Waiting for the Stars | ✓

Chapter Seven

A/N: Last chapter! Song above is Flying from Peter Pan 2003. Covered by Luke Walsh. Poem Cara says below is from Peter Pan by Nicole Zefanya.
Thanks for reading this :) it means a lot. Thank you.

---

Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, Wendy Darling

Even Captain Hook, you are my perfect storybook

Neverland I love you so

You are now my home sweet home

Forever a lost boy at last

---

Cara rocked back and forth on the old rocking chair, the chair that had started her story, the chair that had belonged to her grandmother.

Now she too, was old and weathered, with silver curls and wrinkles near her eyes. Her hands, once soft and light, were now gnarled and weak.

Peacefully, she rocked.

She and her husband had become divorced a long while ago, and he forgave her. He had never really resented or hated her; but he understood, and they were friends. He remarried, and had a family, but Cara sat alone, with no one but the moonlight as company.

She spent her days in front of the window, dreaming away her life. She wrote stories and sold them, and the people were amazed at the sincerity in which she wrote her adventures, as if they really had happened. They were all about one certain flying boy, with an uncanny ability to forget.

She was old, she knew. She had grown up, she knew. But she had never stopped believing in Peter, believing in the kind of hope that never died, believing in an innocence that thrived through her house and danced in her corridors. The hope that would die with her, the last of the Wendy Darling line.

She had a paper in front of her, on which she was writing. Probably her last work of her life, she knew. She neared death, and she accepted it into her gnarled fingers.

In the Neverland sun

I'll sleep safe and sound in the arms of my Peter Pan.

Contentedly, she closed her eyes and tried to forget, just as he did. Unknowingly, she began to hum the old fairy song, her voice sounding strong, not old. Not ready for death.

I'll sleep safe and sound in the arms of my Peter Pan...

She sighed and opened her eyes.

And there, before her, stood the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

It was a boy, a boy with gold hair and brilliantly colored eyes, a boy with a smile that awakened the sun, a boy with radiance that outshone every diamond. He was as old as a boy is when youth is loveliest; and he wore a crown of stars. His clothes were of skeleton leaves, and in his wake trailed music, fairy music, the prettiest she'd ever heard. There was no way to describe him, because his beauty was far beyond the minds of mere humans. Cara did not think she looked upon a mortal, but an angel.

He crowed joyfully, and swooped about the room, and Cara no longer felt old.

"Cara," he said, his voice like birdsong. "You believed."

"You remembered." whispered Cara back, staring at him wide-eyed, wanting to take in his whole image and burn it into her brain.

He smiled, and took her hand. Cara expected him to be repulsed at her age, but he did not seem so, not in the slightest. He helped her up, and Cara's knees and back screamed in pain, in weakness, but Peter's light chased them away.

"Now," said Peter, that glorious boy. "There is a place far away, so far off that you can stay young forever. It is called Neverland."

"I've heard of it." Cara managed to get out.

Peter laughed gaily, and the night sky brightened at the sound.

"In Neverland, there is no such thing as boys and girls. In Neverland, we are all the same!" Peter smiled at her again, and Cara's heart turned pure gold.

"Which would mean, you would become a lost boy. Isn't that fine?"

Cara shook her head in amazement, unable to comprehend what exactly he was saying. "Peter, I am so old, I cannot fly. I will never get this aged soul off the ground."

Peter threw back his head and laughed a laugh of pure joy. "Cara, age has nothing to do with it. It is the belief that matters, the belief that resonates the heartbeat of a child, of the innocence, of the wonder."

"Do I have any left?" Cara whispered.

"Why, of course you do!" Peter told her. "I wouldn't be here otherwise!"

With that, he snapped his fingers, and a lovely creature flew in from the window. It was a fairy, who jingled like bells when she spoke. "Tinkerbell?" Cara whispered hoarsely, her head spinning.

Tinkerbell danced about her, blowing a kiss, and flew round her head, exactly seven times.

The dust fell from the fairy's wings into Cara's hair, and a lovely sensation gripped the old woman, and she grasped the side of the rocking chair.

A growing happiness rushed through her blood, to her brain, to her heart. It filled her senses with the purest thoughts, thoughts she'd never even thought before. And strongest of all was the music of the pan flute, as it flew about her like a bird learning to fly.

When the sensation passed, she was fairly different than she had been a few moments ago.

Her hair was the prettiest it had ever been, long and dark and curly, and her skin was soft and glowed with health and youth. She wore a crown of flowers, and the softest pink nightgown.

She was young.

She was young, and she was strong. She was happier than she had ever been in her life, and she opened her eyes.

Peter stood before her, one foot on the windowsill, with the most serious expression.

He held out his hand.

"Come away with me."

It felt as if the sun and moon and stars had collided, creating in Cara the most incredible eruption, but she was safe from it all, as she flew to Neverland with a boy who'd never grow up.

She took his hand.

"Yes," she breathed, and her feet lifted off the ground.

From that point on, Cara's thoughts are impossible to write. They were so lovely and beautiful that it is fairly impossible to put them into mere human language. She had started to think like him, and everything was as it was on the night she danced with Peter Pan, long, long ago.

Peter let go of her hand and crowed, and Cara laughed with delight, and Tinkerbell danced around them, an infinite dance of wonder.

And the three soared into space, and the night was still.

The End.

---

He came to me with the sweetest smile

Told me he wanted to talk for a while

He said

Peter Pan

That's what they call me

I promise that you'll never be lonely...