I do not own Once Upon a Time nor any of its characters. I do, however, love to dream up stories that surround them and share them with you.

On quarantine vacation and finally inspired again to write so I'm trying to keep this rolling to make up a bit for lost time. As you know, sometimes the journey is rough for our characters before they see their happy ending.

Hang tight, kids. It's definitely going to be a bumpy ride till we reach the end.

And now…on with the show.

—Y&M—

She was on the floor.

How did I get on the floor?

Belle sat upright and felt her head spin a bit. The last thing she remembered was sitting in the castle of the Rumpelstiltskin's, reading hurriedly through the book The Witches of Oz, and then…and then…

…and then she wasn't.

Belle looked around and curiously now found herself on the floor in the middle of Gold's Pawn Shop. When she went to get up off the ground, she found that several books that had been lying on top of her fell off. She was surprised to not only find The Witches of Oz within the pile but also Henry's storybook. The confusion in her face faded to a frown of concern. If she was back in Storybrooke and had Henry's book, something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. A curse had to of been cast, setting a cold pit of despair to fester within her gut. Who had cast it and why send them back to Storybrooke of all places?

"And why are you here?" Belle said to Henry's storybook and received an answer from someone else in the room.

"I am not sure, mademoiselle, but I am delighted that for the first time in centuries, I have my fingers back!" a French man's heavily accented voice exclaimed as Belle jumped, startled, and turned to see a man she'd never seen before wave his fingers in front of his own face in wonder.

Sitting on the floor with his back pressed against the counter in the shop, François Lumiere marveled at being in human form again. After having crossed Rumpelstiltskin in a deal gone bad, the former tailor to the king had thought he'd been doomed forever to being trapped in the form of a living candlestick. There he sat, marveling at himself as Belle stood slowly as she kept an eye on the strange man.

"Who-who are you?" she began. "And why are you in Rumple's shop?"

"Am I that different, ma cherie, that you do not recognize an old friend?" he said with a grin and twisted the end of his moustache with one finger before getting up off the floor.

He then took two steps towards Belle, who backed away from him, before performing an elaborately flourished bow and said, "Bonjour, Belle, for it is I – Lumiere! Do not be afraid, ma petite. I could never do you harm."

"Lumiere!" Belle said with a wide smile as she went over and hugged the man who she felt stiffen in her arms a bit before awkwardly returning the hug as if he didn't know how to.

"Apologies," he said, rather embarrassed. "I've not been embraced by anyone for a very, very long time. You surprised me, my dear. The very fact I had arms again to use to hug you was something Lumiere had to remind himself of first. That is all."

"That's understandable," she said with a shrug. "How long had you been a candlestick?"

"Candelabra," he corrected her, sounding slightly offended at being referred to as a regular, singular candlestick. "And it was…"

He stopped. He really didn't' know how long he'd been trapped in that form. It had been so long that he'd begun to lose track of time.

"I am not sure, ma chere," he began with a worried look on his face. "I was the royal tailor to serve King Augustus. Does that help?"

Lumiere watched Belle's eyes grow wide before softening into a sad smile, "Lumiere, King Augustus reigned over a century ago in the Enchanted Forest. He'd be…he'd be Snow White's great-grandfather. You were trapped for that long?"

His shoulders slumped, his greatest fears confirmed as he turned to look around at the curiosities in the room as a distraction from his situation before he spoke, "Qui. Lumiere had hoped that time merely seemed like it was passing by quickly in that castle. It appears his fears were confirmed. Everyone he ever loved would be long gone, forgetting me."

Belle watched as Lumiere hugged himself and looked away from her, trying to stop the tears in his eyes from falling. It was curious how his tense was switching when he referred to himself, a quirk she filed away in her head and simply chocked it up to a product of being trapped as a candlesti-candelabra for so long. She reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder that was shaking.

"I am so very sorry, Lumiere," she began, slightly at a loss for how to console the man as he would have likely outlived everyone he'd ever known, having been trapped in that state for so long. "I don't know if it's any consolation or not, but I'm glad you're here."

Lumiere's face brightened slightly at that as he smiled down at her, "Really? Whatever for, my dear?"

"Well for starters, I need your help," she shrugged as she grabbed the two books from off of the floor. "Honestly, Lumiere, the entire kingdom, I think, needs our help."

Lumiere nodded as he took one of the books from Belle, "The Wicked Witch – you suspect?"

"Yes. You remembered!?" she asked, not certain how much he would remember before.

Curses seem to do that to people, but not her this time…and apparently at least not Lumiere, either.

"Qui, Lumiere, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, remembers everything, ma cherie."

Something in the way he said it made her pause, "Everything, eh?"

"Qui," he answered altogether too seriously.

"Explain."

"I supposed that's why I got in trouble in the first place," he began. "You see, Belle, Lumiere has always been able to look at things, read them, see pictures, and he could recall them with perfect clarity. So when he asked a favor from the Dark One, his—my price was to steal information from the king in return."

"You have a photographic memory!" she said as he looked at her strangely.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked, almost sounding offended at being called, well, whatever it was she was referring to.

"A photographic memory! It's a good thing. That's what we call it in this world," she explained as he again looked a bit taken back.

"This world?" Lumiere asked, his voice almost a squeak.

A sympathetic look crossed Belle's features as she almost answered and then stopped herself. Not only was her friend just now regaining his physical human form, realizing he had lost everyone he'd ever known to time, but she also just dropped that he was in a completely other world without easing him into it. She wasn't sure his mind could take much more today.

"It's a very long story and I promise to tell you all about it, but right now, I think we need to focus," she began as she looked out the front of the store into the street. "There's a witch out there, after all, and we have no idea what she's really up to."

Lumiere looked like he was going to object before he stopped and nodded his head in resignation. He looked down at the book in his hands with the ornate green leather cover and golden letters scrawled upon it with its title: The Witches of Oz. He'd heard conversations over the years within the castle of the Dark One about her, about her power and her jealousy and envy of those who lived happy lives – those who had love. He looked up to his friend, Belle, who was watching him carefully. He could tell she was upset for him, for what he'd gone thru, and perhaps for what was to come.

"Where do we start?" he asked her as she smiled.