The excitement began to wear off within the week.

Wendy Darling, stalwart caretaker and doting sister, dutiful daughter, and hopeless romantic, took to nature's design with a new enthusiasm. She was fast approaching adolescence, a time in every girl's life to make certain changes, the likes of which she grew strangely interested in. It couldn' be explained. It was completely against her character. Since her father's decison to postpone her departure from the nursery, a feeling of progression had come over her.

She no longer felt the longing for worlds of fantasy, the illustrated tales of folklore and the like. Her interests shifted, firstly to her vanity, then to, with much uncertainty, the opposite sex. Kensington's variety of the latter was fastly becoming a fascinating sight.

Naturally, this attracted the attentions of her two younger brothers, Michael and John. What started out as a teasing subject slowly became a real worry amongst the siblings, one that might've threatened their chances of continuing their favorite routine: most of all being, story time. Their sister was ever changing, becoming the model image of their very grown-up mother.

Wendy herself, by nature, had always took to Mary far more affectionately than her father, who's awkward disposition towards 'female business" was a common trait to be expected. Their bond was the enduring reason why the girl had for so long refused to grow up, instead portraying the role of eternal youth for a woman who's years were rapidly passing. Mary Darling worshipped her eldest to a fault, and the prospect of watching her advance into adulthood was as much a relief as a disappointment. It seemed almost the end to an endearing relationship.

Needless to say, Wendy's maternal behavior never evaporated. She remained very much the helping hand of her brothers, who's faces she washed and mouths she fed when time called for it. John took up a variety studies with which she assisted, grinning at the idea of supporting a budding Darwin. He would often puzzle over fabricated theories, weighing them with his limited reason. Michael, to be sure, was fastly learning the values of sharing and honesty. He was nearly aged six.

All of this, she supposed, was the natural order of things. John would leave his fascination with sea voyage behind, and Michael would all but forget he ever wore Indian war paint on his cheeks. She grew comfortable with the scenario.

He never left her mind, though.

When she sat at her mothers mirror, testing perfumes and arranging her hair, trying on evening gowns as apposed to afternoon attire, she couldn't help but make a comparison to the lace and cuff-linked world of hers, and the magical wilderness of her young heart. The thought of young boys donning animal skins, claiming eternal play as their life's endeavor, the close friend's of a tribe of indians..

She couldn't entirely rake the images aside. She may've fumbled with the names of her young neighbor's,

Tom, the one who asked me to tea, no, Edward, Charles is the one I met only last week, Henry, Henry is...Howard?

But when asked by herself, Wendy, when were you happiest? what other answer could there possibly be? What could measure up to the experience of taking flight over your very rooftop, thereby creating a new perspective of where you live?

Where your heart lives?

As exciting as it is, this new, awkward feeling of physical reaction to young men, and how fatiguing it could be to learn proper etiquette, nothing, no sir, would be that place.

Never Land was filed away, deep in the back of a filing cabinet, which was then thrown into a vast ocean, resting at the bottom of her subconcious. The trouble was, she still knew it's precise location.

And so she couldn't help but wonder, long after she'd placed the contents of her mother's vanity in their designated places, gotten ready for bed, tucked her brothers in for the night, and finally wrapped herself securely under the sheets..

What must it be like?

He was only her same age.

But eternally.

To be caught in such hiatus for always. To be on the verge of nature's flipside, but never wavering. He didn't seem too concerned with such things.

And where was he? ...What could've happened to him?

In the latest hours of the night, when the faintest noises proved the loudest ( John's restless dreams, Michael's soft snoring, and Nana's occasional shifts) she would indulge her most private thoughts.

She would entertain scenarios where he'd come back, sometimes ever young, sometimes matured. His hair a dull, burnt red, his dimples prominent. Her heart would expand in her (ample) chest, and she would behave romantically, or unassuming.

The bare truth was that while she gained considerable attention by day, gentleman-in-training constantly at her side, Wendy found that none of this compared to the moments in which she was...

...in the arms of her Peter.

And so she would whisk the notions aside, and drift into a very proper sleep, in her very proper bed.