Emma nodded at the comment about being a good listener, but really. How did someone explain that? That after all that time, they were still affected by something that needed to happen? Instead, she simply watched Aislinn playing, nodding along to Belle's rambling.
Because she was, in fact, rambling. And Emma knew people well enough to know that Belle was trying to distract her from the gray mood that had settled over her. And really? She appreciated that.
"I don't really remember it at all," she admitted, shrugging. Mostly because there were chunks of her childhood she chose to forget. "I think I was in a group home when I lost my first baby tooth. There's a thing they do here...the tooth fairy. Leaves coins, or I guess by now, inflation has her up to dollars, whenever a child loses a tooth and leaves it under their pillow for collection. We never had that. I was the kid picked on in school because I had missing teeth and no pocket money to show for it."
Possibly the most she'd ever said about her past in one shot, at least to Belle. She so rarely talked about it. It didn't make her, it wasn't all of who she was, so she simply pushed it down. But it was, in fact, her history. The part she knew and could remember. It was basically impossible to remember being the newborn princess to a doomed kingdom and she never even tried.
Yet somehow, still, it had entirely changed her life.
"What was it like? Growing up in that world?" She knew her parents hadn't known Belle's family well at all, but it was still some link. Maybe if they'd had more time to run their world, they'd have interacted at some point.