A/N: Based off a prompt from the WriteWorld blog.
Night seems deeper in a land touched by magic. Maybe it's a trick of her eyes, but Emma can't see any stars. The only light comes from the fading embers of the campfire, and the glimmers it sends along the ridges of the compass. She holds it by the chain, letting it swing gently, light dancing on the gold.
"That's pretty."
She almost jumps, but manages to stop the jolt in her chest. Aurora is sitting up in the near-darkness, her smile weak.
Emma lowers the compass, heart still pounding. "You okay? Why aren't you sleeping?"
Aurora shrugs and says simply, "I can't." She comes over to sit next to Emma, her shawl wrapped tightly around her. "I think I've slept enough for a lifetime."
Looking at her, Emma can't help thinking of the statuesque blonde beauty that more than a few foster homes tried to make her watch and read about. She never really latched on to the whole princess thing, but she has to admit, Aurora is growing on her. Something about her seems familiar—maybe it's the fragility, the delicacy not just in the words she says, but in her face and the very way she moves. Something about her is uncertain, afraid.
And funny enough, that fear is comforting to Emma. Because she's seen it before. Felt it before, even if she refuses to remember it.
"So what do we do now?" Aurora asks suddenly.
Emma looks at her blankly. "Do?"
"We have the compass. We still need the ashes. How are we going to find Cora?" Aurora's eyebrows are knitted together in a frown, and the sight makes Emma almost nervous.
"You should let me worry about that," she says to the younger woman gently.
Aurora's eyes light up in the darkness, shining as she leans closer to Emma, her voice dropping excitedly. "So you know what to do? What's your plan?"
Three simple words, but they send a pang through Emma's chest, make her throat go dry. She turns away from Aurora and tracing the faint outlines of trees against one another in the darkness, closing her eyes against the ghosts. They're all screaming, shrieking for her attention over each other, and all she wants is to push them out.
It's the day. She only knows because the officer comes early, earlier than breakfast—she gave up on the tally on the wall a few weeks in. Walking along, caged by dimly lit cinderblock walls, she knows she should feel something: relief, happiness, even excitement. But she's hollow, the inside of her chest echoing like the low-ceilinged cell corridors.
She's brought to a desk. It's the only polished piece of wood she's ever seen in the penitentiary. The black and white forms blur before her eyes, and all she knows is that she's being told to sign, and answer questions for something they're calling a psychological evaluation.
When the officer asks about spouses and children, she looks up and hopes the woman can't see the emptiness in her eyes.
The woman lists Emma's belongings to make sure she recognizes them all. Finally, she stamps the top form with a very official-looking insignia in red ink, and looks up at Emma one last time. "Congratulations, sweetheart. You're out. What's your plan?"
"Emma?"
Aurora's voice, this time tinged with concern, takes Emma out of the starch-white room and drops her back into the pitch-black forest again.
She's breathing shallowly and her fingertips are shaking, so she clenches them around the compass to steady them. She searches for a way to answer, a way that will both reassure Aurora and keep Emma from lying.
She comes up blank. She turns to Aurora, takes a deep breath, and tells her the most honest thing she can—and as she does, she hears them echo not just around the clearing, but in that small white room of a decade ago, underlined with fear.
"I have no plan."