It was another impossibly slow week before Mom entered my room. "Elle."
"Hi." I didn't look up at her. We weren't exactly on speaking terms.
"I've received a message from Storybrooke."
That piqued my interest; I looked at her. "Oh?"
"The witches and Rumpelstiltskin have been defeated."
"Good," I replied. Did this mean... was it possible?
"Emma was infected by some dark magic or something, and Granny's diner disappeared with several people in it."
"Um... ok." I groaned internally; more danger meant we would never go back.
"So, there doesn't appear to be any immediate danger... we can go back to Storybrooke."
At first I didn't dare to believe it. "Really?"
She nodded with a smile, and I jumped up and ran over to hug her.
"Thank you, Mom."
"Well, the new job isn't working out, so I think you should thank them."
The next day, we were back in Storybrooke. I ran to Evan's place.
"Elle?!"
"Evan! Hi!"
"What are you doing here?"
"We moved back!"
"Oh! That's, um, that's great!" He hugged me.
I frowned. "Evan? Is something wrong."
"No, it's just a little surprising when your girlfriend who moved away more than a week ago suddenly shows up at your door."
I shrugged. "That's fair. Definitely fair. So, how's life been?"
"Fine."
Everything resumed mostly as it had been before. Mom went back to working for the hospital, I caught up on my missed schoolwork, and Evan and I resumed our relationship, much to Mom's discontent. Before I knew it, we had already been back in Storybrooke for longer than we had been away for, and I felt once again like I belonged with all these fairytale characters-even though many of the most well-known ones were now missing. There was wild speculation as to where they had gone, what had happened to them, what the darkness being put into Emma meant. Conspiracy theories filled the time. I blinked again and we had been back for nearly six weeks.
Then, suddenly...
"They're back!" The cry swept through the town. The people who had been away had returned, with the diner. They had been, apparently, in Camelot. But now they were back... not back to normal, though. Emma was the Dark One now.