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epilogue,      second star to the right.

    KAELYN CARROWAY grew up hating magic. She had been raised to see it as dangerous, something to fear and avoid, as if it were a common occurrence. In all her eighteen years of life, she had never once seen someone display magic of any kind, or certainly not the way her father spoke of it. There were the people who claimed clairvoyance, who begged for money in exchange for fortunes in the street, or the street performers that did things that were harmless but impressive. Kaelyn would tell herself it couldn't be magic because magic wasn't beautiful, not like the elegant fireworks they breathed or the fortunes they painted of the most simple things.

    Some would argue that magic had been the reason she was alive at all. It had been the worst storm in living memory when Kaelyn had been found at the farmers' doorstep, bundled in indigo blankets without any note or memoir left behind. They had been kind and taken her in, out of the wind and the rain, and after little thought, had decided to take her in and raise her as their own. They had had a daughter of their own, Cielle, who always shunned her as false family, but as they grew older she had mellowed out and accepted her as best she could.

    Kaelyn had accepted that she would never know where she came from. She had been delivered during the worst storm in living memory, and in that had accepted that any hope of finding out who had left her behind was washed away with the rain. The Carroways gave her a home, they gave her a place to stay and food to eat. Mrs Carroway homeschooled the girls as best she could, as they helped on the farm, and Kaelyn grew to love reading.

    The day she had been old enough to accompany her father with the stall into town to extend their sales had truly opened her eyes. She loved people, the fact that everyone who passed through and bought from them, anyone that passed her by in the street or she briefly waved at in childish innocence held their own story to them. They were their own book in a living library. Cielle had called her stupid when she had tried to explain that the next day, but as Kaelyn had come to find, the two sisters were very different.

    Cielle was loud and proud, she made her opinion known, she demanded attention and what she wanted. She was stubborn, and for the first few years of Kaelyn's life had actually made her miserable. Kaelyn wasn't quite sure when she had stopped treating her like a parasite and as family, but one day the blonde girl suddenly became her older sister and had never looked back. It was nice, feeling like there was someone to back her up, and especially someone with the attitude of Cielle.

    Kaelyn was never quite sure why her family hated magic so much. On the occasions she had encountered someone who bore it, her father had spat about them afterwards, how they were good money but nothing else, something to be avoided, an anomaly in the human condition. The sort of spiteful stuff that could have only come from a past experience, Kaelyn decided. She had read stories of men like her father, forgetting that real life and fiction were different. Magic had always been something dark to her, something forbidden and dangerous.

    But she believed she saw magic in his eyes.

    Malcolm was the local town over's mischief maker, famously abandoned by his father and now making his way through the streets. Not quite illegal enough to be caught or prosecuted, but enough that all the guards looked at him in disdain and the poor looked at him as a hero. Kaelyn had seen him a few times when she had travelled away from home to sell produce, humming in the back of her father's wagon as they went.

    Cielle didn't like travelling. She liked the familiar taste of home. Kaelyn was fine with that, she liked seeing new places and people, so she was the designated assistant when her father went on trips between towns. Malcolm's town had cobbled stone streets, a gated garden area, and a sprawling collection of cottages along the edges. Kaelyn considered it wealthy, so always wondered how the boy had ended up poor as rags.

    They had loyal clientele in the town, so Kaelyn had been going since her early teen years, and she still remembered when she had first caught Malcolm's eye. She had been young, just fourteen, when she had witnessed him blindside a jeweller, and he had met her eyes afterwards, green like the forest and gleaming with mischief. They had gone their separate ways and Kaelyn had tussled with reporting him to the police for the rest of the day. He was not a horrible criminal, but the just part of her felt wrong.

    She had been leaving to head home, the words on the tip of her tongue, when Malcolm had approached her, the same height as her in their youth, carrying a dusted bouquet. Kaelyn had only been able to blink as he had asked her father if he could have a moment with his daughter, and then she found herself alone with the thief.

    "Promise you didn't see anything," he mused, holding out the purple flowers. Kaelyn had blinked at him in disbelief, scoffing loudly and glancing at her father, who was watching the exchange carefully.

    "You're a thief," she pointed out.

    "Not to you," Malcolm snipped. "Your family worked for your money. The tools I steal from aren't good people."

    "Does that help you sleep at night?" she jeered.

    Malcolm nodded. "Like a baby."

    "Cute," she responded, taking the flowers. "You're buying me off."

    "Can't a boy get a girl flowers?" Malcolm asked, slyly.

    Kaelyn ignored the light feeling in her chest. "What'd you do with the ring?" she said instead.

    Malcolm grinned. "That's a secret."

    Kaelyn had ignored her father's pestering the entire ride home, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach, her small hands clinging tightly to the flowers as she replayed the conversation over in her mind. So rarely she spent time with people her age, she convinced herself that was why she was excited to see him again.

    As soon as she got home she had placed the flowers in a vase by the window, watching them straighten out and bloom a vivid purple, the sort of colour she adored. Malcolm had no way to know her favourite colour, but she counted it as something that the petals were.

    The years continued to pass, and Kaelyn had become proficient in writing and reading, surpassing her mother's teaching. She had begun to accompany her father on all his travels, and visited the neighbouring towns every month, after every new moon. She had seen Malcolm again and again, every time like clockwork. It had taken her a few visits before she realised he was seeking her out, and it wasn't luck that they crossed each time.

    Then she started to seek him out, departing from her father to find him, spending the day running amuck with the other teenager. He showed her around town, bought her more flowers with dirty money, and finished off by sitting in the gardens while the sun set. Kaelyn told him about her family, where she had and hadn't come from, how her family hated magic. And he told her wonderful things, how he longed to have the power at his fingertips, how he lived with fairies on the outskirts of town who were kind and generous. They were nothing like the demons her father had warned her about, and seeing how fondly Malcolm talked about it, Kaelyn found herself believing it too.

    It was easier to believe anything when he was talking to her, with his carved face, pink lips and green eyes that she swore could get her to do anything. It took her a while to admit she found him beautiful, and even longer that she probably liked him a bit too much, especially for her family's liking. He was a peasant boy who stole from the rich to give to the poor and to survive. But at the end of the day, he made Kaelyn happy.

    "Look who it is," she'd hear from behind and she'd automatically perk up, dark eyes glowing.

    "Oh, it's you," she would tease.

    "You missed me," Malcolm would say.

    "Always," she'd agree.

    She was eighteen when they finally kissed under the stars. Nothing had ever felt more right than that. Her sister had already moved out and married, but Kaelyn had wanted to wait until she was sure she was making the right choice, knowing she was lucky to be given the choice at all. Her parents had convinced her to pursue her writing further in life, and so when she wasn't running around town with Malcolm or helping out in the fields, she was slaving over paper in her room until the right words aligned themselves.

    "I don't know how to read," Malcolm had admitted when Kaelyn had first tried to show him a piece of what she was working on. She'd been sad initially, before convincing him to let her teach him, and from there he had taken a liking to whatever she wrote, though she knew it was simply because it was the only thing he'd ever read.

    And despite their blossoming relationship, Kaelyn didn't talk leaving home, the future, anything. She was perfectly content where she was, that night she ended up sitting atop a roof, gazing up at the stars in peaceful quiet, enjoying the moments they could share before Kaelyn would return home again the next day. She had offered him hospice multiple times, but he rejected. Maybe out of shame or inconvenience. Kaelyn wasn't sure, but she made sure he always knew her door was wide open.

    "The moon is beautiful tonight," Malcolm said, softly, glancing at her.

    "It's a new moon," Kaelyn giggled. "But look at the stars." She sighed contently. "Someone once told me the stars were people who'd died," Kaelyn said, thoughtfully, thinking of one of the many magicians who she'd encountered overtime. "And the glow is from the last pieces of their souls."

    "Souls?" Malcolm asked, quizzically, looking at Kaelyn.

    "Yeah," she said, softly, Malcolm looking at her in fascination. "It's the energy of a person. Everyone has one, and it's the one thing of ours that stays after death. It's the most raw and powerful form of a person. It's beautiful."

    Malcolm moved to look back at the night sky. "I was always told the stars were other far away worlds," he told Kaelyn. "I always wished I could just leave my dad and disappear up there."

    "Where would you have gone?" Kaelyn asked.

    Malcolm raised a hand, pointing randomly at the sky, Kaelyn following the tip of his finger intently. "Second star to the right– there." Kaelyn gazed at the bright star, whose blinking almost seemed to stand out amongst the others. "I imagined a place called Neverland. It's full of trees, and waterfalls, and you never grow up and everyone plays games all day. There are no bedtimes, no parents, no rules. It's fun, and it's safe."

    "Sounds like a nice place," Kaelyn said, wistfully, seeing how a child would find solace in the idea.

    Malcolm smiled, looking down at her. "It's nicer here," he said, softly.

    And she moved up against him, stars blinking in her wide dark eyes, she felt as if she had all the time in the world.

END.

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[ 2023 note ] and it's over! thank you everyone so, so much for reading this far <3

i know this ending may not be what everyone was hoping for, but it is thematically what i think works best for kaelyn's story. i never truly saw this story going further than this point in the canon storyline, and at the time of finishing, i've fallen out of love with ouat to the point i don't want to put the effort into rewriting the story and characters' roles.

the ending is still left open and ambiguous, and this epilogue is basically the "happy" ending of kaelyn if she was never born with magic, and how she would still meet peter and be happier because at the end of the day, the main theme of this story was that kaelyn being the strongest ruined her. but consider this kaelyn and peter's "in another life"

i've had this plot for an ungodly amount of time (kaelyn was originally a cheeky brunette named kalene taken from one of my ANCIENT mcu fics (WILD)) and i first published this story in 2019 before disappearing off the face of the earth for like two years then slowly coming back and pumping it out in pretty much six months because i knew exactly where it was going.

some of the chapters were then of course written when i was about 15, but they've since been edited but now now i'm 18/19 and while finishing this story i actually changed the ending halfway through. it's not perfect, but it means a lot to me, so thank you to everyone who has read and commented, especially my regulars who put up with some awful update timetables. 

you're all the best, and i hope to see you soon somewhere else on my profile <3