A Found Girl (on hold)

Chapter Four

^The video above is Neverland from Finding Neverland The Musical (yeah, I really like this musical. :D )

The water covered miles and miles of seemingly countless oceans. The eternal abyss stretched on endlessly. The dark night sky gleamed just a short distance above us with the light of a million unique stars. I could almost reach up and touch them.

We had long since left the shadowed shores of England far behind. And with it, went my small shred of hope that I had held onto over the darkened streets of London and the innumerable stretches of sea that came after.

I had hoped that this was all an elaborate joke that was meant to fool and confuse me. Or possibly even an incredible illusion brought on by the terror of being truly separated from my family in a sea of unfamiliar strangers.

But the longer our trip stretched on, the more I began to realize that there was no falseness to the things happening around me. 

I quickly scanned ahead towards the darkened horizon, carefully controlling my sight from straying down the immense drop to the rushing midnight water below. I had never truly been afraid of heights until it was all I knew.

Peter still held onto me tightly, cradling me gently against his chest like a mother would her baby. He kept his blue eyes strategically forward, focused intently on two distance stars far ahead, each a bright beacon in the sky.

Young Tobias flanked the man on one side of us, while Josh flew closely on the other, his eyes, unlike Peter's, focused solely on me.

He studied me intensely as if I were an odd shade of orange against a backdrop of green. 

My cheeks heated briefly, my eyes seeking out a new distraction to sate the burn. Boys were strange creatures, indeed.

My wandering eyes fell upon on the figures of the other children, where they flew just a little ways ahead of us.

Two, Finley and Elijah, were busy supporting my brother between them. Danny's face was ghost white and pale. He looked like he was about to pass out or already had.

The last boy, Benjamin, was happily floating along, obnoxiously whistling an unfamiliar tune.

I kept glancing around, expecting this ridiculous illusion to break, but it trudged on, a never ending void of black night and swirling seas, all a while the two bright stars up ahead kept watch over our small progression. 

***

We flew on that way, holding a loose formation, no one talking, just the blinking stars suspended above us and the insistent syllables of Benjamin's whistle to keep us company and to fill the stifling silence.

Hours seemed to pass, but I had no real way of knowing how long we had been flying. 

Before I knew it, the forever night was transitioning into the light of early dawn. Our passenger stars slowly dissolved into a blue sky, and the sun cast bright rays across the ocean waves.

Far ahead of us, the endless field of twisting ocean collapsed in to form the shape of an island.

And it was towards this island that we were headed.

A strange mix of dread and anticipation began to stir within me. This was the fairy tale home of my childhood. 

The closer we flew, the more details I was able to pick out about this strange place.

The island was neither a large nor a small piece of land that stretched bravely out into the sea. In fact, it was a rather average sized piece of land.