Once Upon a Dream

Admittedly, the stranger known as Sir Neal-Neal Swan if you asked for more information about him-had not, actually, had any experience dealing with princesses. Emma, of course, didn't count. No matter that her blood, or her Divine Right or whatever or however nobles were chosen in the Enchanted Forest might beg to differ with her on her aristocratic status. "Born a princess," sure. But thirty minutes of palace life had not begat a woman whom anyone could accuse of acting like any of the "Princess"-types that always seemed to have the name of some ethnic group attached to the front of them in the parlance of American slang. She bore none of their entitlement, none of their seeming penchant for clothes hoarding and extreme mani-pedis.

As for the genus: Princess, Fairy Tale? Emma resembled this even less. She was far more likely to shoo a stray bird away from her food than to offer it her finger for a perch. More likely to tell a dirty joke than whistle a happy tune. And singing? Better for all if she didn't try to sing.

So, no real experience with princesses. But in Princess Aurora, he was getting an education. And how. Or perhaps, he was merely getting an education in all things Aurora. Rose, as she had asked him to call her. There was about her a sweetness that tracked often as innocence, but he could not believe anyone who had lived such periods of sorrow and loss truly stayed innocent in the face of life's cruelty.

She was simple-hearted, he had come to understand, not simple-minded.

The other two did not give her nearly enough credit. Oh, he could see that Philip loved her, and that Mulan on many levels respected aspects of her, but neither of them granted Aurora much faith where her competence was concerned. In reaction to their unthinking dismissals of her skills, he had taken it upon himself to teach her as much and as quickly as he could everything he knew about the basis of survival in the wilds of this place that was once a seaside corner of the Enchanted Forest. And thing was, she already knew more about cottage life than the other two combined. She had, as she had earlier confessed, been raised by her aunties in the woods, her royal parents trying to protect her from Maleficent and her minions' searching eyes.

By all accounts it had been a far nicer cottage than the one into which he was born and raised. It would appear that with a proper hearth and ready ingredients she would have made a fine cook. She could sew in a practical way, and had a sharp mind for recalling useful plants for everyday life. And, twice as valuable, she was rarely given to complaints.

For over a month they two had been at coordinating a census of sorts of people left in the Cursed Lands, listing where they had originated from, what their occupation had been, what if any family they had been separated from when the Curse fell. It had been Aurora who had known how to mix the needed ink for the task, what to wash the paper of Mulan's scroll with to remove the ink previously on it detailing long-ago troop movements from her days with the army.

The task of seeking out the current, mostly shy and highly suspicious (if not downright terrified) remaining population had fallen to Philip and Mulan, and though Neal would have thought Aurora a calming influence to take along—far less frightening than either the knight or the taciturn woman warrior—he would also have been sorry to lose her companionship during the census-taking.

So their days were spent together at an agreed-upon location, where Philip and Mulan sent those they could find to join with the others assembled until the number-taking was ruled as complete as could possibly be hoped for, and the gathered peasants could be organized and put to necessary tasks; something like an economy created, and the coming Winter prepared for.

Aurora did seem to take to the growing number of people at their tiny outpost. She seemed to find safety among them, and certainly society, which she had been away from for so very long.

He was less certain of feeling better when amongst their number. There was an uneasiness he could never fully shake, and the persistent fear that though it was several centuries later he might yet be recognized as Baelfire, the Dark One's son. Constantly being introduced as Emma's husband, Snow White and Prince Charming's son-in-law Neal Swan, did little to quiet his addled nerves.

And there was the additional feeling of late that he was having unsettling…well, he was not sure how to name them. Certainly he was not going to tell anyone else about them. But experiences where he kept encountering things that reminded him of his mother. Her favorite flower seeming to suddenly bloom underneath his foot when he was walking what had been a clear, unhindered path only moments before. A person presenting for the census-taking who just happened to share the unusual name of his mother's mother.

He woke one morning with a weird poking in his back and pulled aside his pallet from the forest floor to find a Griffin Silver, pretty much the exact likeness of one his mother had lent him long ago as a child (that currency no longer having been valuable in the Frontlands) to sleep upon for luck. She had told him that if he slept with it under his mattress he'd catch enough luck the next four days in a row.

And, strangest of all, moments when her long-forgotten scent seemed to be on the breeze, whichever way he turned.

He did not like to be reminded of his mother. The memories that he had of her were so at odds with what she had become…what she had done in leaving him, abandoning their family. Hers was a story he would rather not try, as an adult, to re-read. It still made a sad child of him; frightened, mourning. Confused at her rejection. Unable to understand her desertion and loss.

He had not been near her in hundreds of years. Lifetimes. And yet, a mother was a mother. And no child easily forgets that, no matter what the Lost Ones of NeverLand might argue to the contrary.

...TBC...