There's a Strange Magic In Storybrooke:
Hunted
Lily walked deep into the woods, sniffing in order to pick any particular scent. Since Emma hadn't given a lot of information on the phone about the culprit of the car crash except that he ran into the woods, the dark-haired woman was rather stumped without any evidence at hand.
As she walked through the woods, she recalled the birth of her little Romana.
In a hospital in Las Vegas, about fourteen years ago, Lily was laying on a hospital bed, breathing heavily as tears were drying on her cheeks. It had been a painful moment, but at least the pains she endured while being in labor were over.
Her inner peace came back when she heard the cries of a baby. She lifted her head up and saw the nurse holding a crying baby folded in a blanket.
'Congratulations, Ms Page,' she said, handing the infant to Lily. 'It's a girl.'
Lily gasped in happiness as she gently grabbed her daughter, who calmed down once she was held in her mother's arms. A few minutes later, Raoul came in, instantly fawning at the sight of the child.
"Lily…she's so beautiful!" Raoul said as he rubbed the baby's forehead.
"She looks a lot like you," Lily told her boyfriend with a smile. She was right because the baby had tan skin and small strands of black hair like her father's. The child gently fluttered her eyes until they were wide open, revealing their sharp, dark brown color.
'You'd better take that back, Lily,' Raoul joked. 'She's got your sharp glare.' While his girlfriend laughed at his joke, he goofed off with the baby, who was cooing and giggling as she held out her little arms to her parents until Raoul noticed something on the baby's right wrist.
'Will you look at that, Lily,' he said as he gently held the baby's little hand in order for Lily to see the swirled traced star like mark on the infant's wrist. 'She's special, like you.'
Lily looked at her daughter's mark and then at her own mark, the only reminder she had of her biological parents. Of her mother, Maleficent. The young woman didn't like to think of the possibility of her little girl growing up just like her: without a motherly figure that truly loved her and only brought destruction wherever she went.
'I know exactly what we should call her,' Raoul's voice brought Lily away from her doubts.
'What would that be?' Lily asked curiously.
'Romana Lilith Page Castro,' he said proudly. 'Her first name comes from my mother's mother; it's supposed to define the promise of a bright future. And the last three names of course are from her father and special mother.'
Lily's memory was interrupted when she could have sworn she heard leaves rustling behind her. She turned her head to look around. The only things she could see were the trees surrounding her, blocking any view of the town. She could have shrugged it off, but her dragon senses told her that she was being observed. And one of the first dragon rules that Maleficent had taught her was to be wary of stalkers or invaders.
She first began by walking faster, which only increased the rustling. This time, Lily ran to the point where she ran even deeper into the woods until she hit something and ended up falling on her butt. When she looked up, she saw that it was none other than Killian Jones, Emma's hook-handed boyfriend.
"Lily? What are you doing here?" he asked as he helped her get up.
"I could ask you the same thing," Lily said.
"I'm supposed to meet Emma here, by the Wishing Well." The pirate showed Lily their location: the little sanctuary of Storybrooke's Wishing Well.
"Wait…that can't be right! Emma's on an investigation right now. How on earth could she possibly have a rendezvous with you right now?"
"She called me to meet her here."
"Well, she called me to go investigate in the woods."
The two of them were quite confused until they realized at the last minute that they were the victims of a setup. Something far too quick for them struck them on the heads, knocking them unconscious. As their bodies fell on the ground, Matt Forest came out of the shadows, carrying a wooden club in his hands, which he threw away before taking out a bottle from his jacket. He uncorked it and poured its blue content on the duo, making them shrink to the sizes of mice.
"I told Fitzgerald that I could crush you," Matt said as he began taking out something from a brown sack that he had brought with him. His hands carefully took out what turned out to be a grey grass-snake. "But I found a better way to crush you for what you did to Marianne."
He put down the grass-snake on the soil and watched as it slithered towards the shrunken and unconscious Lily and Hook. It hissed its forked tongue at them before looking at Matt.
"What? You don't want them?" Matt asked.
The snake gave him a look.
"It's their clothes, isn't it?"
The reptile nodded. Matt didn't hesitate: while avoiding to harm the grass-snake, he grabbed the two humans and stripped them off their clothing. He then took out something from his pocket: a glass jar of what looked like water but turned out to be frog sweat. He quickly dipped the naked humans in them the same way you'd dip tortillas in salsa and guacamole while watching the Superbowl and put them back on the ground. "So, now do you like them?"
The grass-snake flickered its tongue again to the humans again, only this time it looked satisfied. Without hesitating, the reptile swallowed Lily first very slowly as if it wanted to enjoy her flavor. It followed the same process with Killian. Matt calmly watched as the snake swallowed each human head first as if they were mere humans. Back in the Fae Realm, grass-snakes were considered ruthless predators, but here, in the Land Without Magic, Matt found them quite cute now since they were considered harmless.
"Enjoyed?" he asked. The snake nodded its oval head with overjoyed greed. "Good. Off you go, then." The beast nodded and slithered away like a snake in the grass.