Enchanted Storybrooke

Chapter 1: Thief

"Please! Please, Mom! It's just one small thing," Hope begged Emma Swan, her mother, in the kitchen of the loft that use to be Snow White's. Well, Mary Margaret's.

"I already said no, and it is not one small thing. You are asking to join the Sheriff's department. That would mean you going out there and chasing after dangerous people," Emma explained, washing a bowl that was used to eat cereal minutes before.

"I'm eighteen years old. I think I can handle a little danger."

Emma put the bowl down and leaned on the counter. "We're talking about magic wielding people. They are more dangerous than what you see in movies, Hope. You hardly have a hold of your own magic."

"That's not true. I can control my magic just fine."

"Last lesson you had with Regina, you almost decapitated her with one of the knights' swords!"

Hope turned silent before saying, "How do you know that she wasn't in the way?"

"Hope! It was a levitating lesson! You were trying to lift an apple!" Emma started to walk over to her bed to fold the basket of clothes on top of it.

"Fine. Just give me someone easy."

Emma turned around slowly to look at her daughter. "Easy? What do you mean by easy?"

"Someone that I won't have to use magic in order to catch. Someone who doesn't wield magic themselves either. Then you won't have to worry about magic wielding danger." Hope waved her hands around as she said her last words and accidentally caused the bowl in the sink to smash into the wall. "Whoops."

Emma scrunched her eyebrows together and her nose scrunched with them. She then rubbed her eyebrows out as she said, "Fine. There is one person that I think would be okay for you to try and bring in. His name is Roland Hood. Heard of him?"

Hope looked confused. "Robin Hood's son and the other Robin Hood's brother? Doesn't he live with the Merry Men in Sherwood Forest?"

"Yes, but they still do the steal-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor cliché that his dad did. Stealing is still stealing. I just need you to find him and bring him to the station for processing. Think you can handle that without almost killing someone?"

"Of course! What do you take me for?" Emma gave Hope a look as she started heading towards the door. "Don't answer that. Don't worry, Mom. You'll have yourself one thief in a prison cell by the end of the day!"

The door shut behind Hope. "That's what I'm afraid of." Emma dropped a tank top on the bed and grabbed a pair of jeans from the basket.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Finding a thief is apparently a little harder than I thought." Hope lifted a leg over a fallen tree. Her foot landed in the center of a mud puddle as it made contact back to the ground. "And a little messier than I thought. Good thing I wore my boots instead of my tennis shoes." She shook the mud off her boot and carefully brought her other leg over the tree. Hope continued walking in the forest, trying to find the part of it that would classify it as "Sherwood Forest".

"New thing to bring up to Regina: Make road signs in the woods." Hope leaned on a tree in order to catch her breath. "New thing to bring up to Dad: Pick back up fencing. I need to get back into shape."

Hope noticed something on the ground. Well, more of in the ground. She knelt down on one knee and reached for what looked like a stick with wild bird feathers on the end. Three of them. She pulled it out of the ground and saw a sharp metal tied on the top of it.