It snuck up on him when he least expected it. Or rather, he hadn't been paying much attention to the change in season and before he even knew it, Halloween was just around the corner. For the past few weeks the leaves of the trees were turning different shades of orange, yellow, and brown. The café had added different types of pumpkin flavored items to its menu and had set up spooky decorations for the occasion.
"I love Halloween it's absolutely amazing." Eirys answers when he had asked her about the holiday. "I'm thinking about going as a fairy this year."
"What?" Being a social hermit, Mr. Gold didn't involve himself with the rest of the town if he could help it.
"The Pumpkin Festival, you know for being the owner of Storybrooke you sure are clueless about the happenings around here." Eirys sighs giving him a mock pitying look. "The mayor said that trick-or-treating was getting too dangerous and kids were missing curfew so she created a festival so the entire town can celebrate together."
The idea did sound familiar. "I'm sure its enjoyable." The way he said it was like someone had a gun to his head and was forcing him to read a script.
Eirys laughs at his obvious discomfort about the holiday. "You have to get out more. You're going to this festival." He glances at her with a look of pure horror which only made her laugh harder. "Don't worry, you can just go as yourself, you're scary enough like that anyways."
"I'm not going." He replies wishing for the entire month to be over. He takes another sip of his tea, the apricot flavor reminding him of the warmth of spring and the liveliness of summer.
The moment he puts the teacup down and glances up at Eirys he almost regrets his last statement. Eirys had pulled her thin lips into a small pout and her blue eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Please go, for me."
If Mr. Gold had a weakness, this would be it. "Fine" he says almost growling it. She, in return, claps happily and pours him another cup of tea.
"It's going to be so much fun." She says going off about the festival. "It'll be like a Halloween party for the whole town. Don't worry, you'll find some way to enjoy yourself."
Even with her assurances, Mr. Gold still had doubts about the festival. And, as always, they were bound to come true.
"You promised, Bae." Ivy whines childishly. She watches her new secret friend with growing frustration as he swallows slices of pumpkin pie in one bite. "You can't break your promise."
"Sorry, dearie." He replies in a singsong voice, reaching for another slice of the still warm pie. "I promised I would tell you if you brought me pumpkin pie, not when. You should have checked before you agreed."
Ivy pouts and snatches the rest of the pie away from his prying hands. "No more pie until you tell me."
He shrugs. "Very well then, let's see. Outside, during the autumn season all the trees turn different colors, orange like this pumpkin pie." He quickly plucks a small piece of pie from the tray. "Yellow like the sun, or sometimes they turn brown like the dirt."
Ivy shifts closer to him. His voice had a calming effect. It was nice to listen to when he wasn't teasing her about her cooking. "Aw, are they in pain?"
"The trees?" Bae asks raising a brow, the flow of his story getting interrupted.
Ivy nods rigorously. "Every year, I get a feeling like something out there is going away. The voices of the trees start to get softer and soon they disappear altogether. But then I start hearing them again."
"I suppose you're feeling autumn. The leaves fall of the trees and the grass turns brown too. Then it becomes winter. White, cold, powdery stuff covers the ground, plants don't grow during the winter." Bae suddenly stops when he sees tears dripping out of Ivy's blue eyes. "What's wrong?" The act of her crying over something so small was actually quite frightening.
"That's so sad." Ivy says through hiccups. She wipes at her tears with sleeves, even the Fairy Grounds were slightly affected by the change of the seasons. The air got colder and the days were shorter while the nights got longer. "But they come back, don't they?"
"Of course." Bae says, his nerves calming as her tears stopped. He hadn't realized how tense his muscles had become when she started crying. "After a while, all the white powder turns to water and the plants start to grow again. The end."
Blue sparkles, thigh high blue and black stripped stockings, a shimmering blue and black dress, and a magical blue wand that left blue glitter everywhere made her appear to be no older than a college student. She, of course, is giggling like a teenager waiting for Mr. Gold to show up at the festival. In her pumpkin basket are little chewable gummies in the shape of pumpkins and ghosts. "I thought you were never going to show up." She passes a gummie candy to the sullen looking Mr. Gold. "Come on, it's going to be so much fun." She grabs his wrist and pulls him into the festival, passing adults and children all dressed up in their costumes and face paint.
Despite being in the company of Mr. Gold, children flocked to her, holding up their pumpkin baskets in hopes of getting a gummie. And Eirys would always smile and pass out her candy. "Those children are probably going to get a mouth full of cavities." Mr. Gold mumbles, putting a damper on the joyous mood.
"Kids should have a day to just be kids." Eirys replies scolding him. She rushes off to a nearby vender to buys a tartly candied apple. "I can't remember the last time I've had one of these." She holds the apple out for Mr. Gold to take a bite. "Try it, it's good."
Mr. Gold takes a tentative bite of the apple. For a moment, his face is completely blank, and then his face puckers up at the sour taste of the syrup. "I take it that you like this stuff." He gestures towards the apple as if were the embodiment of evil.
Eiryus laughs taking a large bite out of the other side of the apple. "Of course, I've always liked sour stuff. I always have a few candies stashed somewhere in case I need a good sugar rush."
"I suppose that didn't bode to well with your parents." Mr. Gold says watching a gaggle of children run past them chasing a festival volunteer dressed as a ghost. The parents keep an eye on their children from a small set of benches by the carousel.
"I really can't remember." Eirys says, her eyebrow coming together in confusion at the missing memory. "It must have happened to long ago that I can't remember anymore."
"The mind is tricky like that, you better watch out." Mr. Gold says leading them towards the carousel. He sighs contently, easing down onto an empty bench. "What is there left to do?"
To be exact, the two of them were too old to take part in the children's entertainment like puppet shows and the hay maze. The vender food was mostly sweet sugary goodness, chocolate, or sour items. "We could ride this." Eirys suggestions pointing to the carousel they were conveniently sitting next to. "You can't honestly say no to the carousel."
Mr. Gold just shrugs. Many of the festival goers were starting to head home. It was way past any child's bed time and the teenagers were probably at a friend's house keeping up with the wild festivities. "Why not?"
Eirys chose to go on a white horse studded with fake jewels and painted flowers. She let her short legs dangle over one side, turning her head to wave at Mr. Gold, who sat in a matching horse but with more knightly decorations. "Come on, you could at least pretend to be having fun." She tells him, holding the bar with one hand and trying to get a picture of him smiling with the other.
Mr. Gold, of course, keeps a straight face, which clashes brightly with the bright lights and carousel horse he was riding. This doesn't keep Eirys from taking embarrassing pictures of him, much to his embarrassment. "You better not show them to anyone."
"Don't worry about it." Eirys assure him, flipping through her pictures as they walk home. "I'll just pull them out on very important occasions."
Mr. Gold rubs his temples in agony. "You're blackmailing me?"
"Of course not," she replies instantly. "Think of it as future motivation." They stop at her flower shop. "Thanks for walking me home." She slips inside, waving once more before turning off the lights and officially ending their little Halloween date.
"I was thinking about making a pie of some sort." Eirys says sipping her tea. Today's tea is just plain black tea. This particular brand brewed a strong aromatic tea that lingered in the air as a natural air freshener. "Any preferences?"
With Halloween over, Eirys was up in planning for the next major holiday, Thanksgiving. "I prefer blueberry." Mr. Gold replies taking a sip of the tea, he wasn't too keen on the strong flavor of the tea. "I could bring something if you want."
"Perhaps another side dish?" Eirys says jotting it down in her planning notebook, her handwriting involved many loops and curves. It was much more elegant compared to his hurried scrawl.
Mr. Gold is not the type of person he plans ahead for dinner parties, not that he had much experience with dinner parties in the first place. He preferred making deals in which he could set a date in which the repayment had to be made by and let fate do the rest. "I could bring a potato salad."
"That's perfect." She writes it down amongst the items that she didn't need to worry about for her dinner party. "If you don't want tea during the dinner I could find some grape juice or something."
"I have some sparkling juice in the fridge." Mr. Gold lies easily. He felt just the slightest bit guilty about bringing so little. Finding some sparkling juice wouldn't much that much of a dent in his wallet.
Eirys nods and crosses the item off her list. "This is going to be exciting. I can't believe we didn't do this before. I wonder why that is."
"Bae would you like to come to my home for dinner?" Ivy asks shyly, her pale white cheeks dotting with a red blush. "For the holiday that is."
Bae raises a questioning eyebrow, his curiosity spiking for two reasons. "Now, why would I want to do that?"
Ivy shrugs. "It seems sad that you're going to be all alone on a holiday. No one should be alone on a holiday, since everyone's going to celebrate their family."
"Well," he says poking her on the tip of her nose. "Shouldn't you be celebrating with your family?"
She looks away from him. Her blue eyes casting a look of doubt and sadness towards the bubbling river, even the earth seemed a tad bit sadder. "My parents aren't here. They're outside, helping in the Ogre Wars."
"Do you want them here?" He almost slapped himself after hearing the words spill out of his mouth. What could he possibly want from this fairy girl? If he took something, he'd hurt her, then he'd have to leave, and then he'd be poor, hated, and starving again.
Ivy is totally unaware of the mental argument Bae was having. "Of course I want them here, but they have an important job to do so they can't be here." She sighs and Bae realizes that this wasn't the first time she would have to spend this holiday, that celebrated family, all by herself.
"I guess I'll go." Bae says leaning up against the tree. A bump in the tree trunk pokes painfully into his back. He ignores the pain to keep up his nonchalant persona. "If you still want me to come that is."
"Of course I want you to come." She says her eyes connecting with his. They were says 'thank you' to him.
Thanksgiving is sickening, for him at least. The days leading up to the forsaken holiday were a frenzy that he wished to forget. Frustrated mothers and wives rushing into the pawn shop expecting to find last minute pieces of silverware to replace the broken china that their husbands broke the last Thanksgiving or for an in-style table clothe to match the interior of their dinning room.
"You look terrible. Did something happen, Mr. Gold?" Eirys asks noting the extremely tired look on his face. He felt like he had aged twenty years in the past week or so. "Here, you sit down and I'll make so Apple Ginger tea."
He nods his thanks and settles into his chair. The smell of ginger and tart apples soon fills the air. "This is very fitting for the season." He notes with a certain tone of distaste. He sips the tea; the tartness of the apple sends a delicious tingle down his spine. It is a nice change from the bitter and sweet teas they had the other mornings.
"You're still coming over, right?" She sips her tea, watching him for any signs of a lie. Not that he could openly lie to her face.
He smiles crookedly. "Of course, wouldn't miss it for the world." He takes another sip. At that moment the bell above the door twinkles, a customer enters the supposedly 'closed' shop.
"I better go get that." She says getting up and swiftly walking to the shop. "Welcome to the Green Fairy, how may I be of service to you?"
Mr. Gold was always one for some good gossip, it always pleased him to see other people squirm under his knowledge, and they never realize that he was just a good listener. "I would like a bouquet of these orange ones and any other flowers that scream Thanksgiving." Another frantic mother and she is looking for a present for a pre-thanksgiving party.
"Perhaps you would like some sunflowers." Eirys suggests calmly. "I have some autumn wrappings and tissue paper. It'll look simpler and connected to the holiday."
The woman agrees readily, quickly pays for the flowers, and then rushes out as quickly as she came in. "Don't you know that it's a bad habit to eavesdrop on people." Eirys scolds coming up behind him. "I know you were listening in, trying to catch some more gossip."
Mr. Gold sighs, watching the happy families drive to their favorite restaurants or scurry to different stores to find the missing cranberry sauce they needed in order to complete their family dinner. But for the first time Mr. Gold closed his shop before the sun dipped below the horizon and made the short walk next door.
The bell above the store door twinkles as he enters the flower shop still lit and inviting for any straggling mothers wanting an extra bouquet of flowers for her parlor or a nervous boyfriend trying to make a good impression on his girlfriend's parents. The smell of herbs and spices wafts from the open door connecting the store to Eirys's home.
"Mr. Gold, welcome!" The chirpy voice breaks him out of his thoughts. Her dark hair was pulled into a long braid and her blue eyes offset the flowery yellow apron she wore over her clothes. "Come in, come in." She ushers him towards her home, taking the items he brought from his arm. "I don't have much; the morning was filled with last minute shoppers."
They walk through the back room and into her actual home. Despite the small size of her flower shop, her home was quite large. It had one not-terribly-large room with a small fire place to one side and a small kitchenette in the corner. There's a door that leads to another room, her bedroom and a bathroom. Her home was textured with brightly embroidered rugs, tapestries on the walls, a collection of knickknacks and other oddities on every available surface, and many different types of potted plants in equally striking containers.
"Is there anything I can help you with?" Mr. Gold asks, taking in the room, a small dinning table nestles itself in the corner next to the kitchen. She had already laid out all the utensils and plates for the two of them.
"That would be wonderful." She hurries over to the oven, her long pale green skirt whipping between her legs. "I assumed you wouldn't like tofu turkey, so I made Shepard's pie instead. I had to go to three markets to find some vegan ground beef." She opens the oven door, letting the aroma of the pie settle into the room. "Could you turn the cranberry sauce down to a simmer?" She picks out a bowl for the potato salad, leaving the sparkling grape juice unopened on the dining table.
Mr. Gold quickly turns the fire on the stove down just before the cranberry sauce went of the top of the pot. "You have quite a few cranberries in here." To be exact, it seemed as if she had the entire town's supply of cranberries in that one pot.
"Nothing better than homegrown cranberries for Thanksgiving," she replies scooping her vegan stuffing into another artfully decorated bowl. "I got my hands on some nice sweet potatoes and decided to make sweet potato fries, have you ever had sweet potato fries?"
Mr. Gold glances back at the bubbling cranberries. "I did, once."
"Bae, I can't believe it." Ivy says in total shock. Her blue eyes widen with disbelief at the impish man sitting next to her who was cheerfully munching on a blueberry scone. "You've never had sweet potato crisps?"
He sneaks another scone and takes a hearty bite before answering. "Tell me, dearie, what's so good about these crisps of yours?" He finishes the scone in another two bites and takes a delicate sip of his tea. "Is blueberry a theme today?"
Ivy flushes a bright unhappy red color. The two of them return to their quiet eating, it had become a sort of ritual. At first she would bring snacks and other goodies to help him recuperate, but it soon turned into a time shared between friends. It took a lot of prying, but Bae finally started to reveal little pieces about his life.
"I'll make you some when you come over for the holiday." Ivy announces abruptly. She secretly smiles gleefully at the sound of Bae choking on his tea. She pats his back to help get the liquid out of his throat. "You're still coming right?" She wraps the rest of the scones for Bae to munch on before their next meeting.
"Don't worry your pretty little head." He replies shooing her away, she was needed in the Fairy Grounds which had become a safe heaven for fairies who have been injured during the Ogre Wars. It wouldn't be long before they started to send fairies out into the field in order to help fairies who were helping the humans. "I'll be there."
He stared at the orange strips of sweet potato, spiced and sweetened before being baked to a wonderful crisp. Each fry was dunked in a mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon, and sugar with a sprinkle of rosemary and a dash of salt. Each bite was an explosion of flavor, a flavor that he could vividly remember.
Great expectations, if her eyes could speak, they would be saying "I have great expectations from you."
He placed a sweet potato crisp tentatively in his mouth, being a non-fairy meant that he couldn't just walk into the market and buy food. He also couldn't leave because the humans were hunting his head at the moment; therefore, his only source of food came from Ivy's constant visits bearing snacks. "What do you think?" She demands after hearing the first crunch of the crisp break under the pressure of his teeth. "Do you like them?"
Bae ponders the unique burst of flavor, it was surprisingly very tasty. But of course he would never openly admit that he was addicted to the food she brought him. So he shrugs his thin shoulders, slowly chewing the crisp. "It's interesting. You did a good job, dearie." He takes another one out of the basket and pops it into his mouth.
"Well, I guess I have to keep practicing until you say that you like them." Ivy says biting into her own crisp. "I wonder what autumn is like, outside of the Grounds."
Bae shrugs knowing that this little thought would lead to many other questions in which she would nag him for information. And when he wouldn't answer her questions, she relied on her baking skills to bribe him to tell her. "Autumn is a very beautiful. Not that you would want to know about it when you have all of this." He waves his hand towards the window of her little one roomed cottage.
"Oh Bae, please tell me about it." She says easily falling into his trap. "I want to know about this autumn thing that humans experience."
Bae shrugs pretending to not be interested. "I suppose I could tell you. But it's going to cost you." Even in this nice quaint little place he couldn't resist making deals. Of course, none of them were harmful like some of his past deals. "Perhaps another batch of these crisps in the near future?"
Ivy grins. "Only if you admit you like them." She leans back in her wooden chair, the back creaks against her weight. She had a determined expression on her face, one that he only saw when she did her magic.
Bae sighs dramatically. He was starting to rub off on her, making her more cunning and sly. Making him fall into such a trap, it was incredible; he had never been caught before even if it was one this small. "Very well, I like these sweet potato crisps." He takes another crisp. "Not that I have any other to compare them to." This was going to get interesting. There was no way he was going to let this fairy goodie goodie out wit him.