Love, Birdie {h.s au} ON HOLD

chapter five

~Caroline Jacobs~

This was her favorite, being awake during the early hours of morning. The sun just starting to come up, the birds chirping a quiet echo in the air, the cool February breeze blowing softly through her hair as she curls up in her favorite chair with a book that takes her to a place far away. There was a small mug of coffee on the table beside her, but she was so lost in the enchantment of it all that she had completely forgotten about it.

"Second to the right," she whispered to herself, reading the line with a smile on her face. "And straight on till morning."

She couldn't help herself, she had been fascinated with the boy who never grew up since she could remember.

Every night before she went to bed, her mother would tell her stories about Neverland. She would tell her about the lost boys, about Wendy and Tinkerbell. They would sit for hours and talk about what they would do if they ever got to Neverland. How they would swim with the mermaids, fly to new adventures with the help of Peter Pan.

After the accidents she would sit on her windowsill at night, praying to the stars above that he would save her from it all. That he would take her hand and fly her away to Neverland. She would dream that her mother was there, even now... she always loved to think that her mother was in her own Neverland somewhere.

Apart of the beautiful stars... looking on forever.

Her mother was the kind of person that people would read about in books. A carefree, loving, kind, and beautiful soul that everyone admired. She was happy, free and most of all let the young girl believe that the whole world was in the palm of her hand. And she believed it too.

Her smile would put every star in the sky to shame, and her laugh... her laugh shook the world with joy.

Every morning they would wake up just when the sun would start to rise. They would read, paint or simply watch as the sky light up each morning.

Caroline would watch her mother in awe, her eyes never leaving the woman she admired with every bone in her body as she embraced every adventure life had to throw at her. Because that's what her mother would call it. No matter how bad, how twisted, or how evil life got she always had a smile on her face. She would move forward with such grace and humility, claiming she was simply awaiting for a new adventure.

Nine years later, Caroline tried to look at life with that same perspective. After everything she had been through, all she had to do was remember the smile that lived in her fondest of memories and wait for the next adventure to whisk her away.

She prided herself on the lesson she took from her mother, remembering the light that would ignite whenever she walked into the room. How she fought so hard to keep Caroline safe, to protect her from the evils that lurked in the darkest of corners. The ones that were brought up in the light, the ones that masked the evil parts of themselves until the door to their lives was shut... leaving them alone with the devil in disguise.

When her mother passed, she decided the moment she was buried that she was going to do everything she could to keep her spirit alive. To read all the books her mother loved, to take pictures of everything before the good times fade away forever, to paint the night sky over and over no matter how many times she saw it... because it was different everyday.

"Just like life," her mother would whisper as she tucked her in at night. "Everyday is never exactly the same, every sunrise and sunset are never identical."

The two found happiness in the simplest of things, and she was okay with it. In fact... she loved it.

Her family's life was always a mystery to those around them. No one knew much about them, only the things they wanted people to know. Even now, that was how she liked it. She liked being able to walk around campus and not have people whisper about her, she liked to be able to walk into a room and blend effortlessly with the crowd. She believed that some people were born to be the center of attention, to have people captivated by their presence, to be able to walk into a room and have everyone stop and stare.