The princess and the shepherd

A guest asked for a oneshot of a 3 or 4 year old Emma having a bad dream. Snow tells her a story about a princess and a shepherd that fall in love and she falls asleep peacefully.

Snow stirred when she heard the heavy door of their bedroom opening. She found herself waking up quickly when she heard the frightened little sniffles of her toddler daughter. Emma toddled over to her mom's side of the bed, Humbert the bear clutched tightly under one arm, with her thumb in her mouth. She looked up at her mommy, hazel eyes shiny with tears and her bottom lip quivering.

"Bad dream." She murmured before extending her arms to her mother. Snow instantly picked the little girl up and set her on lap where Emma instantly snuggled close to her mom, resting her head in the crook of her neck. "Can't sleep." The commotion seemed to wake Charming too, who looked to his side and quickly worked out what was going on. He sat up in the bed and began to rub soothing circles on Emma's back.

"Aw baby, it's ok. How about a story?" Charming whispered. Emma nodded against her mom's neck.

"Well I have just the perfect one." Snow said, giving her husband a small wink. "It's about a princess who falls in love with a shepherd pretending to be a prince."

"Oh, that's one of my favourites." Charming said with a grin. "I'll start. Once upon a time, there lived the most beautiful princess in all the lands." He said. Snow rolled her eyes playfully but did not edit him.

"But she couldn't live at home anymore, for her stepmother and she did not get along. So the princess lived out in the forest as a bandit. She made lots of new friends there, but one day someone even more special would come along. You see, the princess was waiting for one of her stepmother's carriages to ride by so she could take just enough from it so that she had enough pennies to live with." Snow wanted to avoid using the word steal. "But when she took what she needed, it turned out it wasn't the queen's carriage at all, but another kingdom's. The prince from that kingdom came out and thought the princess was a man, as she had her hood up. He fought with the princess to get the goods back and found out she was a woman."

"Yeah, and the princess left the prince with a scar to prove she was as tough as any man." Charming said, rubbing the little scar on his chin.

"Anyway, at that point the prince was engaged to another princess, and he and the bandit princess didn't seem to like each other much anyway. But their paths crossed a few more times and they soon realised they were madly in love. So much in fact, that they shared true love."

"Wow." Emma said sleepily, she liked this story.

"The Evil Queen wasn't happy that the bandit princess was so happy and in love, so tried to destroy her happiness and split the pair up. But she failed, and the two became happily married. After that, the shepherd became a real prince. But it didn't matter to the bandit princess, she still thought he was the most charming man in all the lands." Snow said, looking over to her husband. Emma gave a soft snore, letting her parents know she had drifted back off again.

"Then the two lovers created a little person with their true love. The most beautiful, precious little girl…"

"In all the lands." Snow finished for Charming. But this was of course not the end of their story, it was only the beginning.