Second Star to the Right

She smiled at Peter, the warmth creeping back in like sunshine breaking through a gloomy fog. She was so thankful to have a friend like him—kind, caring and understanding. He’d lived even longer than her endless existence, so she supposed he did know what it was like to some extent.

“Just over 300 years,” she said quietly, resting her chin back on her knees and staring off into the forest. “I remember being human but a lot of the details from that life are murky, like they are hiding beneath a thick layer of dust and grime. I remember living in a small Hungarian village in the 17th century. I remember it being a simple life and wishing for adventure. But I can’t remember things like my 16th birthday or who my best friend was—did I even have a best friend? What kind of food did I like before blood was my only choice?”

She shrugged and added, “But I now have all of those details for this very human professor in this dream and—I can’t help but wonder if they are details about me? Or was it really just a dream?”

Peter nodded. Sure, he wasn’t a vampire, but he could relate. It did surprise him a little bit that he was older than her, though. He’d figured, hey, vampire--she’s probably got a few years on him, but no. He was still the old one. The one who had lived for so long and never grown up. 

“I think it was probably a little bit of your old self peeking through,” he said, his voice low. “I mean, the stuff has to come from somewhere and since you don’t sleep as a vampire, it would only make sense that your dream-self would be more of a reflection of who you were as a human, right? I’m sure all that stuff is still in your head somewhere, even if you can’t access it all the time.” 

He put his hand on her shoulder, “You’re still you.” 

Jane had been about to answer the student question when this fellow offered to walk with her. Alright, well, she could be blunt and just tell him no – and you know, she didn’t mind being blunt and you know, she did prefer to be alone – but if he knew where he was going, then it was less likely that they’d get lost.

“Very well then,” she answered, clean, clipped, and proper. “Two sets of eyes are better than one and I daresay we’ll track down this scallywag with more efficiency between the two of us. And yes,” she added, “to answer your earlier question, I will be a student here when the term starts. A graduate student in history, specifically military history, specifically World War I. Name’s Jane. Jane Darling.”

Peter had known a Jane once. He couldn’t say she was anything like this particular Jane (mostly because he didn’t know much about this Jane but also because his Jane had been very shy in the beginning and this Jane did not seem to have that trait), but they shared a name and hearing it made Peter smile. She had been a very good friend to him when she was alive and for a second he missed her very much. 

“Peter,” he said. “Peter Pan, and I know a little bit about World War I. I was very interested in it for awhile. Read a lot of books. You’re probably way more of an expert, though, at this point.” 

Peter started walking toward their destination, his eyes on the lookout for vest-boy. “Why military history?” he asked, not looking over at her. 

“You were such a good cat too!” Vee laughed, reaching up to ruffle his hair playfully. “The best companion an old maid school teacher could wish for.”

She thought a moment about the dream, her mood shifting. It had really thrown her for a loop, not just because of the sleeping thing, but because of the taste of humanity shed gotten. Sure she’d still been magical, but she was human. 

She sighed, a forced motion she’d learned over the years to express emotion in the absence of actual breathing. “Nah, I’m not broken.” She assured him with a sad smile as she took a seat on the branch and gestured to the spot beside her. “It was very disorienting, sure and totally freaked me out. I mean, what kind of magic can do that to a vampire?!” 

Drawing her knees up to hug them and rest her chin, she continued, “Honestly, the thing that is messing with my head the most is the new memories I have of being human! I—I forgot how much I missed it. You know?”

Peter’s smile twitched when she looked up at him. She looked so sad and sort of lonely even though she was trying her best to hide it behind a smile. Peter could relate. He knew what it was like to be unable to form basic human connections with people out of fear or necessity or whatever it was that stopped vampires. 

Maybe he should tell her he knew. Maybe if he told her she wouldn’t look so lonely and he wouldn’t feel like he was keeping this huge secret from one of his very few friends he had in this town. And it wasn’t like Vee was going to take advantage of him. She was also immortal pretty much. 

It was just...he’d been poked and prodded and studied and locked away before and it was hard. It was hard to open that part of himself up to someone new. 

“I know how you feel,” he said, mumbling down at his feet. “How long has it been?”

Student center. That made sense. A place for students. And this boy was a student.

Jane looked at the textbook. She could find Vest Boy and shove this book back to him and come up with a quippy one-liner about how he should be doing better. It was within her reach.

“Alright, so where is this student center?” she asked. “While my navigational skills are usually most excellent, I took a nap on the train ride and thus only memorized the route from the station to my flat and from my flat to the history department.” 

She squinted at this man. He looked around her age, but then again he had one of those faces that seemed like it could be much older or much younger.

“Are you a student here?” she asked.  

“Sometimes,” Peter said, referring to the fact that he occasionally sat in on classes whenever he was bored. He obviously wasn’t enrolled or anything because that posed it’s own set of problems--namely being able to prove who he was since he didn’t have any sort of documentation. 

He turned around and pointed in the general direction of the student center. “It’s over there,” he said, smiling back at her. “I could walk you that way if you want. Mostly because I wasn’t doing anything important anyway and now I’m sort of invested in helping you find your mystery vest-boy.” 

Vee snorted with laughter, shaking her head. Well rested was not exactly how she would describe the feeling. Disoriented and completely freaked out were probably more accurate. She didn’t know how it worked but somehow she thought that vampire bodies just weren’t meant to need rest.

She was distracted from that train of thought though by Peter’s declaration. Her mind snapped to the sweet tabby that had been her constant companion in the dream. Her life hadn’t been all that exciting—in fact, it had been pretty mundane as the single muggle born muggle studies professor who’s best friend was seriously a cat.

Her eyebrows shot up and she squealed. “Oh my god, are you serious!? I did have a cat! That was you?!”

Peter thought back on his dream. He remembered being able to laze around in the sun all day. He remembered being petted and cuddled and purring to his heart’s content. Being a cat was seriously the life. If he had a chance to change his curse to anything he wanted, he might actually pick being stuck as a cat. 

“Yeah,” he said, laughing at how excited she was. “It was really fun too. I got to watch you teach and you cuddled me and always gave me delicious food. Man, being a cat is seriously the best.” 

Then he frowned down at her. “You’re okay though, right? I know I joked about the sleeping thing but it didn’t break you or anything, did it?”

Jane didn’t want to make new friends, thank you very much. Jane had enough friends. Never mind that she only knew one person in town; she wasn’t the type who went around tapping people on the shoulder to make new friends. Friends took work. You didn’t just find them.

Still though, she wanted to shove this book in the bloke’s face.

“Alright,” she said, squinting a little, trying to remember. “I think he was wearing a red t-shirt? And a baseball cap. Also a vest, which I thought was stupid because it’s so warm right now. Seriously, I think vests are the most useless piece of clothing.”

Peter frowned. That was a little bit unfair. He liked vests. He thought they were kind of cool. And sure, fine, they didn’t really serve much of a purpose when it wasn’t cold, but fashion didn’t make sense eighty percent of the time anyway. Maybe the boy in question just had a cold core or something.

Then he started thinking about it and remembered he’d seen a boy in a vest not even five minutes ago when he’d been walking through campus. He couldn’t remember if the guy was also wearing a hat, but the other cool thing about vests is that not a lot of people wore then these days. 

“I actually think I might’ve seen your mystery boy,” Peter said to her, smiling. “He was headed toward the student center--or at least in that general direction--if you wanted to try to catch him.”

There were few people in the world who could out-sunshine Vee Hauntley, however, her new friend, Peter certainly gave her a run for her money in the sunny disposition department. Vee grinned, watching him float down from the canopy above, nothing but cheerfulness radiating back.

“Peter!” When he was close enough, she jumped forward and wrapped him in a quick hug. “I am so glad to see you! The weirdest thing happened—though from what I’ve heard, it happened to everyone—and oh my gosh! It was just so WEIRD!”

She was babbling. She knew she was babbling, but the whole dream experience was really getting to her. 

She wrung her hands and worried her lip, continuing, “I mean, do you know how long it’s been since the last time I actually SLEPT?! Let alone had a DREAM?” Her voice had taken on a slightly hysterical edge, though she tried to laugh it off.

Oh, wow! Peter had forgotten that vampires didn’t sleep. Like ever. It wasn’t that he thought they did sleep, he just didn’t really give it much thought either way. Now that she mentioned it, though, he remembered that he did in fact know that about vampires and he beamed at her as she rambled. 

“First of all,” he said. “I have to ask how you’re feeling after your unexpected night’s rest. Do you feel rejuvenated? Well-rested? Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? You would think you would since it’s the first time you’ve slept in like hundreds of years. I know I always feel better after I sleep.” 

He couldn’t help but laugh because that was so true. No matter what happened to him the day before, sleeping always fixed it. Literally. He could be missing a leg and it would be back when he woke up. 

“Wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “Before you answer, I have to tell you! I was your cat! You had a cat, right? That was me!”

Ugh, curse universities for having tall, skinny boys with messy brown hair and spacey looks. She frowned a little, looking over at the textbook.

“Dunno if he seemed like a stoner,” she said, glancing up at the bloke in front of her. He didn’t look annoyed as she’d imagine someone would after a stranger bumped into ‘em off the street. If anything, he looked positively chuffed. She didn’t trust that; friendly people were always ones to watch out for.

“Who lets an expensive textbook just fall out of their bag?” she scoffed. “Demonology…” She ran her hand over the cover. “Hell, maybe he is a stoner. I have no idea where anything in this town is besides my flat, the history department at Pride U, and the lake – do you have any iota of an idea of where I could find the “stoners”?”

Peter looked down at the book. Demonology. Interesting. In all his time being alive, he’d never tried summoning a demon. Maybe that would prove beneficial to him. He should try it some time. Maybe he’d get lucky and the thing would just kill him. Maybe he’d get extra lucky and it would work. 

“I don’t,” he said, tapping the book. “But you could always go to one of the Demonology professors and say you found one of their books. I’m sure they’d be able to find the guy it belonged to. That’s boring, though, if you ask me. You should try to track him down. What was he wearing? We could go around tapping everyone’s shoulder or something. Maybe make some new friends.”

Ok, Vee was officially freaked out. It had literally been over 300 years since she had last slept let alone had a dream and it seemed she had just experienced BOTH. Not only that, but she didn’t remember dreams being so…vivid. Or detailed. It was like she suddenly had a life time of memories that didn’t belong to her—or did they? This was crazy!

She’d decided to go for a run to clear her head—like a for real vampire quick as a flash run which took her to the edge of the forest. 

It wasn’t long before she knew exactly who she wanted to talk to. Quickly changing course, she zoomed between the trees making sure to be quick enough to keep the trees from noticing her and starting any of their funny business.

Spotting the familiar tree, she zoomed up the trunk and stopped to perch on a low branch and called up, “Peter! Hey Peeeterrrrr! You up there?”

@lostboy-peter

Peter was used to weird dreams. He had them a lot, but the most recent one had been...very weird. Like, extremely vivid and a lot of people he recognized were in it. And...he’d been a cat. Not a talking cat. Not a magical cat. Just a cat. And his owner had been none other than he new friend Vee, the vampire girl. 

When he woke up he had the urge to laugh about it with her and tell her what his brain had done, but then he’d promptly forgotten all about it as he’d gotten busy with other things. Like flying around in the cool autumn air and pestering local shop owners by throwing pebbles at their windows. 

Now though, a voice was calling to him and everything came back. He beamed as he looked down from his branch to see Vee calling up to him. Quickly, he scrambled up and let himself fall down to her. 

“Vee! You’ll never guess what I have to tell you! You can go first since you came all the way here to see me.” 

“Hey – HEY!” Ugh. Some idiot was just walking around with their knapsack wide open and something had tumbled right out. Only problem was that he’d disappeared into the crowd and Jane had absolutely no fucking idea where he went. So here she was, holding a demonology textbook and looking around.

Ugh, normally she wouldn’t care, but who the hell let an expensive textbook just fall out of their bag?! 

“Hey – you!” She walked right up to someone in the general area. “Some kid dropped this out of his bag. Tall, messy brown hair, navy knapsack, looked like so spacy I thought he just came from another planet. No idea who the hell he was but maybe you do?”  

There weren’t a lot of things Peter loved more than mingling. It was fun and it made him feel a little bit like a spy or a secret agent or something. Occasionally he would learn nifty little tidbits of information that would help him. Like one time he found out that the cafe on campus gives away their two-day-old pastries around 3pm and Peter had never missed that since. He was pretty sure those employees thought he was homeless, and they weren’t technically wrong...

That’s where he was headed now, as a matter of fact, when he was stopped by a girl holding out a text book. His brow furrowed in confusion and he shrugged. 

“I think maybe you just described one-third of the student body here. If he looked that spacey, though, you might wanna figure out where all the stoners hang out. He’d probably be with them.” 

Vee looked up at the starry night sky, her eyes wide with awe. That sounded absolutely amazing! She tried to imagine what it must look like from so high up, without the obnoxious roaring of an airplane to spoil the effect?

But then she caught his word choice and paused, raising a speculative eyebrow, asking, “Wait. Did you just say ‘usually’? As if you have actually passed out before?”

She thought it must have been a mistake or she’d heard wrong. If he’d passed out that high up—there was no way he could have survived. Was there?

Peter stopped and stared at her, unsure of what to say. Because yeah, he had said usually. He hadn’t meant to. It could totally be just a slip of the tongue, though, right? He didn’t have to own up to anything. Did he want to?

No that would be stupid. Plus, it would bring up a whole lot of feelings that he didn’t need. Right now he was actually feeling okay. The darkness that lived inside of him was dormant, sulking in the corner until it saw it’s next point of attack. 

“Oh, did I?” Peter asked, laughing. “Can you imagine if I had passed out up in the sky? I wouldn’t be around anymore, that’s for sure. I did almost pass out once and that was enough for me. Now I don’t really push my limits all that much.” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Vee said with a shrug, picking at her fingernails like it was no big deal, though she was trying not to laugh. “All the better to catch our prey, my dear,” she added in a mock creep old lady voice as she curled her fingers into claws. A small voice in the back of her mind worried that she might be taking the vampire jokes a bit too far too soon. You’re going to scare the scare the poor guy away at this rate you twit, it warned.

“Ok, but seriously,” she laughed this time, leaning casually against the tree trunk “the vampire super powers are kinda wasted on my family since we don’t really hunt. Not humans anyways.”

“But what about you?” she eyed the way he was “standing” on a twig that should have snapped in two by now, “You can fly and that is so freaking cool! Have you ever tried to see how high you can go?”

Had he tried to see how high he could go? 

Of course he had! The answer was pretty high, actually. Until he passed out. And then he would wake up the next day on the ground feeling pretty sore, but he’d be alive. And that was the real kicker. Him. Alive. Still. 

Peter shook his head, trying to clear it from the momentary intrusion of the darkness. “Yeah, I can go until I feel like I’m going to pass out from lack of oxygen. Then I usually stop because passing out in the air would be stupid,” he joked. Because it was stupid. Didn’t mean he hadn’t done it more than once or twice. “Before that though the view is really nice. It’s like looking at a really big map.” 

Never race with a vampire—especially not a competitive one. Unless you don’t mind losing, of course.

Vee’s face had shifted to a mischievous smirk in reply to Peter’s eyebrow waggle. She followed his gaze, identifying the mark and before the challenge was fully issued, she was off! A second later she reached the tree, showing off a little with a leap and a little somersault mid-air before landing gracefully on a branch about seven meters above the ground.

She grinned widely, her—well not her heart, her spirit maybe? Her spirits were soaring. This was literally the first time in her existence she’d made a non-vampire friend she could completely let loose around and just—play. And it was marvelous!

“This tree, you mean?” she called out, laughing at seeing her friend still standing where she’d left him half a second before. “Or were you talking about some other tree?”

Before Peter could even blink the girl was gone. Holy shit. He knew vampires were fast but he didn’t know they were that fast. He laughed, completely delighted. This was going to be fun! 

He shot up into the air and did a few somersaults before heading over to the tree. He was fast too, but he had nothing on her. “Yeah,” he said when he reached her. He put his foot on a branch so it looked like he was walking on it, when really he was still floating. “Are all vampires as fast as you?”

Vee waited to see his reaction, all tense and nervous for about half a second until he did the absolute opposite thing she expected. His entire demeanor lit up—which was saying something because he had already been pretty cheerful.

People who found out usually drew away, almost in horror, but not Peter. Nope. This boy grabbed her hand and gushed about how cool it was.

Once she’d gotten over the initial shock, all she could do was laugh along with him. Because, yeah. This was amazing! Not that she was a vampire. She already know that. But that this boy didn’t immediately treat her like a monster, and she wasn’t prepared for how emotional that made her. If she could cry, she would have been crying tears of joy.

When he blushed at his lack of self restraint she just laughed some more, so excited that she did one of the most impulsive things she’d ever done and threw her arms around him in a not-quite bone crushing hug. “Oh my gosh, you have no idea how ridiculously happy I am. Thank you for not running away.”

Peter wasn’t one to turn down hugs when they were offered to him. He wrapped his arms around his new vampire friend and tried to pretend she wasn’t crushing the life out of him with her superhuman strength. Not like it mattered.Even if she did crush him he’d just wake up later. 

“Of course I didn’t run away! Do people usually run away? That’s rude of them.” Peter got it, though. Don’t tell people you’re immortal if you want to have friends. That was a lesson he’d learned a long time ago. He pulled back and put his hand on her shoulder. “I won’t run away. Unless you want to race?”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Last one up that tree is a rotten egg?” 

With each word he spoke, hope sparked inside her. Tiny little embers taking root where her heart had once beat a steady rhythm until, before she’d even realized it, a tiny flame had kindled, smoldering gently and fueling her confidence, if only for a moment.

“Ok, ok,” she held up her hands in a gesture of surrender, though she was smiling, “The truth is I don’t know how long I’ve been a great singer because that’s a matter of opinion, buuuuttt…” she laughed with a little wink, continuing, “I’ve been singing for about three hundred and fifteen years, give or take a few depending on your definition of singing.”

She became quiet, her expression sober as she looked at her toes. “And the reason for that,” Clasping her hands behind her back and going still in the way only a vampire can, “is because I am—” she bit her lip nervously, whispering, “a-a vampire.”

A VAMPIRE!

Peter had never met a vampire! He’d seen one once--a fleeting glimpse on a battlefield--but that was it. And now here he was talking to one! That was just so cool! There weren’t a lot of things that were new for Peter, or surprised him, but this revelation covered both of those bases. 

He beamed and grabbed her hand. “Wow!” He turned her hand over in his own and looked at it then held it up by one finger. “This is a vampire hand! I’m touching a vampire!” He dropped her hand and had the decency to turn a little pink in the ears. “Oh, sorry. Boundaries and all that. I’ve just never met a vampire before. And you know how hard it is to check new things off your bucket list when you get to be our age.” 

Despite the fact that she was internally kicking herself, Vee laughed. He was quite the nosy boy wasn’t he? She really shouldn’t tell. But. Wasn’t that her dream? To have no more secrets in hopes that people would love and accept her for who she was, fangs and all?

She’d told Mei and Mei had immediately stopped talking to her. Though she hadn’t blown Vee’s cover either. And then there was that werewolf nurse who knew—but, well? Werewolf. Enough said. And what about this boy, Peter? Well, he seemed nice and they clearly had something in common.

He could turn out to be a great friend! Someone who was stuck watching the world roll by without him—a lot like she did. But what if he didn’t? What if he ran away. Like everyone else? Or worse, told everyone in town? But then again, he said he wasn’t afraid of scary monsters—maybe he meant it?

Only one way to find out.

She pursued her lips and crossed her arms, looking up at the boy still cheerfully floating above her, a teasing eyebrow raised as she said, “Alright, let’s assume for a moment that I do have a secret. Would you even believe me if I told you I was a super scary monster?”

By the time she finished her question, Peter was lying in the air in front of her, his elbow resting on nothing. He smiled and thought about it. It would make sense. She was out in the middle of the night, not a care in the world, singing at the top of her lungs. Obviously she could take care of herself. Not a lot of “normal” teenage girls were that careless at night. 

“I don’t know. I think it might make a lot of sense. I don’t know about scary, though. And monster sort of sounds judgmental. I don’t know if I could call you a monster by any stretch of the imagination.” 

Peter floated back down to the ground and bounced on his toes. “Are you a monster? Immortal, maybe? You know how cool that would be for me? So cool!”