Present Day on the Island of Eden...
Her loose brown curls framed her face beautifully. Her smile made everyone feel at ease, but it could also strike fear into anyone she wished, with the slightest change in expression. She poured drinks with a flare that couldn't be found anywhere else in Eden, adding a magic touch to each. The one thing she longed for more than anything was family. She had a son, but he had grown up, had a family of his own and lived in a completely different world, rarely using a portal to visit her.
Her closest friend was a one handed former pirate. They had a complicated history and the number of times they'd had their memories erased meant they had several different, conflicting memories of their encounters – none were anything more than platonic, but there had always been a mysterious bond that seemed to be deeply hidden in their subconscious. Even when their fake reality caused them to despise each other, there was something that always stopped them from causing each other permanent damage, but they couldn't figure out what. Every conflict during their cursed lives could escalate to a gruesome battle, if they were so inclined, and many did – yet there was never any lasting damage and not for lack of trying.
They were rather similar too. They both had kind hearts that could fairly easily be outweighed by their often fiery tempers. They battled their dark sides to be good people, but it hadn't always been easy. They had both done evil things in their pasts, mostly before the first curse, which belonged to the lady behind the bar – at least in part, as she hadn't realised she was carrying out the selfish plans of a powerful and manipulative imp, known as Rumplestiltskin.
Due to the many curses and realms they'd been exposed to, their lives were complex and muddled. The lady had come to terms with sharing her son with his birth mother and even becoming a part of the family she had previously been desperate to destroy to satisfy her desire for vengeance. She had also fought her dark side and won, in a very literal sense, even ripping out her own heart to help her evil half find contentment with a somewhat-reformed thief she had once lost. Due to the countless losses she had suffered, she truly believed she may never find happiness because of her history as a villain.
The man with the hook, however, was one of two clones of a well-known captain who was married to a saviour. Oddly enough, like his Wish Realm clone, he was on a mission to find a daughter he'd never known – though the other clone had found his in a place called Hyperion Heights. He was unaware of her mother or her, until peculiar clues from a fairy led him to discover that she existed. He didn't even know her name. The original captain of the infamous Jolly Roger had been in love twice, yet this clone had never been in love with anyone or anything but freedom and the open seas, which is why he was rather shocked to find out that he was a father. He wanted nothing more than to find his child, but these hints only informed him that he had a daughter, not who her mother was or even the year she'd been conceived. He had once been a Casanova with the ladies in Eden but, with the number of times he'd had alternate cursed lives and involuntary memory loss, he had very little hope of recalling likely situations.
Eden was an island next to the Enchanted Forest. Half of the island was a blast from the past, with cottages and cobbled paths, taverns and pirate ships at the dock. On the other side of the island, it was very modern, with parks and playgrounds, mansions and apartments. The clothing and lifestyles were polar opposites too, with the Old Town communities wearing clothes that fitted the era in which modernisation had frozen centuries ago and the people in the City wore clothes from the last couple of decades.
Every month, there would be a market in the Old Town to keep their economy stabilised, but people from either side could visit any day of the year – though the folks from the Old Town were generally quite wary of the City and rarely crossed the border.
"Regina, rum on the rocks with a little magic – a Roni's special" the man said.
"Coming right up, Killian" she replied. They smiled at each other.