Oh, but it was late.

This was hardly conducive for a mother's temperament, she was sure.

Early to bed, early to rise is the dutiful woman's way.

It was just that she could've sworn (or been sorely mistaken) that she'd caught a glimpse of incandescence flickering quite strangely outside her window. And movement. So trivial, and suspicious. Really quite bothersome, honestly, if one is expected to meet a decent schedule every hour of their waking life. She was to be sound asleep by 8. She was to be awaken, washed and quite alert by 7. There was breakfast to prepare, lessons to attend, her brother's well-being to administer to..

Nana's medicine to be given (The poor girl was, after all, getting on in years),

Mother's secrets to be kept, (her marriage was in a period of dissolution as it was)

Margeret, and afternoon tea.

And awash as she was, suspended in the spinning demands of these things, she found she couldn't bare to disregard the odd light. A flutter; An overturned slab of consciousness. Painful curiousity, it seemed, gave way to a sort of creeping clarity that would not, despite best efforts, show itself in full. The recesses of her heart were suggesting, telling, assuring her that that thing she'd been waiting for, that private, obscure musing was there. It'd come for her, it teased, it's tone terribly ambiguous and not the least bit adult.

She stalked from her bed, choosing her movements to achieve maximum silence. The boys were only in the neighboring room. The nursery, she grinned. She'd become so conscious of the word for watercolor painting of the minds eye that bore alphabet blocks and wooden swords and a rocking horse. A room that once held abandon. Foolishness.

They'd left it behind, her brothers. Whatever notion that might've been had to return to those days had long since been sacred haven of swashbuckling pirarts and native heathens had been completely made over in the image of respectability, accordance. Their father.

John was known, at 14, for his dogmatic demeanor and appraisal for cynisicm. The sight both attracted the vacuous and shunned the assured.

Michael, her darling youngest of 9, however relentlessly playful, was stubborn to a trying fault.

Neverland was out of their grasp.

And so it wasn't until this very night that she might've forgotten the thought of him.

Taking a clandestine detour by the light of the moon plucked a nerve for Wendy. Her heart cried out for pixie dust; that this couldn't possibly be mistaken for a neighboring household light or streetlamp. This was him. He'd come back.

She was at the window now, her hands resting on the sill, her eyes peering into solid midnight blue and charcoal. She must've let her gaze roam over the expansive landscape of Kensington a dozen times over before she was struck with discouragement. There was nothing.

And then, in a trembling instant, it occurred to Wendy Moira Angela Darling that maybe...

Just, possibly...

She'd invented the entire thing. That young boys soaring over hilltops, whisking children away to paradise was beyond silly and surpassing soundness. That the past few years have worked against her to cement rational thinking, she with unbridled defiance.

But Michael, John..

Could three individuals share the same dream?

She doubted it. She would have to ask John. He made it his business to investigate such things.

And was she mad? Was she displaying unwise conduct? Casual questioning was fast becoming irrational, pitiful, deprecating.

I'm only a silly girl after all.

To've possibly imagined that it was so easy.

And in a crumpled heap, she slumped onto the window stool.

For several passing moments she indulged in improper weeping. All of this was improper, it seemed. She was left with these two courses of thinking, she decided between huffs;

She had such a formidable imagination that not only did she believe for years that she'd visited a place called Neverland, but she'd been hoplessly fawning over a boy who could never age. Her face contorted as she felt herself crying harder. With the denial of this, there was still the other;

That even if all we're meant to believe as we mature is tripe, and flying and pixie magic does indeed coalesce with our skeptical universe, that she'd been foolish enough to think she could be acceptable for the spirit of all these things. That when she was rescued thrice, that affection and the prospect of intimacy was the display.

But how could she know, as a girl of 16, that all of these depressing musings were the crucial ingredient to truly growing up? How could she filter fiercest rejection and inadequacy into something true?

She turned back to the window, searching for the familiar formation of clouds. The pirates ship of her dreams. But the sky was clear on this night, and so she dabbed at her eyes and brushed her wrist under nose. What a fool she'd been tonight.

Wendy exhaled, nodding slowly. This is my life. And heaven help me, I will not succumb completely to duty. She raised a finger, pressing it against the condensation coated on the window. She produced a small smile, forming letters backwards. A P.

E.

T.

E.

R.

Her brow furrowed. Was this still so silly? Who would see it?

A question mark. A plea.

That's enough.