The flowers looked particularly beautiful in this section of the Enchanted Forest. It was one of Emma's favorite places to frolic and sing as she pined for her prince to come. She wasn't so naïve not to realize that she had been betrothed – Baelfire had given her their beautiful son—but he was gone. She'd been widowed during the ogre wars. He had met a noble death, but deep down, Emma knew that he had not been her true love.
Her true love was yet to come into her life.
"Emma?"
She stopped mid-twirl as she heard her name called from yonder. Looking up through the forest trees, she caught sight of the person who had called to her. She blinked as the briefest flicker of recognition warmed her over, but then as the figure came closer, the recognition spiked a flood of adrenaline. The evil queen was smiling at her and waving like she was an old friend.
But no, this couldn't be happening. The Evil Queen had been banished since right before Emma's own birth 28 years prior from today. How was she standing here now? She didn't appear threatening, but with the strange dress and casual demeanor, Emma knew it was a deceit of the highest order. She would not fall for this trickery.
"Emma, what on earth are you doing?" The Evil Queen laughed in disbelief, while Emma squinted in suspicion and half hid behind a tree. The queen sauntered forward and plucked a flower from her basket, making Emma flinch in fear. She watched the queen cast her gaze down at the flower and lift her eyebrow. "Yellow. It is believed that this color flower symbolizes optimism, enlightenment, and happiness."
"What do you know of happiness?" Emma snipped and snatched her flower back from the Queen's glove. She was surprised to see the sadness behind the Evil Queen's eyes as she looked back at her thoughtfully.
An arrow from Emma's mother's quiver zipped over the Queen's head as she narrowly avoided getting shish-kabobed.
During the exchange with the rightful King and Queen of the Enchanted Forest, Emma couldn't help but feel like something was off about this Evil Queen. She'd heard stories of the kingdom's greatest adversary as her bedtime story (and waking story) for her entire life. Thankfully, Emma had been raised in a peaceful time. Aside of the ongoing ogre wars, but those battles had been to the west. The Enchanted Forest knew only prosperity for the past 28 years.
The Evil Queen showed no fear against the blade or arrow that threatened her and Emma puzzled over the strange feeling this triggered inside her. That sense of courage seemed altogether familiar and distant like a dream.
"For God's sake, Emma-come on, remember already!" The Queen yelled at her before disappearing in a haze of purple magic. Emma's lips parted at the display of magic, she'd never seen an act like that outside of what the fairies did to ensure the harvests were abundant.
Emma took her basket of flowers back to the sanctuary of the castle. The guards rushed her inside, forbidding her from anymore unsupervised woods frolic sessions while the Evil Queen was back and on the loose. She clearly wanted vengeance and to take over the kingdom while vanquishing the happiness of all who lived in the Enchanted Forest.
As she listened to her parents fret and argue with the council, Emma couldn't help but wonder if the stories she'd heard of the queen were all true. Her parents did have a tendency to be a bit hyperbolic, if not over-simplistic in what exactly went down before she was born. She wondered why the Queen had returned and why now?
She seemed to have an important and insistent message for Emma, and yet she'd spoken to her like she knew her, but the queen had been banished and defeated on the day of Emma's birth. She had never met the woman, just lived in the shadow of her larger than life legends.
But there was something about her that Emma couldn't shake.
"Don't you agree, Princess?"
Emma had zoned out, and now her attention was being tested by her mother, "I'm sorry, what?"
Snow clasped her hands together in front of her around the table, "I said that we need to go through with Henry's knighting ceremony as if everything is normal."
King Charming ran his fingers across his chin in thought as he nodded in agreement, "I concur with Snow, the Evil Queen feeds from dissension and we cannot let her beat us- not now, not ever. The knighting ceremony for our grandson will proceed unheeded."
Emma narrowed her eyes in thought. A shiver ran through her body despite her fine leathers and fur cape. The Evil Queen was certainly one thing, but the prince-like woman she had met in the woods did not seem evil. She seemed familiar… because she had a secret that she could not voice: not to her parents, her loyal maids or even her beloved son.
The woman in the woods, dressed sharply in her gold buttoned jacket, beautiful face and short, strange flippy hair, was the same woman she recognized from her dream about Storybrooke. Regina… and she couldn't be the evil queen, because she had seen her there too. They were twins or something created from one but split in two by magic. She knew it, but she would be thought mad if she dared to admit it.
Besides she knew her parents wouldn't take her seriously. With a somber gaze and lips pulled into a frown, she worried on what it all possibly meant.
Emma needed time to devise a plan. She knew it was foolish and dangerous. She probably wouldn't get past the guard who stood by her chamber door, but she was dead set and determined to try. She had to meet with the woman from the woods- the woman from her dream, again. This time she would demand answers.