Never Boy

Second short story for Kay Darali's 'write your ending contest'

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Miracles are very common things. We just underrate and overlook the marvels that life has brought us.

                            But Cerabelle Sky had the kind of miracle that was so spectacular and unbelievable.

                      The story of Peter Pan is thought to be just a story but he was much more than that. He was as old as the first laugh ever to enter this world. Created through the innocence of childhood, he now roams the earth in search for stories.

                      Oh how he loved stories- about pirates, about princesses, about love and acts of bravery. He especially loved the stories that were about ordinary people fighting for something much bigger than their own existence. He also visited the children whose time glass was shorter than others, whose time was slipping through their fingers like sand. He would use his magic to let them pass onto the other world with smiles on their faces.

                     But there was one particular girl who Peter always remembered, who he visited the most out of the rest.

                   Her name was Cerabelle Sky whose name was as beautiful as her face. She had a laugh that could instantly make you want to laugh with her and the way she told stories. She was one of the best he’d ever seen.

                   Of course Peter Pan heard stories written by C.S Lewis and Frances Hodgson Burnett- he in fact often went to their homes to listen to their tales of lands far from their own- however it was the softness of her voice that elevated the words off the page and into air, like an aroma of fantasy.

                 He remembered the first time he heard her read. She was around seven and it was already past her bedtime yet Cerabelle Sky was so in love with books that she would take out her torch and under the covers she would read the words on the pages. Of course most people just read in their own heads but Cerabelle would whisper the words to animate the words.

                     He could hear her gasp and sigh at moments when the story got intense and it was from then that he found himself absolutely fascinated by her way of thinking.

                          So he visited as much as he could, once a month, twice if he had enough time. And he hovered outside her window- in rain or snow, in winter and spring and he felt a lightness enter his heart as he saw her grow up and discovery more stories and cry at more sad endings.

                          He also started to leave books for her. His own library was an infinite vessel which he could command to appear at any time he saw fit. Every first edition, every book that would have been thrown away, books that were banned, books written in languages old and foreign, books that defined the people that read them. So every Christmas he would wrap her book leaving no trace of the giver but always happy to see that at midnight on Christmas day, she would be up in her room reading the book he had given her.

             But the days of youth had run out. It was eight years since his first visit and he noticed she was no longer a little girl anymore. She was sixteen and the reality of life was hitting her like a storm. She was a broken boat trying to stay afloat in a sea that wanted her to drown.

             He wanted so badly to talk to her but that was forbidden especially for someone of her age. But he felt his heart break for hers was breaking to. And he realized that it was because he loved her that he felt the same way she did.