The fairies had always known what was to come and how things would be after the curse was enacted, so it came as no surprised to them when they felt the first shifts of magic stirring on the breeze.
Nova could sense it in the air she breathed, like the feeling of an on-coming storm brewing in the palm of her hand. Magic rippled through the air, tense and eager to fight, to flee.
It brought her no fear as she watched the fabric of the world turning in on itself, dismantling all she had learned to love.
Instead, she breathed a sigh of relief.
In the next world, too, the fairies would be separated like pariahs; residing in the convent, safe and sound among those just like them. Few of them remember how life had been, and the rare soul that did was wont to drink themselves into a stupor to forget anyway.
But not Nova. She would sit and watch time sift by, playing with her memories and letting them slip through her fingers like little silvery fish.
The worlds blended so seamlessly for them, those fairies who had forgotten.
But Nova could see. This world was raw, a newborn baby in a world full of monsters that even the most daring of princes couldn't slay. Storybrook was hastily patched together, interconnecting storylines all mixing and melting together underneath the Queen's oppressive rule.
Little had changed, really. Names alone kept some characters from who they really were.
Leroy, her Dreamy, was one of those.
But others were so thoroughly buried beneath the weight of the curse that they barely resembled themselves, lost as they were in regards to who they once had been and what they once had.
Regardless, Nova found that Storybrook was not unlike the world they all had once known.
The one thing that had truly, dramatically changed, however, was the Queen.
Well, perhaps it was not so much a change as it was her victory, her unquestioned and unopposed rule over all.
The Queen inflicted Nova's only pain in a subtle, yet substantial form.
Every year, the Miner's Day Festival was had in the squares and corners of Storybrook. The Queen paraded the fairies like captives of war around amongst the ignorant townsfolk, showing them off as if to say, 'I can tame the ever powerful fairies into submission. Who do you think you are, you insignificant pieces of sum, to oppose me?'
Nova shouldered the burden of this knowledge without peep.
She knew the Queen remembered. She was well aware of the purpose of this parade.
But every painful year, Nova carried the shame of her race on her small shoulders, as one of the few who knew she was a prisoner of war. But she smiled and sold her candles to those living in the darkness of their forgotten pasts without a word of complaint or rebellion.
Loud talk was wonderful for moral.
But in reality, what could a fairy do without her magic?