Wendy Darlin'

Chapter Four - Small, grey hope

I wake up in the nursery.

Only I don't feel like it is a nursery anymore. I am to be married, so I should mature and stop day dreaming about forbidden love and far away places.

Yes, it was all just a stupid, stupid dream that must be forgotten.

If I cannot lead the life I want to, let me at least make my parent proud.

Even if it means sacrificing my own happiness.

I get dressed and ready for the day ahead. Mother chooses a light pink frock for me that gives me a look of innocence and almost like a china doll.

I miss feeling dangerous.

Get over it, silly girl.

It's Tuesday, so I join Mother in the drawing room for another embroidery lesson. I settle down on the settee and open up my small sewing box that rests on the table.

I stitch.

I put all my feeling and emotions into the thread and cloth. I ignore Mothers instructions and complaints about my careless sewing, I just sew.

I look at my finishes product and almost laugh at the ugly state of it all.

I've sewn at least seven different colours onto plain white material in no particular pattern at all. It's ugly and messy and-

Something a bad wife would do.

I start again.

And again.

And again.

Until finally I have a product that could maybe pass for a rose.

I close the lid to my box and pass my finished product to Mother. She tuts.

"In all fairness, it is the best you've ever completed, my dear." She stands up, resting my embroidery on the table. "Adam should be here by now..." She murmured, glancing up at the clock. "He's taking you to the gardens."

I almost burst out with anger about how everyone is making decision for me, but I don't.

I feel nothing.

This is the way I must live.

Feeling nothing until death visits my door.

Because I can never see him again.

I straighten my dress before making my way to the porch, where Adam stands with a straight back. He greets me by kissing my hand (which has been starting to annoy me immensely) and we walk off together into the street.

The whole way I listen to Adam barking on about his wealth and future ambitions to carry on his Fathers business, a successful auto-mobile industry.

I nod and smile like the good wife I am going to be.

We sit down on a bench. The fog from yesterday has barely lifted, although it is a bit easier to see the colours of the flowers, the outline of the sun in the sky.

"Matilda." Adam says, taking my hands. He looks awfully uncomfortable.

"Hmm?" I say, my attention back on him. I just feel so empty.

"What's wrong? You seem so... Different from when I first met you..." He strokes my face with the back of his hand, testing for fever. "You seemed so passionate, so sure of yourself, now you're just..."

"I'm just me, Adam." I say, pushing his hand away, casting my eyes down. He's pushing me to be more than a friend, but friends is all I want to be.

He's my betrothed, though.

I look back up at him and force a smile on my face. Force myself to forget Neverland, forget Slightly and Bethany and Tiger Lily and most of all forget Pe-

Forget him.

"I'm sorry, I'll make an effort to smile more often." I say, and I truly smile when I see how much his face glows with appreciation.

"Thank you, Matilda..." He grasps my hand again and presses it to his mouth. I laugh at his constant need to act like a gentleman.

And-

And then I see it-

Right there-

Dancing between the flowers-

The smallest, concrete grey fairy I have ever seen.

The last fairy in Kensington Gardens.