Cally stood in awe of Pitch's home. It was a huge cavern filled with caves and cages and shadows. It suited him.
"Cally?" Pitch asked as she flitted here and there on agile feet. She flitted back to him with a huge smile on her face.
"Yes Pitch?" She said happily stepping from foot to bare foot, hair curled into that silvery halo of delight. She was moving too much for him to keep his eyes on her for long, so he placed her face between his hands.
"Cally. The Man in the Moon said you needed to go to the Pole, right?" Pitch asked carefully. She nodded between his hands still smiling. "Then you need to go find the Pole." Her hair straightened out a little bit.
"I guess so." She agreed as Pitch let go of her face. "How do I get to the Pole?" Cally asked touching her cheeks.
"What can you do?" Pitch asked. He dissolved into the shadows an appeared on the ceiling above her. "Can you fly?" He asked moving to another corner of the room as a shadow. "Or do you simply move between places?" He was next to her again.
"That's a neat trick." Cally grinned. She took a step from him and concentrated, her silver hair stuck out in strange odd angles as she thought. She then took a step and shot off across the cavern as a flash of silver. She appeared on the other side of the cavern and floated in the air for a moment.
"Did you see that?" Cally laughed from across the expanse. "I flew!" She shot back in the same manor and stopped suddenly before Pitch.
"That you did." Pitch raised half of his face into a smile. She was beautiful in the dark, a light to mock the shadows and she wasn't afraid. He wondered why that made him feel happy rather than rejected.
"Where is the Pole?" Cally asked. "I'll try to get there, and I'll be back soon." She smiled up at him, and he felt that she was a little afraid she'd get lost and never find her way back to him. That was something Pitch had never seen before, someone that would miss the boogeyman.
"I can't tell you." Pitch said. Cally glared at him. "What?" He laughed at her. "I can't just point you in the direction of the Pole. It's like this place, out of the world. There aren't directions." Pitch walked around her to the globe flickering with lights.
"How am I supposed to find it then?" Cally demanded following him as he walked away from her.
"You look for it. Or find North somewhere, he'll probably take you home with him, what with you looking like a lost child and all." Pitch mocked. Cally frowned at him, her curls turning to harsher kinks as her anger rose.
"Why are you being mean to me?" She demanded. Pitch laughed again, he wasn't being mean, he was being candid.
"I'm the boogeyman, sweetheart, I thought you knew." Pitch gave her his best boogeyman smile. Her eyes went wide like the full moon.
"The boogeyman?" Cally wondered. Then she smiled, her anger leaving. Her laughter filled the cavern. "No wonder I have so many nightmares." She laughed again and Pitch rolled his eyes. She wasn't even mad at him. What was he supposed to do with that?
"You should get going." Pitch told Cally running a hand along the edge of the globe.
"Promise to be here when I come back?" Cally asked, suddenly right next to him.
"I'll be here." Pitch said not looking at her. He had nowhere else to go after all.
"Good." Cally stood up on her tiptoes and gave him a brief kiss on the cheek and vanished into a spark of silver light that shot away as fast as a shooting star. Pitch raised his hand to his cheek and wondered why Cally had to go to the Pole. He wondered too what that meant for him.
Cally was gone for a long time. She wandered around the world looking for the Pole. Each day that passed made her wonder if maybe she'd never find it. At night she'd look up at the moon and wonder if he had anything else to tell her. But her father never spoke. Somehow she knew that was for the best.
When Cally gave up her search for the Pole, she found herself on a new sort of quest. She had to find her way back to Pitch, the boogeyman. She wondered why what he was hadn't bothered her until now. She should have known from the start that Pitch was something dark, but she hadn't. Was Pitch the bad guy then? She wondered as she crossed the sky in a brilliant spark of light.
Someone saw her flying and made a wish. Cally was confused as to why she knew there was a little boy that wished his mother would come home. Cally went and found the little boy, wondering what it meant. He was sitting at home, waiting. She hid beside his window when he looked out at the sky. Not only was it a wish, Cally realized watching the boy's mother stumbling along the sidewalk towards the door, it was what the boy really needed. Cally felt something glowing in her hand and when she opened her palm a small globe of moonlight sat there. Cally released it towards the woman having trouble getting her key in the door, and the light was absorbed into the woman's head. Somehow Cally knew that the woman would be home for her son more often.
Maybe there was something to this. Cally wondered as she shot off again into the sky. But she was too busy wishing she was back home with Pitch to think too much of it.
Cally found her way to the caverns one day and relief filled her as she descended into the dark. She made her way to the big cavern and landed softly by the globe.
"Pitch?" She called into the shadows. There wasn't a reply. "Pitch!" She tried again, louder. Her only reply was her voice dancing off the ceiling. She ran a hand through her hair, trying to get it to lay behind her ears so that she could see the shadows better. Her hair was trying its hardest at the moment to get in her face and block her sight, as if maybe it knew there was nothing to see.
"You've been busy." A voice said suddenly from the shadows, but it wasn't Pitch.
"Who are you?" Cally demanded, anger mixed with the fear in her blood.
"I believe the better question is, who are you?" The voice didn't have a form as Cally looked into the shadows.
"I'm Cally Moonborne." She said. "Now tell me who you are!"
"Now Moonborne, I believe. But Cally? Not so much." The voice came from behind her now. She whipped around and stared at the darkness behind her.
"Then who am I?" Cally asked, her hair twitching as she became afraid for the answer. She didn't know what it could possibly be.
"You certainly have a specific color to you." The voice said flippantly. "Perhaps you should go by Silver?" The voice was walking again. Silver sounded right to something inside of her, and like a switch got flipped, something powerful awoke in her too. She lit the shadows with rays of moonlight that floated like dust moats in the dark. She couldn't see anything or anyone there.
"Who are you?" She demanded again. This time nothing but her echo replied. She let the moonlight fade and sat in the corner watching the globe with its glittering lights. They were children, she knew in her heart of hearts, but she didn't know why she knew. Or why she didn't care so much anymore. Cally shut her eyes then and curled up against the stone of the wall, wondering if Pitch would return, or if she'd somehow lost him forever. Cally dreamed one last time of mountains and flying and beautiful things. Silver's sleep was dreamless as she closed the door on her past.