"So," said Belle, folding her arms and cocking her head. "I don't believe you."
"Don't believe me concerning what, dearie?" Her mother-in-sort-of-law queried in that velvety voice of hers. How did a woman with such a refined accent and erudite diction hook up with Malcolm, Belle wondered in passing. But there wasn't time for trivial musings.
"They call you 'the Black Fairy.' I don't believe you're a fairy at all. I think you're a demon or something of the like." She was playing with a full-fledged conflagration, Belle was, and she knew it, but she was a mother whose son had been tormented and kept locked in a cage for years, and Belle remembered cages, her own and Rumple's, and the damp, moldy hopelessness that seeped in through the floors and puddled around the prisoner's soul. "So I think you're a liar."
"I think you've read one too many fantasy tales, daughter," Fiona tossed off a small laugh.
"Prove me wrong."
"Pardon me?"
"Prove me wrong. Show me your fairy form."
It was a small ask, and if it would win Belle's trust (and through her, Rumple's) so be it. Fiona flicked her wand and in the twinkling of an eye she resumed her fairy appearance: winged and no bigger than a butterfly.
No, no bigger than a gnat, Belle smirked, and with a flick of her own wand, borrowed from the pawnshop, she changed Her Handsome Hero into a six-foot tall winged tome, which she sent flying at the Black Gnat, the pages wide open. Another flick and the oversized novel shut with a satisfying snap, followed by a most enjoyable splat.
Rumple snapped his fingers to restore the book to its normal size and Gideon bent down to retrieve it. "Let me clean up that horrible stain in our book, Mother." He conjured a cloth.
"Feel better, Belle?"
"Much." Belle linked her arm through her husband's.