Long Live Regina!

Robin Hood was flying forth on a stolen horse with a bucket full of jewels thumping its rear.

He had dropped the button before hefting his stolen goods over his shoulder, hopping on his horse, lowering his body to the Appaloosa's neck, and galloping out of there.

He liked to spread the hope.

It all began by knocking the guards of the chariot out one by one by flinging rocks at the perfect spot. Sometimes, the people in the chariot let him have the goods once they were defenseless, but King Midas' daughter thought she could overpower him. She'd come out of the chariot, fists on her hips, and snarled, "Come out, whoever you are, and fight me like a man!"

He'd used his slingshot to knock her out. He wasn't about to enter a brawl with a woman, unless she hit him first and he couldn't escape. He'd had to punch two women for this reason. One well-placed punch between the ribs gave him the freedom to rush away. He knew these women were desperately lost in the mind, or they wouldn't have attacked him.

He was a wanted man, but not by desperate souls. The rich were angry he'd lifted a small percentage of their wages. It was enough to want him dead but not enough to punch him. Snow White would lurve his head.

After he knocked Abigail out, he'd swiftly pillaged her chariot.

As he rode, Robin Hood thought about how he'd never seen Regina in the flesh.

Certainly he'd seen Wanted posters with her face plastered to trees.

But he believed in her. The Queen had been hunting the lass for eighteen years with her demon guards. Who had burned several villages down when they discovered people hiding her whereabouts but no one would disclose them with a traitorous peep.

Robin Hood had been angry when the young queen had raised the taxes so high his father could not afford them. The guards had burned his mother at a stake and imprisoned his father. His father caught a lethal virus and died not long later. At twelve years of age, Robin Hood had ridden off, determined to rob the filthy rich and give to the poor.

And even more determined not to get caught.

Which he never had.

It was pathetic that a mere thirteen-year-old—never mind how determined or cunning he was—could outsmart and overpower these guards. It made him think now—at twenty-eight—the guards were meant to protect their quarry from imbeciles.

He believed in Regina, and that helped him believe also in himself. If she could fox her way out of death, why couldn't he?

There had been several instances in which he'd almost been caught. People who believed in him saved him.

Like that time a guard had sent an arrow into his shoulder. A shepherd who'd witnessed it slit the guard's throat then took care of Robin, taking him to a witch doctor friend of his, who removed the arrow so deftly and gently that Robin didn't even have a scar.

And once he'd been so exhausted that he fell from his horse and into a stream. He would have died if a band of women on the run hadn't stepped up, rescued him, and rode hard so the hunter tailing Robin lost sight of him.

There'd been a couple more slip-ups, one of which his rescuers had only saved him because they would not stand by and let a man get thrown in a prison cell by the scruff of his neck. They had no idea who he was. Foreigners. Gypsies. When he gave his name, the one missing half his teeth and licking his gold tooth—Clopin, he said his name was—had admitted to hearing of him. "But unlike Regina, we had no idea what in tarnation you looked like."

Robin had draped his cape around his shoulders and madea goofy face. "Well, I hope I look like a hawk, because if I don't," he swaggered off, "I'm going to be mildly disappointed."

Their rescue had happened when he'd hung upside down from a tree branch by his ankles, aiming arrows at the hem of chairot guards pants and in a rectangle around the horses. He'd climbed many trees since he was a year old and never came close to falling. But he'd fallen from that tree and ended up in a lake. If the gypsy caravan hadn't come rushing back for him and Clopin hadn't offered his stilt to tug Robin into ther vehicle, he'd be beheaded by the bloodthirsty queen.

Robin thinks the queen is nuts, but he has never been in love. He feels empty and wistful sometimes. Thinking it'd be nice to feel passionate enough about someone that when they die, he rips the heart of their twin out to make them kiss him.

It must be nice to feel so passionately about someone even twenty years after they died.

He hasn't met a woman who melted his heart, but he sometimes ponders over how peculiar it might be to glimpse someone with the potential to love him…then pass her by without ever realizing it.