All she could hear was the thundering of hooves behind her as she ran through the forest. It was light enough that people could see, so there was no place to hide. She came to a stop in the middle of a clearing and looked in every direction to see which way she would go next. In front of her the clearing opened to what sounded like a stream. To her left and right, the forest grew thick with brush the deeper you went. And behind her the sounds of the hooves grew louder.

She decided to take her chance with the stream and went straight ahead. She knew anyone with half a brain would go to a water source to try and get away from people who were hunting them.

As she went forth, the sounds of the hooves grew fainter behind her until she could hear them no more. She continued through the field and was met with a hill the moment she hit the tree line. Looking around she could see that there was no safer way to get down than the spot in front of her, so she carefully started to slide down the hill, taking one step at a time and dodging trees.

At the bottom of the hill, her eyes focused in on her target and she smiled at herself. She had finally found it!

There, on the other side of the stream, was the buck that she had set out to find earlier that morning. It had eluded her all morning and most of the early afternoon, but now she had finally caught up to it.

Emma slowly pulled out her bow and equipped an arrow and carefully aimed at the animal that was about 200 yards away; an easy shot by her mother's standards. As she was just about to let her arrow go, another arrow flew past her head and into the animal's chest, dropping dead instantly. Her eyes were wide as she saw her hunt laying on the ground with an arrow that wasn't hers.

"Nice try there. Thanks for leading me to him darling," a soft voice declared behind her. Emma sighed and put her arrow back and bow away.

"Mother," she moaned, "You know I had him! I was about ready to aim when you came in and shot him before I did." Emma turned to fully face her mother at that point.

Queen Snow just laughed as she flipped her braided her behind her back and knelt next to her daughter. "Emma, you still have much to learn about the forest. Yes, your archery skills are nothing short of spectacular now. But you need to learn to read animals. If you did, you would have known that the buck had grown stiff and weary. He was getting ready to dash and you would have missed your shot if you had taken it."

Emma couldn't help but agree with her mother. She knew that she had more work to do if she was to know as much as her mother did. But being on the run from the Evil Queen kind of forced her to become very good very quickly or die trying. Emma had the luxury of learning at her own pace.

"You're right. Maybe that will be the next lesson?" she asked her mother, hope quickly bubbling in her voice at the thought of moving on in the lessons. Snow just nodded her head and smiled as she watched her daughter jump up and down with excitement.

"Just remember, it's still a race to see who will get the animal first. And I will still win," Snow said with a wink to Emma, who in turn scoffed before headed to the fallen dear.

"Oh Emma, don't worry about it! The dwarves said if we get it today, they would take it home and cook it up for dinner!" Snow called from the trees behind her.

She only smiled back at her with a little tint of rebellion in her eyes. "Well, that's good that he won't go to waste but I don't think it's fair that they have to come all the way out here to get it just to take him all the way home…"

"Emma Ruth…" Snow started calling, "I know exactly what you're thinking and the answer is no! Don't you remember the last time you tried that?"

Emma just shrugged her shoulders a little and looked back. "Okay, so I accidentally ended up in the swamps with the Ogres. Nothing bad happened. We now have a growing friendship with them because of it."

Snow couldn't help but drop her head in defeat. Of course, she had to bring that part up. How did she forget! It's not like she couldn't stop her anyways because no matter what…

THUMP!

Snow White looked up quickly from her spot and started running to where her daughter had just been. The area was now surrounded in a white, heavy smoke and she could hear someone coughing in it. She reached for her arrows, never knowing what was going to happen when her daughter used her magic for teleporting to other areas. Sometimes nothing appeared, sometimes birds or other small animals appeared. One time a child appeared and they cried the whole time until they were reunited with their mother.

The smoke in the area was starting to clear up and Snow could make out a small person in the middle of it. She started to put her bow away, not wanting to scare a child with it and got closer to help them up. As she got closer, the coughing started to turn to sneezing and she feared the child may have gotten too much smoke in their lungs... until she saw that it wasn't a small child at all.

"Sneezy?" She cried. The dwarf just looked up at her and smiled and then went right back to sneezing. "Oh goodness. Well, at least that means she made it to your home this time," she said as she helped him up and they started walking back to the castle.

Later that evening, after much thanks from the dwarfs for dinner and three failed attempts to get back home, Emma sat in her room getting herself ready to turn in for the night. She sat in front of her vanity brushing out her long, golden hair and then weaved it into a braid for bed. As she sat, she pondered over her magic.

How come she was the only person in her family to have magic? No one else had ever heard of any ancestors being able to wield it. She had been told that it was because she was the product of true love and that sometimes those born because of it were blessed with magic. But that was only a legend. No one in this land was able to wield magic except for two people: the Dark One and Fairies. Although she had heard that fairies could bestow magic onto those they deem worthy, but they never gave it to a newborn. It was always an older adult. And she had been born with it.

Oh well. It didn't matter anyway. The last person to have powers bestowed upon them was the Evil Queen who had been taken down by her parents many years ago. Ever since the Evil Queen's reign the fairies had all but disappeared from the Enchanted Forest, leaving the place without magic for at least 20 years. That was, until Emma was born. And she was learning from her books pretty well.

Emma shook her head violently to get her thought out of her head. Every time she started thinking too hard on the subject she always ended up with migraines and the next day was horrible to get through. She got up from her stool and walked her way over to her bed and laid down. As she started to drift off to sleep she looked out her windows and out into the forest and let her mind wander to the next lesson she was to learn tomorrow.

The next day Emma had awoken with much anticipation. Her mother was going to finally teach her how to read the animals and find effective ways to communicate. She was always in awe when she would watch her mother calmly walk up to a woodland creature, gently talking to it, and just pick it up and start petting it, or the animal would come to her and perch on her arms. When Emma tried all she did was scare the poor creature away while her mother giggled behind her. She wondered why she didn't teach her this first when they started this when she was five. Why wait until she was 16? Oh well, better late than never.

Or at least that's what she had said this morning. It was already afternoon; the sun was at its highest peak and was beating down relentlessly on the princess and the Queen. The trees offered some shelter from the sun, but the shade was sparse as they were in the less dense part of the forest closer to the castle.

"Mom," Emma cried, "can we please take a small break? It's so hot out today!" She had taken a seat on a stump nearby.

Snow just turned around and looked at her poor offspring. "Emma, we need to get to the rabbit's hole before long. If we stop, they'll be gone by the time we get there!"

Emma only let out a loud sigh when she got an idea in her head. "Hey how about this. You keep walking, I'll stay here for just a minute or two and then run to catch up with you. I know where the rabbit hole is so even if I don't find you I can find it!"

Snow looked down at her daughter and closed her eyes. Didn't she know running was only going to exhaust her more? When she opened them again she saw Emma bouncing in her seat and just smiled weakly. How else was she going to learn?

"Okay, but don't be too long. If you get lost I may have to send Ruby out to find you."

Emma's smile was huge and it made Snow's heart melt a little. Her baby girl was growing up and there was nothing she could do to stop or slow it down. She gave her a smile back and turned around to keep walking towards their destination.

Emma sat back further on her stump until she met the tree behind her and closed her eyes. It really was a beautiful day out. But it was just too hot for them to be doing anything. Even her father, who loves to train every day, decided to stay indoors today. Now that was saying something.

When she was sure her mother was far enough away that she couldn't hear, or see her, Emma opened her eyes and pulled out a little bag of rice. She put one grain in her palm, covered it with her other hand, and began to chant silently until she saw a white light come from her hands. With anticipation, she opened her hands and let out a shriek of joy. In her hand was not only the grain she started with, but at least ten more! She had finally gotten the duplication spell down! She started putting the rice back into her bag, seeing as how it's been way longer than the two or three minutes her mother had told her, and got up to start in the direction of the rabbit hole.

Emma had only walked a few yards when she came upon a peculiar site. Before her was a large circle of mushrooms, or better known as a fairy circle. She thought back to all the readings she'd done and wondered how it ended up here? These rings only appeared when a fairy was around who was willing to help out a human should they find their ring. And well, seeing as how no fairy had been in this land for 20 or so years, they were all gone, their magic taken with their fairy. Could this just be the way the mushrooms wanted to grow? Oh well, no matter. She had a rabbit hole to get to and a wolf to keep off her back if she was late.

And so, not even thinking twice about it, Emma began to step into the fairy circle to make her way to her mom, when all of a sudden her vision grew dark. The trees around her began to fade from her sight. The ground underneath felt like it was giving way.

And then, there was nothing.

Hello all and thanks for reading. This story was my gift for my CSSV this year. Hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think!