Wildness
I read a lot of story books when I was little. Where there were grand adventures and the heroine often knew who she wanted on first glance. I didn't like the girls much as they never got to do much and it was boys who had all the adventures. I didn't believe much in the story books, and the knowing who you wanted on first glance. Until I was woken up by a boy trying to stick his shadow back on.
He was fey and wild and dangerous, was Peter, so different from the adults and London and the person they wanted to mould me into. So different that I was drawn like a moth to a flame and didn't think twice about following him out of the window, followed by my brothers.
Adventures and pirates followed, and taking care of the other Lost Boys and... Peter lied, or maybe he didn't know it would happen. We did grow up. Only not in the London way. We were still wild, and though not exactly carefree, there weren't corsets and rules about how to sit or earning money to live, and skirts to my ankles because it was ladylike, the way adults back in London meant it when they said to grow up.
Growing up was becoming taller and stronger and changing shape and being kissed by Peter after a rough and tumble wrestling match down a short grassy hillside into the water, when he'd dragged me up, spluttering, grinning as I cursed, and leaning in because he said I looked like I needed it. My response was to curse some more and shove him. I wasn't in the mood for being kissed at that moment, especially not if he thought it was funny. The second and third kisses were started by me, the second in gratitude for a small kindness exactly when I needed it, and the third was a kiss by firelight after the boys had been put to bed. That one had more intent than the other two.
That kiss led to other kisses, and other things as we grew further still. When Peter and I were as wild as any satyr would care to be. Later still came a child, a girl, which the boys marvelled over. Lost Boys would still arrive, but no girls, as Peter had always said they were too sensible to fall out of their prams. Sensible, maybe, I'd tell him, but they still wanted wildness. We just didn't know how to ask for it. They said, back in London, that girls grow up faster than boys. It's just that we know responsibility earlier. It doesn't stop us wanting wildness.