Author's note: As a thank you to all you lovely readers, I wrote an epilogue for this story. Hope you enjoy!

Epilogue

19 years later

If there was one thing Ava Jones wanted, it was excitement.

It wasn't like she lived in a city in some boring flyover state where nothing ever happened. Nuh uh, not at all. Ok, so her home did look like any other beach town, but it was the exact opposite!

Her family, her whole family, her extended family...they were all fairy tale characters. Although she didn't usually think of them as so. They were just...her family. Her parents, her brother, her grandparents, and whatever she thought of Regina as. Her half brothers adoptive mother? Or would she technically be her step great great grandmother?

19 years later and still confusing.

The point was, though, her life was boring. Straight up boring. She went to school, she hung out with her friends, and she went home. Boring. Although that was a bit of an understatement. More like MAJORLY boring.

What nobody seemed to understand was that she wanted adventure. The type that she'd grown up hearing about. How her grandmother ran away from her grandfather and outsmarted trolls. How she'd lived as a bandit. How her brother had been kidnapped by Peter Pan and taken to Neverland, and then how everyone had jumped onto a ship to save him. How her mother had almost been squashed by a troll until her grandmother killed it with an arrow. How her father used to be a pirate captain, sailing and adventuring everywhere. Hell, how Regina had cursed a whole town.

Ava's life was just a little too safe. And safe equaled boring. Okay, she understood that her mother's life had basically sucked out loud, in like three different languages. Mom just wanted to give her the life she'd never had, stable and full of cute family moments and love. Yes, Ava understood that. Appreciated it. But didn't her mother get that she was sick of that?

Her mother had met her father while trying to get home while in a strange land. Her grandparents had had countless adventures together. And what had Ava done? Nothing. Zip, zero, zilch. Nothing at all, baby.

Why didn't anyone understand? Every time she brought up going on a quest or something, she was shot down. Her mother had said something about wanting a nice, normal life. Henry had said that Neverland had been enough. Even her father, the infamous Captain Hook, for crying out loud (though she'd always known him as Daddy), had said no. Said no to his princess! She'd learned early on that he could never resist her puppy dog eyes (how else had she gotten a new car and a phone for her birthday) but here he was, refusing her request.

"But Daddy," Ava had whined back when she was eight. "don't you wanna go do fun things with me? We can go on an adventure!"

"I'm sorry, princess." He'd said. "That life's behind me now."

"Please Daddy?"

"Tell you what. How about we just go for a sail on the Jolly Roger?"

Oh yeah, fun. Ava had been out on the Jolly countless times. It was always the same routine-sailing around the harbor. She wanted to go portal jumping, battle monsters, try chimera, maybe meet her own pirate captain. It sounded like so much fun.

"Oh, no way." Mom had said when she'd asked. "Your definition of fun is totally skewed. All I want is a normal life in the real world."

Bor-ing!

Her parents were probably so old they were getting unimaginative. Her mom had magic and she never used it. Her father had a beautiful ship that he never took out, except for dates with Mom. And they never went far.

Roland was lucky; he had Regina, who probably taught him all about magic. They'd probably gone portal jumping and all that fun stuff Ava never got to do. Sometimes Regina could be so much cooler than her own parents.

"If you want adventure, Ava," Henry had told her when she was younger. "just read my book."

But Ava had read the book cover to cover already. She'd grown up hearing those stories, grown up with rich visions dancing beneath her eyelids as she fell asleep. It was her turn to be in the book, to write the family's history.

If nobody was going to take her on an adventure, she was going to have to do it herself.

Author's note: Ava has quite the character, doesn't she? I purposely left this open ended to leave the door open for a possible sequel. Not sure if I'm going to do it, but it never hurts right? Who would be interested in reading about Ava's adventures?