Morning's Golden Light

Part Two

A/N 1: A song fic that seemed to spring fully formed from my mind as I listened to an Enya song today…while I was busy working on a completely different, Mirandy, fanfic. It grabbed me, wouldn't let go and demanded to be written. You can listen to the song here: watch?v=GJgbzEGAvzc

A/N 2: Oops! I thought this story was only going to have two parts, but it just seems to keep writing itself, so it will definitely be at least three parts. My Bad.

Emma made her way to the diner her pace slow her mind wandering to her dreams yet again, trying to figure out what they might mean. She'd already figured that part of it was probably what her subconscious was thinking Regina might be suffering as the older woman dealt with the demons of her past and her concerted effort to stay on the side of good for their son's sake. Emma could certainly empathise with the strain that would put on Regina, being all too familiar with dealing with the stress of her own demons that demanded she run at the first sign of trouble and her not wanting to disappoint Henry by giving in to them.

The diner's bell rang when Emma pushed the door to enter the busy interior. She noted almost every table was taken, the lunch rush apparently having extended far beyond the normal 12-2 slot that any other diner experienced. The blonde shook her head as she immediately attributed this aberration to the inability of most of the townspeople to tell time. Snorting at her less than charitable thoughts she made her way toward the booth at the back, the one usually reserved for Ruby and the other diner staff to rest during their breaks. Ruby was just coming out from behind the counter carrying four plates of food and Emma jumped out of her way mid greeting.

"Hey Rubes. No rush for me, I'm gonna crash in your booth, leave me till you get a breather okay?"

Ruby dropped off the food to various customers and waved Emma off to the back of the restaurant with a clipped acknowledgement before she hurried back behind the counter for the next orders. Emma dropped into the booth and slid to the back where she could rest her head against the wall and the back of the booth. Unsurprisingly, she was asleep the second her head hit the padded back of the seat. Almost 20 minutes later Ruby dumped two cups of coffee on the table and slumped down in the seat opposite Emma, snorting as she heard the soft snoring emanating from the sound asleep blonde. The tall brunette gave a wolfish grin and spoke loud enough to rouse the other woman but not for prying ears to hear.

"Hi Regina, our Sherriff sure snores up a storm doesn't she?"

Emma sat up immediately having registered the Mayor's name and woke up mid-snore almost choking herself in the process trying to gather her sleepy wits.

"Whaa..Regina..I…"

Emma blinked as she looked for the nightly subject of her dreams, but saw only a chuckling Ruby who quickly pushed the steaming mug of coffee toward the blonde. The blonde scowled at the woman opposite her but accepted the coffee and took the time to take a healthy swig as she surveyed the now considerably emptier diner. Ruby sipped from her own mug allowing Emma a minute to wake up.

"Em, you look like crap girl, what's up with you?"

"Gee thanks for the pep talk Rubes, remind me to be as honest the next time I see you stumbling out of the Rabbit Hole at 3am."

Emma took another sip of her caffeine juice and smoothed her hair back with her free hand.

"Actually, the reason I look like shit is what I wanted to talk to you about. I've hardly had any sleep now for almost a week, and when I do manage to get to sleep I keep having this really disturbing recurring dream."

After swearing Ruby to secrecy about the details of the dream, insisting in particular she keep the subject of the dream from her parents in particular, Emma described her dream in detail and shared her hypothesis that it might be magical in nature, especially as it seemed to be evolving slightly each night.

"Other than the vividness of the dream what makes you think it's magical?"

"Well, there's the nightly change of the clothes I'm wearing in the dream that matches whatever I've gone to sleep in that night. I mean I suppose that might just be my subconscious being really on the ball, but I honestly don't think that's the case, and then there's the details of the wood, it's always exactly the same, every tree location, size, type, I swear it's a real place that I'm actually visiting."

Emma paused, she was a little unsure about sharing her next thoughts, but decided to go for broke and share her latest theory with Ruby.

"Rubes, I think, I mean I was wondering if I might be… Do you think it's possible to end up in someone else's dream?"

"Em, we live in the same town as the former Evil Queen and the Dark One, a town that only exists because it was magicked here by a curse. So, I'd say something as simple as dropping into someone else's dreams would be a walk in the park. Whose dream do you think you're in?"

Emma thought Ruby was being a bit slow on the uptake given the details she'd shared with the brunette, she thought it was pretty obvious whose dream she was invading every night.

"I think it might be Regina's. The kid mentioned he thought his mom wasn't sleeping well recently and she's the only other person in the dream. I can kind of imagine she might have dreams like this too, she does call out her mother's name a lot and that woman was all kinds of nightmares."

"Umm, if you think it's Regina's dream that you're joining, can't you switch shifts with David and try sleeping during the day when Regina is actually awake?"

Ruby's suggestion barely made it past her lips before it was met by her friends golden curls emphasising her negatively shaking head.

"Tried that three days ago, stayed up all night and tried to grab some sleep in the afternoon, but it didn't work, I still woke up totally exhausted. I landed in the forest but the rest of the dream was different, in fact that's what convinced me this is definitely connected to Regina. Like I said I was in the forest again, but this time it was completely silent, not a single sound, not even the wind. It looked and felt like it was still night, only this time I noticed there weren't any stars overhead. I hunted for the clearing and found it, the bed was there but Regina wasn't. The really creepy thing was that the clearing was full of strange dark grey fog shapes that seemed to be circling and crawling all over the bed."

"Fog shapes? What kind of shapes?"

"Shapes like, well like ghosts I guess, sort of vaguely human, at least from head to waist, they all seemed to taper off below that, like I said, creepy." She shivered a little at the memory.

"And you've not seen these fog people in the clearing before?"

"No, at least I don't think so, but I never get to look into the clearing for very long before Regina screams and I wake up, and when I'm first looking I'm concentrating on Regina in the bed anyway."

Ruby ducked her head to hide a knowing smile quite sure her friend wasn't aware of the wistful, almost longing tone her voice had dropped into as she mentioned the mayor's name. The blonde pushed her nearly empty mug around the table, not looking up until Ruby asked another question.

"So have you managed to circle the whole clearing? You definitely haven't missed an opening somewhere that might let you get into the clearing and maybe help Regina. "

"I've definitely been all the way round the clearing, almost all the trees are huge pines and oaks and elms set so close together the trunks touch and the branches form a woven wall. There are two places however where there's a couple of saplings planted between two older trees, that's where I was able to see into the clearing, but even they are so close together there's no way I can squeeze past them."

Emma paused and looked around before she reached for the top button of her shirt and opened the third button down before pushing the fabric aside to reveal a small scratch just above her left clavicle.

"In last night's dream I found the gap between a huge tree and the much younger sapling and I tried to push the smaller tree to the side. I lost my grip and some branches whipped back into my face and chest, I felt the sting on my chest and it woke me up before I'd seen Regina. I looked down to see this scratch which was still bleeding at the time. That's got to mean there's some magical crap going on dontcha think?"

"Well, it still might not be magical, I mean you might have scratched yourself with a finger nail and that was what woke you up."

Emma shook her head at the suggestion.

"I thought that myself but the scratch was bleeding pretty hard and there was no blood on any of my fingers, so I don't think that's what happened. Like I said, this feels like a real place, not a dream at all. I wonder, I wonder if it's something like the place Snow and Henry told me about, the one where people who've been under a sleeping curse go to sometimes when they dream?"

Emma sat up a little straighter, suddenly hopeful she was onto something that might prove to be useful after a week of dead ends.

"Henry even said he came out of one of those dreams with a burn on his wrist from the fire that was raging in the room he was in with Aurora and Snow. Just like this scratch." She ran a finger over the broken skin, even more convinced she was right about the similarity of her dream to the otherworld Henry and Snow had described.

Faced with these new pieces of information, Ruby reluctantly admitted that it did look like there was something magical occurring with Emma's dreams. They both lapsed into a thoughtful silence while they finished their coffees and tried to come up with an idea that might help Emma. Suddenly Ruby sat up and leaned forward, the detail of Emma's changing clothes in the dream had given her an idea.

"What if you tried falling asleep with something that you could use to get past the saplings."

Emma blinked at her and gave a derisive snort.

"You want me to go to bed with a chainsaw? What would that do except help me cut my own legs to ribbons. Anyway how is that supposed to help me in the dream?"

Ruby rolled her eyes at Emma's obtuseness and a little at her derision.

"It doesn't have to be a chainsaw Em, sheesh! I was thinking if it's saplings you're dealing with, maybe an axe or a saw or even a hatchet might work. And I was thinking if you fell asleep holding it or with it attached to your wrist then it might show up in your dream, like your warmer clothes did."

Emma sat back and mulled the idea over, she could see Ruby's reasoning easily enough but still wasn't sure it would actually work, and she really wasn't keen to share a bed with an edged weapon of any kind, she was klutzy enough wide awake and vertical, she figured asleep and horizontal she'd end up chopping off one or both of her legs.

Ruby seemed to guess where Emma's thoughts had wandered when she shook her head at the woman who had obviously never had to chop wood for a fire in her life. Not for the first time the wolf thought how obvious it was that, birth notwithstanding, Emma was definitely a child of this world and not the Enchanted Forest.

"Uh Em, you can put a leather guard on an axe or hatchet so you won't slice a toe off," The brunette gave a chuckle. "or anything else for that matter."

Ruby's chuckle turned into a full blown laugh at Emma's self-conscious blush and she reached over and patted her hand reassuringly.

"I'm off at six tonight, you can swing past the Inn sometime after seven and pick up our hatchet."

"Okay Rubes, I suppose it's worth a try, I'll see you later then."

Emma slid out of the booth and headed for the entrance, a little more spring in her step than when she had arrived. She was still beyond tired, but having a plan in place gave her new hope that she might be able to solve this problem and finally get some much needed sleep.