Lydia nodded knowingly. She knew how that felt. Then she paused. She'd gone through a collection of Grimm's tales before, and now that she knew herself again, she knew which story was hers. She looked at him, and then gestured to herself questioningly.

Hook nodded after a moment. "Yes, I did come across your story." He didn't mention that he had gone looking for that, but hey, he was (kind of) honest.

Lydia wrinkled her nose a bit and cleared her throat. Seemed like she wasn't going to get through the conversation without speaking. Damn. And she had been doing so well, too.

"It's mostly accurate," she said. "Isabel was a brat. But enchantment-granting fairies sometimes don't take into account that a child is usually a brat when they're twelve." As she spoke, she gathered up the flowers and stones that began to accumulate in her lap. Most of the stones were diamonds and pearls, with the occasional ruby, and the flowers were a combination of roses and syringa.

"Fairies usually don't take things like that into account," Hook agreed. "They can be rather pesky that way, actually." He picked up a stone that had fallen off her lap and offered it to her.

"Thanks," Lydia said, accepting the stone. She added it to the others. "What the story doesn't say is that Mother tried to auction me off to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder happened to be a disgusting old lord. So I ran away."

"Good call there," Hook agreed with a nod. "So you ran off and, what? Sold these and lived off that?" He nodded at the gems.

"I tried to, for a little while," Lydia replied. "Pretended I was mute, lived off of a bit of a stockpile." As she spoke, she kept absently collecting everything that appeared. She had a fair pile of flowers, by now, and more than a few gemstones. "The lord put out a warrant for me, though, and people got suspicious of all of the valuable gems I kept 'finding'."

"So you had to move," Hook said, nodding his understanding. "That's a shame. Traveling can be quite fun when you're not worried about people coming to get you."

"Traveling was okay, until I heard the rumors about me," Lydia said. "Apparently, people had started to hear and talk about the girl who could make you rich just by talking."

Hook nodded. "People talk about things like that," he agreed. Not to mention the rumors had spread enough that he'd heard about her, but he wasn't going to mention that.

"Right," Lydia said. "Though I didn't have to worry about it long, because the Curse happened."

"Indeed." Hook shook his head a bit. "And now we have magic again, so it seems you have to worry about it again." He tilted his head to the side a bit. "What are you going to do?"

Lydia just shrugged a bit. There was nothing she could do about it, at the moment, at least as far as she knew.

Hook nodded. He knew that feeling. "Well, let me know if there's anything I can do to help," he offered, rather surprised to find the offer was genuine. He kind of liked her, which was odd and dangerous and he needed to stop that.

Lydia blinked. That was definitely unexpected.

"We'll see," she said. She paused. "What's your name, anyways? Your actual name, not the one you picked up later."

Hook quirked a bit of a grin. "Killian," he said. "My name is Killian."

"Killian," Lydia repeated, catching the pearl that spawned. "Well, it was nice to talk to you outside of my freaking out."

Killian grinned. "I'll see you again soon," he said, rising. "Enjoy the rest of your day."

"You too," Lydia said, smiling just a bit at him as he left.

Hook headed back to his ship to figure out what was going on. Because this was not normal for him, dammit.

In the meantime, Mai had been involved in the arrangements for the part-time custody of Grace, and she had made sure that Jefferson had his daughter on the weekends. But she didn't get out of the habit of picking Grace up from school every day to walk her to whichever house she was going to.

For the moment, Jefferson had to be content with just having part-time custody of Grace. Some was better than none at all, and it meant he got to have her at least half the time.

And, if he was honest, he was getting a bit fond of Mai, as well. Grace liked her, after all, and Mai herself wasn't bad. She was actually a bit feisty, to Jefferson's surprise, and he found he kind of liked that.

Mai always walked Grace to whichever house, so she wasn't all that surprised when Grace invited her in to Jefferson's house for a quick drink and a snack. Huffing to herself at her inability to tell the girl no, Mai glanced around for Jefferson as Grace raced up to her room to put her things down.

Jefferson, for once, wasn't waiting for Grace in the main room. Instead, he was off in another room off the main hall. The door wasn't closed, so he wasn't explicitly telling anyone to stay out, but he was distracted enough that he didn't call to invite them into the room, either. Inside, there were several hats on display, each one elaborate and gaudy but all obviously treated with care. Jefferson was turning one over in his hands, running his fingers along the inside gently.

Almost by accident, Mai found him, and she blinked. It made sense that he made hats, she knew who he'd been in the other world, but still... It seemed like a private place, so she didn't enter.

"Got quite a collection there, Jefferson. Thinking of modeling hats now?"

But that didn't stop her from making snarky comments from the hallway.

Jefferson blinked and put the hat down.

"What?" he said, a bit bewildered. "No, no, it's nothing like that." He set the hat back down carefully on its display. "These hats are... special, that's all."