“Henry, be careful! Go slow,” Regina’s brow creased in worry as Henry took his first wobbling stumble out onto the pristine and smooth ice. The pond was as reflective as Regina’s mirror, and not yet a scratch on its surface. Snow fell in large lazy fluffy flakes adding to the few powdery inches on the ground. Next to a large thermos of hot chocolate, Emma and Regina sat side by side on a fallen tree lacing up their skates.
“Are you sure it’s cold enough? He’s not going to fall through, right?” Emma watched as Henry lowered himself to his knees on the ice to avoid his first fall.
Way longer than a drabble and more technically a sick fic than domestic au, but here you are!
Emma begins to cough on Tuesday. It’s been a normal few weeks, which is always worrying. They never have this much of a breather without some other-dimensional threat crash-landing in Storybrooke.
But it’s been quiet. Nothing’s out of the ordinary. Emma wakes up, makes some Poptarts for breakfast (which Regina says she hates, but will always always sneak one when she thinks Emma isn’t watching, which she is, because she’s always watching Regina. How else is she supposed to guarantee her a happy ending if she’s not paying attention?), drop Henry off at school, and swing by Granny’s for some coffee and gossip before she gets to the station.
She wrangles Pongo, eats some donuts, helps some old ladies cross the street. All in a day’s work for the sheriff.
It isn’t until she gets home that the trouble starts.
“We are proud to announce the formation of our new Feline Unit, headed up by Sgt. Paul Samuelson. Please join us in welcoming his newest recruit, Fuzz, who is highly trained in catnip detection, mouse apprehension, and laser pointer tracking. Sgt. Samuelson and Fuzz will work diligently to scratch away at the growing catnip epidemic and clean up the objects randomly knocked off of surfaces that litter the streets of Fort Dodge.”
The Zero Comment Challenge is a way for readers to find new stories and reach out to authors they want to encourage.
Every fandom has stories that get lost in the shuffle. Maybe they were posted during a busy time and didn’t get much attention. Maybe the author didn’t tag as effectively as they could have to get their story in front of the audience it was intended for. Maybe the fandom is just really shy so they leave kudos instead of comments.
The Zero Comment Challenge is meant to find those authors and give them some love. Go to the AO3 search and filter by comments, then look at the fics that don’t have any comments at all. Find one that looks interesting to you and let the author know what you thought. They get to meet a new reader and you get to find new fic. Everyone wins!