A/N: Story is based on the movie Pete's Dragon, which for some reason when I saw it had me picturing Little!Emma lost in the woods. I don't own Pete's Dragon or OUAT. Please also note that the story is completely AU with Emma and Lily as children, and Regina and Mal in an established relationship. First chapter is mostly an intro and focuses solely on Emma but the remainder of the chapters will include all characters. Hope you enjoy! :)

Chapter 1

Go north, go north, with wings on your feet

North with the wind, where the three rivers meet

Look all around you and see:

Deep in the forest their dragons will be

Four year old Emma Swan sat in the back seat of her social worker's sedan. Her little legs dangled off the edge of the seat, coming nowhere close to reaching the floor of the car, and she swung them back and forth, unintentionally smacking the seat in front of her.

"Don't do that Emma," the social worker, a nice enough lady named Julie, eyed her thru the rearview mirror.

"Sorry," Emma mumbled, ducking her head. She thought that maybe Julie was mad at her because she'd had to come pick her up again. She'd tried really hard to be on her bestest behaviour, to be a good girl, she really had. She hadn't meant to break the lamp, or get sick all over the floor, or wake everyone up when that thunderstorm had scared her, or any of the other things she'd gotten yelled at about.

As if she could read the little girl's mind, Julie sighed softly, "Hey kiddo, it's okay." When Emma didn't look up or acknowledge her words she added, "I'm taking you to a nice new home, you know. The McCartney's live out in the middle of the forest, you'll get to see all kinds of birds and other wildlife, and they even have chickens." She waited for the blonde head to finally bob back up, wide green eyes, hesitant yet hopeful, looking at her through the rearview mirror, and she smiled at the child, "I really think you'll like it."

"Chickens that make eggs?" Emma asked curiously. They'd been learning about farm animals in kindergarten.

"Mmhm," Julie nodded, her eyes back on the road, "Maybe you'll get to help collect the eggs."

"Like Easter?" Emma asked. Not that she'd ever collected Easter eggs as far as she could remember but last month at school they'd painted eggs pretty colours and the other kids had talked about Easter egg hunts. It sounded fun.

"Sort of," Julie smiled, glancing into the backseat through the rearview mirror again, "We still have a ways to go. Why don't you read that book I brought for you?"

Emma glanced over to the seat beside her, where her red backpack with all of her worldly possession sat, and beside it, the book Julie had handed her as she climbed into the backseat. She picked that up now and stroked the cover of it. It had a cute puppy on the front and she liked that. She scrunched up her nose and tried to read the title, "El...El...Ell…"

"Elliot," Julie supplied.

"Elliot," Emma nodded seriously and then moved on to the next words. These two she knew, "Gets Lost."

"That's right," Julie nodded encouragingly and Emma beamed.

Reading was hard. Her teacher, Mrs. Appleby, said you were supposed to practice at home with your parents but her foster parents always said they were too busy and that Emma should stop being so annoying. Children were meant to be seen and not heard. That's what they always said. She tried practicing by herself but it was hard because she never knew if she got the words right or not. She was getting better, Mrs. Appleby had said so and she'd even given Emma a shiny star sticker for being so improved. Emma knew lots of words now, but not all of them, there were just so many to know, like at least a hundred, she thought. Mostly when she opened a book, she just made the story up based on the pictures. That was more fun anyway.

Emma opened the book, studying the glossy picture on the first page of Elliot the puppy sitting in the back seat of a car with a boy and a girl. There was a mommy and a daddy in the front seat and everybody was smiling big smiles. They were going on an adventure, Emma decided. Maybe her new foster parents would have a puppy and if she was extra extra good they could go on an adventure like the people in this book. That would be fun. She'd never been on an adventure. No one ever took her anywhere. Well, Julie did take her to new families all the time, but that wasn't fun and Emma was pretty sure adventures were supposed to be fun. She looked up from the book, intent on asking Julie if that was true, that it was only an adventure if you had fun, but the question never left her lips.

Emma's eyes widened as she saw the deer that dashed into the path of the car and Julie shrieked and the car veered right.

And then the car was flipping and flipping and flipping. And when it finally stopped, the whole world was upside down.

Emma didn't move from the backseat of the car for a long time. Not till long after she'd given up trying to get Julie to wake up, not till the sun had set and the moon had appeared in the sky.

She climbed her way out of the backseat of the car through a broken window, sniffling and wiping at her watery eyes and running nose with the sleeve of her pink jacket before her eyes darted left to right, taking in the forest surrounding her. She couldn't see the road at all. They must have fallen a really really long way in the car.

She spotted her red backpack and not too far away from it was Elliot Gets Lost. She crouched to pick up the book first, brushing away carefully at the dirt covering it, before she slid it into her backpack.

She jumped at the howling sound that suddenly surrounded her. Straightening, she hugged the backpack to her chest as she quivered, her eyes resuming their previous darting, back and forth and back and forth, seeing nothing but darkness and trees. The howling got louder, got closer, and she shook harder, terrified. She could see beady eyes glowing in the darkness now - it seemed like hundreds of them - and she whimpered, frozen in the spot she stood, unsure what to do. She slammed her eyes shut. If she couldn't see them, then maybe they wouldn't see her. The howling stopped suddenly and for the briefest of seconds she thought her plan had worked and then the ground shook.

She peeked her eyes open just in time to see four furry green legs appear in her line of sight seemingly out of thin air. She had to tilt her head right up to take in the rest of this giant green thing, whatever it was. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers and another whimper escaped her lips as the hairy green four legged giant thing took a step closer to her.

Whatever it was, as if sensing her fear, it stopped moving, standing perfectly still so that she could look up at it. She continued to tremble, waiting, for what, she didn't know. After what felt like forever, the furry green giant thing kneeled, extending its paws forward and face up. Emma looked between the giant paws and the giant face, now much closer to her. Up closer like this, she couldn't help but think that this thing's face looked just like a puppy's. Well like a giant green puppy with a broken tooth sticking out. But still. Maybe that's what it was. A giant puppy. Like Clifford.

The thing tilted its head and Emma swallowed thickly. It wanted her to climb up, she could tell, but she was scared. What if the giant puppy wanted to eat her? It seemed nice. But what if it wasn't? Her eyes darted behind her to the forest, remembering the scary glowing eyes that had surrounded her. The eyes were definitely scarier. She took a hesitant step forward and then another and then she carefully climbing into the awaiting paws, one of her hands brushing against the green fur and widening in surprise at how incredibly soft it was, the tiniest of smiles appearing at the realization.

As soon as she climbed up, the thing was pulling her closer to its chest, wings she hadn't noticed before starting to flap.

And then they were flying.

It definitely wasn't a puppy.

6 years later

Emma eyed her reflection in the stream she stood beside. She was taller now. She mostly knew this because she'd long since outgrown the few pieces of clothing that had been packed in her red backpack - although she liked to use the remaining tattered pieces of material to tie around her waist to form a skirt of sorts. Her hair was longer too, it nearly came down to her waist, and no matter how many times she washed off in the stream, it remained matted and tangled - not that she particularly cared.

The feeling of the early afternoon sun on her skin made her smile and she kneeled down to take a drink of water from the stream. The weather had been warm now for about a month and that made her happy. Warm was so much better than cold.

She looked up when she heard rustling from the other side of the water and she immediately straightened as her eyes locked on a rather large bear. Clearly seeing her as well, the bear stood on his hind legs and let out a loud roar.

Emma stood to her full height, thumping twice on her chest, and roaring back as loud as she could.

The bear looked highly unimpressed by her until a half a second later, when the slight reverberation of the earth caused by heavy footsteps had the animal dropping to all fours and scurrying away back into the forest as quickly as it could.

Emma was already grinning as she turned around to face her furry green friend, who she'd long ago decided was a boy. "Hi Elliot!" she chanted happily, giggling as she ran up to the dragon, who immediately dipped his head down so that she would scratch his favourite place between his ears. She did that a minute and then she grinned mischievously, tapping his head once, declaring, "Tag," and taking off like lightening, ducking into the forest and immediately scaling a tree. When she was sufficiently high, she flung herself to the next tree over, traversing the forest that way, from tree top to tree top, until she reached a bit of a clearing. She dropped out of the trees, did a quick look around to make sure Elliot was where she thought he was, and then took back off at top speed. She didn't slow down as she approached the cliff at the edge of the clearing, just jumped right off the edge of it, shrieking loudly and whooping with laughter as Elliot caught her on his back, flying them up up and up higher.

Later that day, once the sun had set and the moon had risen high in the sky, Emma sat cross-legged in the cave where they usually slept beside a fire that Elliot had started. Elliot sat beside her and he motioned with his head to the book on the ground beside him, the expectant and excited expression on his face as good as words, although, truthfully Emma did sometimes wish he could actually talk to her. She obliged the request with a smile, picking up the old book and reading the title out loud, "Elliot Gets Lost."

She cracked the book open and, as she did every night, began the tale, her voice getting more and more animated as she flipped the pages. She'd long ago made up a story to go with the pictures to fill in the gaps that her reading skills didn't cover. Elliot's head bobbed excitedly, following along, until the very last page.

"The end," Emma declared happily, stifling a yawn as she closed the book and set it aside. She moved closer to Elliot, curling into a ball beside him, her head coming to rest against his paw, "Goodnight Elliot," she mumbled, her eyes already drifting shut, "Love you."

Elliot might not be able to speak, but the way he nuzzled her tenderly, made it clear that he loved her too.