Breathless.
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catch the stars.
As she travels, she compares the night sky she's used to back home at the estate, to the night sky in the city. She finds something good about the isolated land her family owns, remembers seeing even the Milky Way when she watched the skies with her mother.
They would lie on their backs, away from the house, where there was almost no light at all, and their matching blonde hair would spread over the grass, her mother's like silk, and her own like cotton. Her mother would point upwards to show her constellations and stars, show her planets and shooting stars. She would watch with wide eyes and follow her mother's movements with her own childish ones, tracing the heavens under her clumsy fingers.
She can't see the Milky Way in the city. She can't even see half of the stars she knows. As she got older and more used to the city, it surprised her to go to the countryside one day and see the stars of her childhood.
Wide eyed, she falls onto her back and looks up at them, imagines her mother beside her, and her mother is pointing out stars again in her soft voice. How familiar they still were, like old friends she hadn't remembered to keep in touch with. Even as she was older, she finds herself able to feel the life of the stars, powerful, ancient, and pulsing, and is still awed.
The stars fall in little glowing orbs, glinting as she tries to catch one. It was like a promise of another time, or a wish that hadn't quite made it to a shooting star. (Maybe one of those wishes was one of her many childish wants. She smiles at the thought and crushes the star in her hand, only to find nothing when she opens the fist).
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watch the feathers fall.
When she was younger and her mother was still alive, her father used to take her on long walks. They would walk through gardens at their estate, filled with roses and other flowers her mother loved, because her father loved her mother very much. Sometimes he would pick her up, carry her on his shoulders, and sometimes he would tickle her. Sometimes he would smile and laugh, and sometimes she would too. Sometimes it was just silent, and it was okay. Sometimes she even used to love him.
Even when her mother died, for a little while, he used to talk with her until their discussions dissolved into nothing. Then they would fall silent and wonder under an oppressive burden of what happened, dad? and i'm sorry i couldn't be a better father. They would wonder where they had gone wrong with each other.
It felt like only yesterday he would pick her up and let her pretend she was a bird. She would shriek at how high up she was and he would laugh.
Then he got busy, and then mother died, and then they didn't spend time together anymore. It felt like he had dropped her. They would wonder where all the love a parent and daughter should have for each other went.
She discovered later that it was probably buried with her mother.
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lock the memories away.
When she was younger, everything seemed too big.
She would spin around until she got dizzy and fall into the thick, dewy grass, looking up at the sky that was far away, too far away, and think of her mother. She would roll down the hills to destroy memories that would only make her cry, and then lay at the bottom, waiting until the very memories she wanted to leave caught up with her.
You shouldn't ever forget, she remembers her mother saying, and she wonders why her mother had to be the one to go.
So she keeps her memories in a glass jar, screwed shut tight in the darkest corner of her mind. She says it doesn't hurt anymore. She is not the only one who knows she's lying to herself.
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make do with the circumstances.
As she gets older, she wants to escape. The world she was used to was getting too small and she was growing, fast, so fast. Her father couldn't understand the need for freedom, so she ran. She had never thought escaping could be so easy, and, looking back on it now, maybe it was too easy. Maybe the servants let her escape because they could understand that longing that had nestled itself in her chest, on a shelf closest to the center of her heart.
She decides, in the present, not to think about it, and files that away as well.
People make do with circumstances like her own all the time. It's never been unusual to miss a parent, it's never been unusual to want to escape, and it's never been unusual to want adventure.
(She tells herself this, but it still hurts.)
.
follow peter pan to neverland.
As she travels, she comes across a boy.
He isn't like her, and she knows this, but somehow she finds herself following him. She tells herself it is only temporary, but she finds herself following him to the ends of her sanity and back again. He eats everything in sight and talks with the voice he should use to yell. He can't be on moving vehicles and he looks for magic.
He reminds her of Peter Pan, and she wonders idly if she has stumbled upon Neverland because of him.
But then, she tells herself, even if she did, Neverland is not a real place, and therefore, it would all be in her head. Somehow, though, she feels like he could actually find it, just because he is who he is.
To him, magic exists. Maybe she should think more like him.
He lets her taste adventure and catch glimpses of the things he believes in, and she wonders if this is what it would have been like to have siblings.
He drives her crazy, she tells herself, but she wouldn't have become the person she had always wanted to be without him (kind and strong and inwardly beautiful).
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see the connection.
She comes to see that there is a understanding, and then there is understanding. She couldn't tell you the difference, but sees it for herself so clearly, it almost hurts.
It's like the difference between a hunter and prey, and the difference between a mother and child. She does not have understanding, but an understanding with her father. He is like a fox, she knows, and she is like a rabbit.
That's why she hides; she knows that, somewhere, her father is looking for her. Not because he loves her, but because he needs her. He is getting older now, and he has no wife, and no children but her. She knows he will try to take her back to teach her about the way he lives: by working, and not actually living at all. She doesn't want the family name, she doesn't want the money, she doesn't want the business, and she never has.
She reminds herself one last time that he doesn't care, and that she should run if she sees him again.
(She thinks it would be funny if he actually cared; thinks it would be weird. She thinks she would cry and kick him, hit him, because she's known for years that it's just too late to change what's always been there between them.
There is no love between them anymore, and maybe there never was. Maybe it had just always been a blood connection, and a mutual love of her mother.)
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hold yourself until you're through.
Sometimes she will catch herself thinking about her father, wondering if he ever cared. She wonders if he ever even wanted her. Sometimes she will laugh at the thought of him caring about anything but money and the family business, and sometimes she will want to cry.
Her friend sometimes tells her she's being stupid. Sometimes he says nothing at all and hugs her, and his arms are always warm. He never needs to say anything, though, because anything from a person like him means the world. She never tells him anything, and he never asks. She's grateful for that, and thinks that he's the greatest friend she's ever had. Then she thinks about it, and remembers he's the only friend she's ever had.
Sometimes still, he won't know what to do, and she will hold herself to keep herself together, because it feels like something in her is splitting. She will hug herself and clench her eyes shut, fall onto her side on her bed and curl into a ball because her stomach is shrieking at her, and she will scream silently because it aches.
She won't let anyone see her and she can't move for hours. There are burns on her arms from hugging herself, and she cries after a long time of this, until her blankets are soaked and filled with the faint smell of salt.
Sometimes. Not all the time; not at all. But she does wonder what it means to think about it all so much.
.
begin to act your age.
She grows older faster than she thought she would. Before she knows it, she's seventeen, and she's growing too fast for her to even notice.
She's growing older and older, and inside, she feels she's almost getting younger, because she's beginning to hope and believe again.
She wants to believe in her father, and that he could love her.
She wants to believe in angels, and she wants to believe her mother is out there, somewhere, and that she will find her one day.
She wants to believe, but she knows, deep down, that it's useless. Perhaps she's not yet as young as she felt.
.
toughen up and move on.
She wants to believe in angels and she wants to believe in God. She wants to believe, and yet, there's nothing to believe anymore.
There is no understanding, and there are no falling stars, and there are no more walks across the gardens. There is nothing left to say, because everything was said so long ago, they can't even remember the questions, much less the answers.
People can only have so many chances, and he's had hundreds. She's given all her love away to the people closest to her, and he's missed his chance to be one of them.
(That's what she tells herself when she wants to cry. It never stops the ache.)
She thinks it's okay like this, because she doesn't miss him. She doesn't; she knows this for a fact, because it's been so long since she's cried, and now she only ever has the energy to get angry. There is no room for anything else.
And still, she wants to believe in something, because nothing is unbearably lonely.
.
become an angel and fly away.
She decides she will try one more time to believe in angels, and instantly pictures boy she's met.
She smiles, because she's an idiot who should have realized earlier, that she's already met angels. He smiles, the boy who started her new life (her real life), and he holds out a hand, and she becomes one next to him and other acquaintances.
She wonders if her mother is proud, and wishes her father could see how happy she is now. She wonders if he would even care that she was home now.
.
finalize the goodbye.
"Lucy, come on!" he says impatiently, and at the mention of her name, she remembers that her parents chose her name together. "Everyone's waiting!"
"I'm coming," she says (she remembers trying to talk to him after mother died).
Looking back at a picture frame, she looks at the family portrait while her father's frozen eyes stare on. He'll never get to see her as an angel, but maybe it's not his fault. Maybe it was both of them, and maybe it had always just been that way. It could have been anything.
She takes the time to pick it up, inspect it for things she might have missed that could show if he actually cared, notices nothing and bites her lip – she puts the picture frame back, image down.
(Maybe it was a lot of things that drove them apart. But she'll never know now.)
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FIN
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Alright! Trying this again; this is a third draft, hahah. It's changed a lot, and I'm much happier with it now. c: It's .. pretty much what I wanted, hahah. I don't know what else to do with it. -happy sigh-
I hope you all enjoy this edited version. -heart-