You never expected magic to touch your life—not really. But when you met Emma, everything changed. It started subtly, a flicker in the corner of your vision, a warmth that wasn’t yours but felt like it was. You shrugged it off at first, thinking you were imagining things.

Then one day, it hit you. You were sitting across from Emma at Granny’s Diner, waiting for your coffee, and suddenly a wave of sadness washed over you so intensely it took your breath away. You looked up, startled, only to find Emma staring at you, eyes glossy, lips pressed together.

“I… I’m fine,” she said, her voice tight, but you knew better.

You realized then: you could feel her. Not just her sadness, but everything—her anger when someone doubted her, her excitement when she was about to do something reckless, even the tiniest sparks of hope she tried to hide from the world.

It was mutual. One morning, when you were overwhelmed by guilt over something trivial, Emma winced, and you saw her wince with you. The bond was real. Magical. Unbreakable.

Days passed, and the connection deepened. Sometimes it was inconvenient—like the time she felt your exhilaration after she saved a child, and suddenly you were grinning in the middle of a crowded street—but mostly, it was comforting. You understood her in a way no one else could.

One evening, the two of you found yourselves alone in Storybrooke Forest, the autumn leaves crunching beneath your feet. Emma stopped and looked at you with that piercing gaze that always seemed to see right through your defenses.

“You feel it too,” she said softly.

You nodded, swallowing the lump in your throat. “I… I feel everything you feel. And I think… I think I don’t want it to stop.”

Emma smiled, a small, almost shy curve of her lips. She reached out, brushing her hand against yours. The warmth between your palms flared, sending a shockwave of emotion through both of you—joy, anticipation, fear, and something deeper, something like destiny.

“You and I,” Emma whispered, “we’re tied together. Heart, mind, magic… everything. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”