in his mind where dreams and Neverland were stored, was that just before he had closed the door in the nursery and in fact Peter's dream portal, James had whispered something to himself. Something that, had not Peter been straining to hear it, would have been overlooked as a slight sound heard off in the fair distance. But since he had heard it, and understood it, he would never forget it.
"But that doesn't mean they have to stop… believing."