44. September 1917 (part 2)

But Peter had not yet found a chance to talk any of his former companions out of their miserable blindness. They were busy being confronted by the living they'd brought this endless winter to.

He heard the music beyond the ever-embittered crowd. Their grievance had busied Pearly and his bunch throughout the year, which, until now, greatly helped Peter and Cecil remain unnoticed in their search for miracles and coins. Beverly's flight and her thickening melody had been a result of their poison. And now they reaped the consequences.

And it was funny, cause Cecil had often told him during the previous months, that spirit guides, stars, people like them, were always chosen, that it was the living who needed to render them real in order for their help to be provided.

"Ours is a kind death," he said to Peter one evening, "but it is death, regardless. We don't exist unless we're necessary. And we have no choice on the matter. We choose to react, but not when to exist. When to be seen."

"I love how clear your explanations always are."

Cecil had chuckled and the night sky had trembled. "I'm not accustomed to giving direct answers. I've been taught to be vague. To be patient, too."

"Cecil, how did you manage to get a job, then? Y- I met you- Well, not met you, but you cared for horses, on Grand Central. You had tools to give me, and blankets, and… Well, how?"

"I was needed. Help was wanted. Coins and tools were given to me. And I…" A wink, a click of his tongue, a pointing thumb. "I was the only one who answered."

"So… we can answer to job offers?"

"Absolutely. It's recommended, too. It opens eyes. It makes people needy of you, receptive of you. You exist to them, suddenly. Not only can it help us integrate society and move among people without raising as much suspicion from demons, but it's also a great way to fulfill smaller, subtler deeds. Conversations. Favors. Hints. Seeds for miracles… Coins have always been my harness to my star, my source of light, my ticket, always, for this. They shine in many ways. Money is a universally-powerful gift. I know plenty of starfolk who use them."

Cecil had this habit, Peter realized at some point during their months together. He hadn't previously taken notice of it, but now that they were both composed of the same fabric, bound to the same realm of death and threads of light, Peter could see that, for the most part, Cecil only explained things when directly asked about them.

Athansor hadn't been that way. There were lights that teased and lights that blinded. The subtle and the bold. Cecil was exceptionally clever at baiting people toward a certain topic or direction.

Go to Florida.

Cecil had guided him to Beverly, too. But it had been Athansor's blunt efforts that had struck a true impression…

Athansor. Where was Athansor?

A pause. Then, Peter Lake whispered: "The coins you earned, you-"

"I gave them away. Yes. Never all of them, of course, I'm not that reckless. To keep only one would suffice."

"One coin."

"Beverly has one earring. So did you."

"Cecil," shock and disbelief brought a quiver to Peter's voice, "how many times have you been stranded like this?"

"Many times. Quite."

"Were any of them by your own free will?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"Many."

"Ah, enough of your starry-eyed vagueness, for fuck's sake!" His words rose into a whispered scream of bewilderment and Cecil laughed. Laughed.

Willa had been vague too. But Willa hadn't been a spirit bound by unfinished deeds to a brutal world. She'd been a child, her intuitions whispered by her own nameless strangers in her dreams.

When winter ends…

"You willingly gave up your coins," Peter Lake concluded, superfluously. "Your light."

A magpie giving up his coins, just to know if magic was real. If people cared.

"I gave nothing up," Cecil muttered, frowning slightly, though his good-natured smirk persisted. "I used every single one of them as intended. Don't you feel it, Peter? You're traveling still, I'm only guiding. My song is over, but I still hear the music, because I'm needed in others. Your story is still unraveling. Listen to it."

Beverly played her piano and freed her crickets. A wanted poster flapped from a lamplight brighter than usual.

I feel you, love.

"You hear the universe whisper. And you give up every coin you have to the poor and the lost and the stubborn and hope that you didn't mishear… I have never regretted being kind. I have never given up my capacity for hope… And that is why I've always been given my light back. I've never lost it, it only changed shape, and meaning, and language. You gave it back to me yourself, as you may recall."

"I think you're more reckless than you give yourself any credit for."

"If I wanted peace and quiet, Peter, I'd go back to the sky, to the water, and stay there for all eternity."

"You're cursed and blessed to care."

"Yes. Why did you return to Beverly, Peter? Why, in this city full of beasts, did you return to her? Was that not reckless?"

Peter remembered laying his head back on Athansor's side and the smell of the docks and Humpstone John's voice forming a similar question.

Do you want to go to Florida, Peter?

A quiver of homesickness…

Peter shook his head. Whispered: "I just needed to… I felt like every step I was taking away from her was a drag of the tide into the ocean. Like I was walking into the sea."

"Why do we sing and risk to be heard, to be seen?"

"You gift light to the shadows and expect them to give some of it back."

Peter Lake intended to do this, too. He intended for no more fences to clatter. For no more orphan boys to be dragged into Pearly's den.

In his final moments alive, he'd witnessed a flash of humanity wash over the magpies. He'd seen his own eyes within their sockets. The desire to run and run and never return.

Some never would, some were as natured to chaos as Cecil or Athansor or Beverly were now natured to hope, but others… His equals…

The stars waited for him to deliver his first lines of dialogue. To convince them of the impossible. They'd given him Beverly, a miracle, a vessel in this starless sea, this map without ink, a chance to stay awake and continue his story and build a vessel of his own, despite his strange new reality. The disappearance of Beverly's earring and her return to the starlight had all bound him to the same city, the same loneliness, that had preceded his walk to the bridge. The path back toward the stranger with her little hands and her saturated hair.

He was dead, but New York remained the same. And his chest felt heavy, heavy…

"Not always to the shadows," Cecil had clarified.

"How is your woman? Pauline?"

"Good. Old, and stubborn, and lonely… but good."

"One day you'll need to tell me everything."

"One day… Mm…"

"Have you led her where she should go?"

Cecil hesitated before shaking his head. "I've been at it for years… Without a light to guide her, I can do nothing at the moment. Most people will never see me again… but I can still make them feel me."

"So it seems."

"I do love what I've been given."

"I know. It shows."

"I love being in the dark, empty-handed, solid, in a world of wolves and magpies and whatnot, and waiting… and being as calm as I am now."

"I wish I had your peace."

"You're not supposed to be at peace. Not like me. A soul can only carry a miracle for so long. In life it's easier, in death it's so heavy that it may anchor you to the bottom of the sea. Some miracles expand over lifetimes, others last seconds. A piece of you was left behind in the world you once lived within, and until you find it, you'll never have my peace…" Cecil sighed softly and added: "And neither will Beverly."

Peter supposed, then, that demons were needed as well sometimes.

There is no light without darkness.

Because the wolves were fragmented along New York and being confronted by the fruits of their own sins. And these arguments, these accusations, seemed to almost… soothe them both.

Peace took many forms. Anger boiling into screams. Sadness flooding one's eyes. Happiness igniting into shrieks.

The grey face of Peter Lake flapped from a lamppost and the clouds gathered between the sky and the earth.

You're the same you, in every color.

Peter wondered how Beverly was today, and longed to be told through voice or glances, but he suspected that, even if she tried to tether herself recklessly to the gravity of the world that had ripped her apart, in her bright dress and red hair, for her light to be tracked and hunted in the same way Cecil's had been… she was too restless to bring herself to a specific spot.

"Don't get lost to the light, love," he said softly, to the streetlamp, to her. A fickle blur of gold and white, blinking in the breeze. "You mustn't always travel at its speed. If you ever need to rest, please rest. The world will not spin any faster while you sleep, your family will be alright, and so will I… You told me that nothing could happen to you anymore, but that isn't true. Even in the starlight, away from his grasp, you're exhausted. I feel it. Take care of yourself, Beverly… I implore you."

Why had she been dressed in the color of spring, a hue so scandalous, so easy to track for Pearly and his crew? Why couldn't she have been guided to wear something grey or black? The shades of this wintry limbo, so she may walk beside them and not raise suspicion or draw conclusions for Pearly? Had her red hair not provided sufficient reasons for why she needed to stay concealed?

Nothing happens that isn't supposed to.

He missed her. And she missed him. And that couldn't be denied. As inescapable as their places were given their respective resources, or lack thereof, and the dangers they were exposed to in the city, they missed one another, and that was that.

Feel me as I feel you.

And the wind blew and the paper untethered itself from the lamppost and the warm light flooded the inky details that had carved out Peter's picture and, with a gasp, on instinct, drawn by thread and string and stubborn white horses, Peter Lake caught the paper in the air.

It was the first piece of New York he'd been able to take in his hands since his death. To wholly and solely be held by him as if he and it belonged to the same world…

Light takes many forms.

He was dumbfounded for a moment. His body trembled and the city shook under his feet and he heard the cogs turning and the wheels intertwining their toothy edges with one another. And the paper was thin and cheap, and cold and soggy with ice and salt, and the wind gathered behind him as he ran.

Beat, little heart…

And he returned to Cecil, to the crowds of beating hearts and unsteady breaths, with warm tears of laughter running down his cheeks, and white mist blooming from his open mouth, and Cecil's eyebrows raised in shock and his lips slowly curled into a grin.

Peter lifted the poster into the air and grey turned to white and his picture practically vanished in the showering sunshine.

"Look, Cecil," he called out, "we got some light back! I'm wanted alive!"

Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.

I forgot to post Part 2 of the "September 1917" chapter yesterday, which was a blessing in disguise cause it gave me the chance to fully read over and change a few lines before posting. Especially Cecil and Peter's conversation.

I love Cecil the more I write about him, especially writing his dialogue - his character isn't explained or explored much in the movie, he appears very briefly, so the fact that I've reached a point where every time I write Cecil talking with either Peter or Beverly I am 100% sure of what he'll tell them and how, it shows that I've managed to build my own character from the little crumbs of details I got for him in the film, and finalized it in my little writer's mind. So writing his dialogue is lovely.

This is now probably one of my favorites from all the chapters I've written from both "A Star in the Lake" and TFOTM. From Peter's reaction to seeing his own face after almost a year of being dead, to his words to the light (to Beverly), and Cecil and Peter's chat about what it means to be a spirit guide... yeah, I love how this turned out, I'm very proud :3

As I've already explained before, in my re-interpretation (I'll explain again cause my personal worldbuilding based on the movie's magic can sound a bit weird but I have proven before that I can make it work, at least I hope I can XD I do love how TFOTM looks so far and I feel like, even though my story has become extremely weird, on par with the movie I'm basing it on, it can still be understood... again, I hope?), I maintain the theory that starfolk/spirit guides need to carry a shiny object with them at all times in order to travel the roads of lights that connects everything in their world and gives them safety from Pearly's men, to direct the attention of the people they're meant to help by using their "harnesses" to play with the light and hint at the next step they need to take.

So, stars can either be physically present or light-bound, to manipulate light or be light itself. Cecil is physically present when we see him in the movie, but Beverly isn't visible after her death, she only moves through light. If you're a star without a means to wink back at the light, you're exposed to Pearly, since you're stuck on the world, invisible to most people but never invisible to Pearly, who is an active star-crusher and miracle-stopper. Peter is exposed to Pearly as well, but Peter's case is different since he's not guiding anyone, he still has a miracle to fulfill before he can be a proper star, a miracle himself. He's more at risk than Cecil, whose own miracle was what got him a spot in the sky in the first place, but still.

So my headcanon is that the way you get your "light back" is if you're given a new harness by "a friend of your own making," someone you need to help fulfill their purpose and who chooses to let you help them.

Hence why, in my stories, in particular this chapter, I decide that Cecil's coins, his light sources, his lifelines basically, are all given to him by the people he helps (unlike Beverly's earring, which she finds before she returns to the city and gives one of them to Peter, as a way to also allow him to travel through light - but given the heaviness of his soul, full of debts he still feels he must repay, he cannot fly on his own, and he loses the earring and is stranded on New York with Cecil - sorry for the recap, sometimes I get nervous that you guys get lost in my madenning fanfictions of this already-strange film XD) and he in turn, gives most of them back to people who need money or who will be inspired by his act of kindness. I think this makes too much sense and that it's also a wonderful way to build more on my personalization of Cecil. I love his interactions with both Peter and Beverly so much.

I also went very deep with his little line to Peter about peace. That there is nothing better in the world than to be calm, like he is, despite the apparently-wry circumstances he's in with his friend. It's a mindset I wish to possess. I suppose I identify with Peter a lot when I write from his POV, same as how I identify with Beverly's plight dearly when I write from her eyes, that's the beauty of writing from characters' perspectives, so... yeah. Let Cecil be everyone's wholesome starboy therapist for today :3

Beverly was sort of the "therapist" in ASITL but I have made her much more somber and mature in TFOTM, given the difficult situation she's now in, I just think it'd make a lot of sense for her character in the movie if she was shown after her death. Plus, gotta take into account (as I already have) her reversed role from being the one in need of help to being the helper and savior of others. I promise that, in TFOTM, Beverly remains an optimist - she's a strong woman and her neverending richness of spirit is what grants her a star in the first place. She's only more complicated than that, as soon as you get into her mindset, as I have for this story - whereas with ASITL I stayed only in Peter's eyes, only hinting at Beverly's loneliness and sense of unfulfilment by making observations from Peter's eyes.

Back to the "peace" thing: Beverly and Cecil have both finished their personal journies on Earth, even if they haven't finished their work (they're stars for that reason, they still want to help), they gave their miracles to others - Cecil's miracle is a story that I'll save for later, but Beverly saved Peter and gave him a chance to fulfill his destiny from the grave, which is her miracle to him in my version. In the movie, his love for her is so strong that he is incapable of dying, which is how her miracle to him plays out - but since I wanted Peter to be dead in my version, to bring another explanation for his 100 years in New York and also have him and Beverly be bound to the same vessel, not have them completely separated from one another as they are in the film (I am still writing fanfiction at the end of the day - I work very hard on these stories, but I will not make you miserable, I want a version of WT where my two cinnamon rolls are allowed to at least be together in spirit, and also in person, don't worry they'll be back together eventually, before Abby shows up :3), I find it more fitting, and more beautiful to be honest, for Beverly's miracle to Peter to be "his life", literally and figuratively, in death. As I made Cecil tell her in the "Water Under a Bridge" chapters: Beverly is Peter's death, because she's his life. I literally make him call her "my life" :3 Not just for cheesiness. You see? Everything's connected XD

Okay. This Author's Note is a big mess XD But I got carried away.

I am so so happy with this chapter, now it's definitely one of my favorites, it cheered me up so much to write it. Right now I'm back to uni work and being busy, as if I don't make myself busy enough already drawing and writing about this movie XD, so writing a new chapter of TFOTM feels like my personal letter to myself. I love these stories, I love what I've created, I love the movie that inspired them.

Even at my weakest moments, my doubts of finding a love like the one I write so much about, or my family situation, or my melancholic afternoons... I have always been comfortable in my own skin, and that's something to be grateful for. Cause I love what I do. I'm at peace with myself. Maybe not with the world, most days... but I am, with myself. So I do identify as Cecil too, in this case :3

Anyhoo. I have to stop ignoring my obligations as an animation student XD Gotta get to work so... I'll leave this for you. And I'll be back soon. Here's your hug *hug* , thank you as always.