As the sun sets in the early evening, Emma rests in the tack room, folding the last of the horse blankets. She soothes the side of her face, still feeling the pain from the slap as her stomach growls wanting food. Emma sighs knowing that her outburst will cause her to go hungry tonight.

Ignoring her stomach, Emma twirls her hair as she stares at the pictures that hung in the room. The black and white photos told their stories through their glass frames of her family's history. One photo showed her great grandparents rebuilding the ranch after a powerful storm hitting the land. Another showed her father and uncle as kids while the one next to it had her father and a younger version of herself riding a black mare. Dowager.

Then everything came back at her as the next picture showed a younger version of her dad posing with Dowager. Steady tears flow down Emma's cheeks at how happy her father was in that picture. She remembers him telling her the time he and Dowager first met.

Her father was very young and met a wild black horse out in the woods outside of their ranch. He believed that the mare had to be the same horse that had protected the Roland's for generations. Ever since then, Dowager never left her father's side, until that faithful day.

Trying to distract her thoughts away from painful memories, Emma's eyes trailed the photos, they stopped at the painting next to them. It showed a strawberry-haired woman holding a sword, riding a winged horse. She loved that painting and it also happened to be her father's favorite as well.

She walks up to the painting and remembering all the stories she had came up with about the woman on the winged horse. Emma was a writer and from the moment that she could pick up a pencil, she wrote endless tales, mostly of magical horses and whenever inspiration strikes from her father's fiction. And usually, her father spoke of far off places filled with magic, horses and a world called North of North. Those were her favorite stories.

Emma giggles at her childhood memories, deep in thought. North of North. Little Emma always wanted to escape to North of North and pet all the horses and care for them. She recalled of the time where she wondered what North of North was like but as she grew older, Emma knew that they where just stories. Stories that her father filled her head just to occupied young Emma from their hardships on the farm.

But ever since she lost her father, Emma looks back at those stories and realized how much she needed them and to fill the void on her aching heart.

Reality comes back to her as Emma realized that the painting, she was staring at was tilted to the left; Emma wasn't going to let that slide. The brown-haired girl stopped stimming with her hair and adjusted the painted. Suddenly a supple and brown book slides out from behind the paining. Emma gasps.

She blinks, unable to believe her eyes. "It can't be." With a gentle hand, Emma picks the leather-bound book up admiring its dusty cover. She brushed the dust off to revile rusty yellow highlights that seemed to glow in the dimming light bulb that hung from the ceiling on a thin string. Emma traced her fingers over the white embossing on the front that spelled out: Ballad of Sigga. A purple orchid was pressed onto the over to complete it.

"Sigga!" The words escaped Emma's lips as she read those words. Sigga, the Valkyrie of her dad's stories and her favorite hero.

She carefully flips through the book as some of the pages were held in by their seems. On the first page of the ballad read It is said, what is written may never be forgotten. For there is a power in stories that surpasses all of the world's wisdom. Emma took that to heart as she read the stories her father once told. The memories of him telling her these fables brought tears to her eyes.

The history of North of North, the legendary horse's backgrounds, the Valkyries and their names, all right here in these pages as Emma read them all. She remembered them all, often using them in her own stories that she wrote, pretending that she was Sigga when Emma was a kid. But some of the pages were full of pomes, that her father never read to her.

She read unfamiliar verses when one of them caused her to read out loud.

Emma's lips were parted.

"You can't speak to me,

But I can see it in your eyes

you understand exactly how I feel.

Nothing you could tell me

would come as a surprise.

I know in your heart, so beautiful and real.

We run, and the world blurs

into streams of colored light.

My troubles fall behind and disappeared.

You're with me in my dreams,

and it feels so true and right.

Anything can happen when you're near.

When I'm with you,

I'm strong and free

and I know there's more

I'm supposed to be.

I don't know-how,

and I don't know why,

but you give me wings,

and with wings, I can fly!

Sometimes I get restless,

and I think I've lost my mind.

I don't know what I'm trying so hard to do.

But no matter what fate brings us,

I know I'm going to find

we can handle it together, me and you

When I'm with you,

I'm strong and free,

and I know we'll find our destiny.

Come with me,

and we'll claim the sky,

because you give me wings,

and with wings, I can fly."

As Emma spoke those words, her hair lifts as if the wind was carrying it and a burst of light fills the room. This new energy fills Emma's heart with joy that she had never felt before. The burst of lights leaps out of the tack room and into the stalls as if it was begging Emma to follow. She follows the trail of light outside of the barn and into the sky. She watched the soundless light explodes like fireworks, filling the night sky with colors she had never seen before.

The colors danced with one around each other and sparkled in a natural light display. The dynamic patterns of brilliant lights appear as curtains, rays, and spirals that soon flicker into dynamic particles metamorphosing into the atmosphere that covers the entire sky.

The aurora persists to dance as tears of pure pleasure flow down Emma's cheeks. For the first time in forever, Emma felt happy and free just like the poem she read. She hugs the old book close to her chest letting this magic uplift her. This was indeed magic that Emma had never felt before.

As she watches, a hand grabs her shoulder that sends shivers down Emma's spine. She twists to meet her uncle, but as she did so, she hid the book behind her, not wanting him to take the only thing that reminded her of her father.

"What are you doing out here, missy?" He asks with a harmful look in his eye. Emma shakes her head trying to process what had happened. She turns her head back to the sky and just like that, the aurora had vanished. Did she make that all up or did it happen?

Once she turned back, she smiled and lied to her uncle, not making eye-contact with him. "Oh, I was just fooling around. You know us, teenagers." She slides past him, walking away, backward and fidgeting with her ponytail. "I'm going to bed now. Good-night." She caught her uncle raising his eyebrow in concern as she left.