// The Dark, I Know Well
Title: The Dark, I Know Well
Rating: PG
Pairing: Implied Elphaba/Fiyero.
Warning: Spoilers for the end of the musical.
Summary: An Animal, unaware of the troubles in Oz, invites two strangers into her home, and soon discovers that nothing will ever be the same again. Post-musical.
I.
You once lived in Oz; a long time ago.
It’s hard to remember much about it, other than the odd shadow in your daydreams. All you know now is where you are; here, in this quiet forest, in your quiet home with the shoddily-made shelves, crumbling books hidden under the bed, clothes that never seem clean enough. It is your entire world -- and yet, your dreams drag along familiar voices, grasping buildings, and the images linger long after they should.
It was the right choice. Your uncle always knew best, after all, and he was the one who placed the suitcase in your frightened grip, the dawn but a newborn in your clouded windowsills - just in case. He was the one who sat on the edge of your bed with weary eyes, telling you dreadful stories of what was happening to the Animals, of a corrupted Oz; stories that later seeped into your nightmares, vibrant, deafening.
He was the one who stayed behind.
You catch yourself against the wall; utter a prayer that doesn’t even seem to leave your mouth, hot with hopes of safety, of innocent mistakes. It couldn’t be. Those hastily scribbled words - they’re coming to take me away tomorrow. His tales of lost voices, of prison cells and quiet secrets; they would never come true.
Not there.
You shouldn’t really be thinking about that, though.
With a simple flick, the dust scampers away from your broom into the early evening, and for a moment, you stand in the humid air, watching the clouds gather above you - shiver, even though it isn’t cold.
Just another day in the Bad Lands.
II.
The rain is heavy, horrible, like the cries of a defeated soul. Threads drip down through the holes in your roof, forming gaping puddles; your bed little more than a pond now. You’re tired, eyelids drooping, body trembling, and for the thousandth time, you think of your little home in Oz, abandoned, alone, and wonder why, why, why. Why did you believe so many unbelievable tales? Why did that letter tremble against your hooves, so raw, so real that for a fleeting moment, the words almost seemed to leap from the page and wrap themselves around your throat? Why did you leave such comfort to cower in a crumbling shack and pray?
Somewhere within your faded thoughts, a cackle of thunder sounds - and a scream follows it.
You’re upright in a moment, unsure if you really heard it, unsure if you’re merely losing your mind. It’s been so long since you’ve seen another living being that all you can do is imagine they still exist somewhere; far from you.
The scream rattles in your bones, and you throw open the door just in time to be blinded like an brilliant flash of white; watch as a giant of a tree collapses amidst all the shadows, slams against the ground with an anguished howl.
A frightened voice pierces the steady rhythm of the rain, calling someone’s name, and then you’re running, hooves sinking in the mud, clothes fit to slip off your matted hair - more exhilarated than you’ve ever been before. Someone is out there. Someone is out there.
You’re running so fast that you nearly slam into the fallen trunk; its jagged outline vibrant in each gasp of lightning. It’s enormous, so large you’re unable to tell where it begins and ends. You think of calling out, but you’re afraid that no will answer; that you’ll be proven insane, and that will be the end of it. Instead, you try to feel your way along it, traveling an untouched path; unsure of what you might find (someone is out there, you tell yourself, determined, hopeless).
And then it’s real.
At first, it’s just a woman’s sharp voice. Then, the shadow of a figure before you, invisible until lightning pours over, revealing the outline of a black cloak; hands tinted an otherworldly color, which must be a trick of the night, a hallucination of your frenzied mind. She’s frantically shoving at the stoic trunk, and you find yourself frozen, confused, exhilarated; merely watching as though you’re on the outside, looking in. You don’t move until a thread of lightning traces the shadows beneath the bark; colors something dull yellow, and with a jolt of horror, you realize it’s a person, trapped under the trunk, and then you’re shoving too.
The woman seems to notice you, then, shouts something that a sudden roar of wind swallows whole, and you don’t know what to say, so you say nothing. For a frightening moment, you believe that she is about to shove you away, but she merely makes a wild gesture, urges her body against the trunk harder still.
A man’s voice, soft, pricks at your ears; says something about his hands, and it takes you a bewildered moment to realize it’s coming from the figure trapped beneath the tree. How he’s even still alive; much less speaking in a perfectly calm, stable voice, is something you can’t understand, can’t even begin to. All you know is that now, the woman has clasped one of his hands and is pulling, and you mechanically follow, clutching your hooves against the other.
For a brief, despairing moment, you think the situation hopeless; but then something gives, suddenly, swiftly, and you’re dragging the man through the windswept grass, wonderfully free. You release him, your hoof coated in something you don’t recognize at first; straw, you finally realize, and are all the more perplexed.
The rain keeps beating down, unrelenting, unfeeling to your plight, and all you can do is gesture at the two trembling figures, clutching to one another; shout for them to follow you before turning and running. Their footsteps crunch against branches, slip through mud behind you, and despite the rain and the cold and the wind, you’re not alone any longer, and it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world.
The sensation proves to be fleeting.
A few weak candles are still clinging to gasps of fire when you stumble in, looking like you just emerged from a lake, and when you turn back, eager to urge them in, your body stiffens; your blood trembles beneath dripping hair.
The man isn’t human at all, you realize, and your hooves unconsciously move to your shreds of clothing, wiping away the straw that is solidly matted to them; that came from him, from his body, you realize, horrified. The flames catch his every shade of gold, and against rationality, against logic, you realize he’s one of those rag dolls that you used to see hanging in cornfields; undoubtedly alive.
What’s even worse is that one of his legs is gone, ripped clean off, and you realize it must still be trapped under that monster of a tree. He isn’t bothered by it, either, not in the least; merely bewildered, it looks like. He clings to the other figure; a shadow of a cloak, so deeply covered that you wouldn’t even be able to tell it were a woman if you hadn’t already heard her voice.
For the longest of moments, you simply stare at them; startled, disbelieving. There’s nothing to offer them, no excess help you can really give. You’re not even sure what they are.
And then the woman steps forward, black cloth swirling in the puddles along the floor, curtly asking if you have a bed, a chair, anything, and you manage to gesture dumbly to the back room.
With surprising speed, she helps the straw man through the doorway, and you’re left standing below a slow drip of rainwater, wondering just who you’ve blindly invited into your home.
III.
You know you shouldn’t be listening, that’s it rude to eavesdrop on conversations that have nothing whatsoever to do with you; by the sound of their voices, there’s obviously a very serious subject worthy of discussion between them, and you have no business within it.
This, of course, does not keep you from lingering near the doorway.
They speak in careful, hushed tones; still, you manage to catch snippets of sentences amidst the dull roar of the storm.
“It‘s my fault --”
“-- I told you, I can’t feel anything! I’m fine - “
“Fiyero, your leg is gone --”
“You worry too much --”
“ -- or have you already forgotten the spell?”
“I don’t like seeing you like this --”
“ -- it wasn’t as though the lightning was your fault --”
“Just let me try --”
And then the woman brushes the folds of her cloak away, uncovers elegant hands (and her skin, why is her skin not quite the right color? It must be an hallucination, you decide; you‘re beginning to see things) and her tongue wraps its way around sharp, soothing gibberish; a foreign language, you fleetingly decide, but then something’s happening, something impossible, and suddenly, his leg has reappeared.
You can’t understand it, staring unabashedly into the darkened room. One moment, his leg was gone, and the next, it was there, perfectly whole, flawless in every way. He wraps careful hands around it, smiles, and you’re beginning to feel lightheaded.
It’s the most spectacular thing you’ve ever seen, and with your lanky limbs trembling, a gasp stuck to the roof of your mouth, you slip against the wall, and you can think is magic, magic, magic.
IV.
Finally, when the hours have quietly slipped by, when you’ve resigned yourself to a damp wooden chair, when the rain has finally calmed itself, the woman emerges from the room; awkwardly stands before you, little more than a shadow in your home.
Unsure of what else you can do, you gesture to the chair across from yours, and to your faint surprise, she takes it.
“Thank you,” she finally says after a pocket of awkward silence, and it’s easy to tell that gratitude isn’t an emotion she expresses often. “For your help.”
You do your best to nod in response, unable to keep your gaze from wondering to the darkened doorway over her shoulder.
“He’s sleeping,” she says, noticing your eyes; shoulders stiffening under the folds of her cloak, neck craning so as to avoid the light catching within the depths of her hood. You try to smile, nod once more, but she makes you nervous, so very nervous, and in all your fidgeting, you accidentally knock over one of the candles with your clunky hoof.
And before you can even react, try to reach for it; her hand shoots forward, wraps long fingers around the wax just before the flame touches the table.
You might have been amazed at her speed if you weren’t already preoccupied with her hand, glowing dull emerald in the light.
She pulls it back within folds of cloth, as though she has been stung; as though the flame has burnt her.
After a long moment, she sighs, defeated, and throws her hood back, revealing long, tangled raven hair; undoubtedly green skin.
“Say what you will,” she snarls as you stare, unmoving, from across the table. “Everyone seems to have an opinion of me; let’s hear yours.”
You struggle to find words.
“Who are you?”
It’s all you can manage to say, awkward, trembling, but you have faced entirely too many surprises tonight; you deserve at least one concrete answer.
It’s her turn to look bewildered.
“Do you mean to say,” she starts, deliberately, disbelieving, “that you don’t know who I am?”
“No,” you answer, and it’s the truth. “Should I?”
She doesn’t provide a response; merely falls back against her chair, the shadow of a smile emerging amidst the sharp curves of her face. She waves away your further persistance, merely saying that she is no one, no one at all, and somehow, you get the impression that she revels in the fact that you don’t know who she is; that her identity is so well-known that to find someone who has never heard her name is everything but an impossibility.
You don’t know whether to feel sympathetic or frightened.
V.
It’s ages before she takes a good, long look at you, and when she blinks, leans forward in surprise, softly says, “you’re a Goat,” as though it’s some sort of grand revelation, you nearly laugh.
“Not familiar with Animals?” You can’t help but comment, snidely.
“Not for a long time, no,” she snaps in response, and her expression is so grave that the smirk is wiped clean from your face. “Have you been living under a rock for the past few years, or are you just oblivious to your own race?”
The whisper of a chill runs along your back (lost voices, prison cells, quiet secrets), but you do your best to ignore it.
“The last time I spoke to an Animal was --,” her sentence awkwardly hangs in the air, and an expression tinged with pain lingers along her face; her lips stiffening into an unforgiving sneer; “an Animal that could understand me, could respond of its own will,” -- her eyes close; her nails press into the damp wood, “was months ago, at the least.”
“Where are you from,” you ask, scarcely able to hide your panic, boiling beneath your skin.
“Oz,” she says, and it’s a nightmare, coming true.
VI.
“I once lived in Oz. I was told -- there were rumors of something happening, something bad, but I never - I never thought much of them. When I left, I was sure it --someone would come for me, would bring me back when it was all proved false.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Years. I think. It‘s difficult to keep track of time here.”
“It must have been, if you never heard of the wi -- if you never knew ”
“Was it really so horrible? I can’t - I don’t understand --”
“If horrible to you means corruption of the highest level; unsupported, foolish hysteria; Animals, losing their voices, being carted off to Oz-Knows-Where -- then yes, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it that. Would you?”
“I - I can’t --”
“Be grateful for your good fortune; that you escaped before the storm.”
Her eyes fill with the glint of something otherworldly, each dip and curve in her skin growing hollow, and in the shadows, her face looks utterly evil; utterly wicked.
“It’s all you can hope to have at this point.”
VII.
You wish to know more; more of Oz, more of her, more of the reason why a woman of strange skin and a man made of straw are traipsing around in the Bad Lands. She waves away each question with a tired hand, a warning gaze; but still, your curiosity presses on.
She speaks in vague, gentle tones; few tidbits of information that don’t tell you much at all. They lived in Oz all their lives. Unfortunate circumstances were numerous. They are running away; escaping. They can never go back.
(Who is chasing you? No one. Who wishes you harm? Everyone.)
“Isn’t it sad, though? To remember your time there?”
She laughs, then; a hoarse cackle that sends unvited chills through you.
“Remember?” She says, like it’s the most amusing word she’s ever heard. “I long to forget.”
She will say nothing else on the matter, and you wonder if it's for the best.
VIII.
Your eyes meander over to the doorway; perfectly dark, empty.
“Will he be all right,” you suddenly ask, remembering the bile in your throat at the sight of his single leg.
“He’s fine,” she says with a voice that has suddenly obtained a slight slur; she’s growing tired, arms lifeless along the worn grooves of the table. “He -- he didn’t even feel it.”
“His leg was ripped off!”
“He doesn’t feel pain,” she says, as though it’s the simplest thing in the world to accept. “Not anymore.”
“That’s impossible --” you start, disbelieving, but she holds her hand up so suddenly, so sternly, that the words leak back down your throat, lost.
“Don’t act as though you know what’s possible and what’s not,” she hisses, long nails reflecting the faint flames of the dying candles. “You don’t.”
You can accept that, you suppose.
She suddenly tips her head, pulling at the thick material of her dress; clutches between her fingers a few pieces of straw, brilliant gold in the light. She smiles wearily at them; what seems like a strange mixture of sadness and happiness enveloped in her face, and glances over her shoulder to the doorway.
“He didn’t have to; but he did.”
She delicately wraps her fingers around them; clutches her soft fist to her chest; lost in something you could never begin to understand.
“I love him,” she says, almost desperately.
You’re not sure what to say to that.
IX.
Somewhere in the fringes of your soft sleep; when you and her have slipped once and once again, only to be awakened by melting wax, faint light, the blurry gaze of the other, wide as though looking upon a stranger, you remember something; scribbled lines in a crumpled letter; carefully folded under the thin folds of your bed.
My days teaching here have not been by any stretch ideal; but there have been small instances of happiness. There is one student, a very bright young woman, who has shown me great kindness.
Startled from lucid shadows of dreams, you glance to her crumpled form, perfectly still, still trapped in an prolonged interlude; hands twitching with what you can only expect are restless dreams.
I think you would like Miss Elphaba; she is wise beyond her years. I only wish her skin - for you see, she is green in color; a very odd rarity - were normal, for then she may make friends with greater ease.
For a moment, you rest in the hole of your wrapped arms, watching her.
“Elphaba,” you whisper, without thinking.
She jerks, nearly stirs but does not wake, and she must be the girl mentioned in your uncle’s letter; it seems impossible (you can’t imagine this shadow, this utterly frightening enigma of a woman calmly sitting in a classroom, taking notes like any other good student), but it must be.
“Elphaba,” you say once more, a little louder; nudging her thin fingers.
A grimace follows the sharp pattern of her face, and she brushes you away, mumbles something; not now, Nessa; it’s too early to go outside; buries her face in her shoulder.
You barely have a moment to breathe before she sits upright, startled from sleep; looks to you with wild eyes.
“What did you call me?”
X.
“My Uncle, he’s a professor; he used to send me letters all the time. About his classes and his students -- he once wrote me a letter speaking of someone named Elphaba, who was green. That -- I mean, is it you?”
“Yes.”
“He spoke so fondly of you.”
“I thought fondly of him. Doctor Dillamond was my favorite professor, by far.”
“I’m glad he wasn’t completely unhappy. You gave him some comfort, it seemed; some hope for the world.”
“Hope.”
She says it as though it’s a filthy word.
You don’t want to know, you don’t; so many dreams you managed to cling to have been effortlessly shattered in a matter of hours, and you don’t know if you can withstand any more of this. You want to believe in goodness, however fake it may prove to be in the end. It’s all you have left.
You are a fool in the end, and cannot help but ask.
“Do you know what happened - what became of my Uncle?”
Elphaba averts her gaze, focuses sad eyes on the whisper of a flame, and the room is quiet and quiet and quiet; filled with nothing but the truth, and it’s the most horrible feeling you’ve ever known.
XI.
There is nothing left in Oz, for you or me. Perhaps -- one day, things may be different, but it will take time.
Quite a bit of time.
XII.
The rest of the night is spent in restless fits of sleep; your body caught in countless awkward positions that leave you stiff with each startling time you wake. You dream of being struck by falling trees; of sitting in a classrooms with green shadows; of being unable to speak, no matter how hard you try. Each one leaves you cold to the touch, waking to melted wax on your hooves, a glimmer of emerald across the table.
If your sleep merely consists of restless dreams, than hers is filled with nightmares; horrible, terrifying nightmares that startle you awake you over and over again, that cause her body to jerk, her frenzied words to sharply echo through your home. With a hoarse voice, she calls out to those who must be far from her; Father, Nessa, Glinda; and they must slip into the scraps of sleep you cling to, because unfamiliar shadows linger in every quiet corner, and all you can do is watch them, try to touch their fleeting figures.
There is one moment; and you may have imagined it, you may have dreamed it up entirely amidst your fits of sleep; that she slams her body against the table so hard that you feel it against your bones, and when you rise to see what’s wrong, she begins to chant, foreign, broken words that mean nothing. She screams, louder than all the times before; Fiyero, Fiyero!: and before you even know what’s happening, there’s a faint shuffling in the other room and a dark shadow stumbles out; the straw man.
He hurries to her, takes her thin body in his arms. I’m here, Elphaba, I’m right here, you hear him whisper; and still, it seems like ages until she finally wakes, trembling, gasping. Her hands, a faint stroke of color, emerge from all the black, clutch to him, and in the last little flame; for one candle is endlessly stubborn, and clings to its light; you can almost see the ghosts of tear stains along her face.
Over his shoulder, she looks to you, looks straight into your eyes, half-closed across the table.
You blow out the flame.
That look; the look of someone who has weathered enough hardship to last ten lifetimes; who has known pain unlike anything you could even begin to imagine; who has nothing more to say than this is what the world has made of me; has never left you.
XIII.
You wake to silence.
Every limb seems to ache, your body curled through thin puddles on the floor. It takes you a moment of blurry, haphazard vision, of groping for something solid in all the haze, to realize that a blanket has been thrown over you. Except that you don’t remember ever going to get a blanket. You fling it away, disoriented.
Finally, you rise to unsteady hooves, and it is only then, with a glance around the small room, pockmarked with dim sunlight; it is morning, and you are alone.
At first, you’re sorely tempted to believe it all to have been merely a dream. You were lonely, you were frustrated, you were losing your mind; you simply invented fanciful strangers; imaginary friends, or something like that; to keep you company in the endless night. It’s an easy solution, one that could be simply swallowed without another thought.
You can’t ignore the straw strewn across your damp bed sheets; the table, where all the melted wax has been cleared away and inexplicably replaced with three whole candles, so neatly placed that it must have been intentional.
And there is the fallen tree, you realize, traipsing out into the faint light of morning; an enormous shadow amidst the speckled green, the blotted brown. You gently place a hoof against it, begin to walk beside it; almost as though you expect it to lead you somewhere else entirely, somewhere far, far away, where all of this will fail to be real any longer, and you will find something that is worth finding.
You reach the end, and when the quiet forest comes forth to greet you, it and nothing else, all you can do is wonder what is supposed to happen next.
XIV.
You go on, as though it meant nothing at all.
You still take long walks in the morning, weaving through the thin shadows of trees, losing yourself in the foliage and quietly hoping that you may never find your way back. You still leaf through tired books when the sun hangs high in the sky, read the stories you’ve read a thousand times and struggle to believe every hollow word. You still spend your nights bathed in candlelight; learning to be lonely.
There’s still hope, there must still be hope, but your dreams of home have become nightmares; horrible, unexplainable visions of having your tongue ripped out, of drowning in a mere pail of water, of emerald shadows being ripped to shreds, and when you wake with a gasp --think of your poor uncle, who is gone, gone, gone --
All you can believe is that something bad has happened in Oz, and there's no turning back now.
XV.
And when it storms, you stand in your crude doorway, stare into the shadowed night, and wait.
You never see them again.
~
Rating: PG
Pairing: Implied Elphaba/Fiyero.
Warning: Spoilers for the end of the musical.
Summary: An Animal, unaware of the troubles in Oz, invites two strangers into her home, and soon discovers that nothing will ever be the same again. Post-musical.
I.
You once lived in Oz; a long time ago.
It’s hard to remember much about it, other than the odd shadow in your daydreams. All you know now is where you are; here, in this quiet forest, in your quiet home with the shoddily-made shelves, crumbling books hidden under the bed, clothes that never seem clean enough. It is your entire world -- and yet, your dreams drag along familiar voices, grasping buildings, and the images linger long after they should.
It was the right choice. Your uncle always knew best, after all, and he was the one who placed the suitcase in your frightened grip, the dawn but a newborn in your clouded windowsills - just in case. He was the one who sat on the edge of your bed with weary eyes, telling you dreadful stories of what was happening to the Animals, of a corrupted Oz; stories that later seeped into your nightmares, vibrant, deafening.
He was the one who stayed behind.
You catch yourself against the wall; utter a prayer that doesn’t even seem to leave your mouth, hot with hopes of safety, of innocent mistakes. It couldn’t be. Those hastily scribbled words - they’re coming to take me away tomorrow. His tales of lost voices, of prison cells and quiet secrets; they would never come true.
Not there.
You shouldn’t really be thinking about that, though.
With a simple flick, the dust scampers away from your broom into the early evening, and for a moment, you stand in the humid air, watching the clouds gather above you - shiver, even though it isn’t cold.
Just another day in the Bad Lands.
II.
The rain is heavy, horrible, like the cries of a defeated soul. Threads drip down through the holes in your roof, forming gaping puddles; your bed little more than a pond now. You’re tired, eyelids drooping, body trembling, and for the thousandth time, you think of your little home in Oz, abandoned, alone, and wonder why, why, why. Why did you believe so many unbelievable tales? Why did that letter tremble against your hooves, so raw, so real that for a fleeting moment, the words almost seemed to leap from the page and wrap themselves around your throat? Why did you leave such comfort to cower in a crumbling shack and pray?
Somewhere within your faded thoughts, a cackle of thunder sounds - and a scream follows it.
You’re upright in a moment, unsure if you really heard it, unsure if you’re merely losing your mind. It’s been so long since you’ve seen another living being that all you can do is imagine they still exist somewhere; far from you.
The scream rattles in your bones, and you throw open the door just in time to be blinded like an brilliant flash of white; watch as a giant of a tree collapses amidst all the shadows, slams against the ground with an anguished howl.
A frightened voice pierces the steady rhythm of the rain, calling someone’s name, and then you’re running, hooves sinking in the mud, clothes fit to slip off your matted hair - more exhilarated than you’ve ever been before. Someone is out there. Someone is out there.
You’re running so fast that you nearly slam into the fallen trunk; its jagged outline vibrant in each gasp of lightning. It’s enormous, so large you’re unable to tell where it begins and ends. You think of calling out, but you’re afraid that no will answer; that you’ll be proven insane, and that will be the end of it. Instead, you try to feel your way along it, traveling an untouched path; unsure of what you might find (someone is out there, you tell yourself, determined, hopeless).
And then it’s real.
At first, it’s just a woman’s sharp voice. Then, the shadow of a figure before you, invisible until lightning pours over, revealing the outline of a black cloak; hands tinted an otherworldly color, which must be a trick of the night, a hallucination of your frenzied mind. She’s frantically shoving at the stoic trunk, and you find yourself frozen, confused, exhilarated; merely watching as though you’re on the outside, looking in. You don’t move until a thread of lightning traces the shadows beneath the bark; colors something dull yellow, and with a jolt of horror, you realize it’s a person, trapped under the trunk, and then you’re shoving too.
The woman seems to notice you, then, shouts something that a sudden roar of wind swallows whole, and you don’t know what to say, so you say nothing. For a frightening moment, you believe that she is about to shove you away, but she merely makes a wild gesture, urges her body against the trunk harder still.
A man’s voice, soft, pricks at your ears; says something about his hands, and it takes you a bewildered moment to realize it’s coming from the figure trapped beneath the tree. How he’s even still alive; much less speaking in a perfectly calm, stable voice, is something you can’t understand, can’t even begin to. All you know is that now, the woman has clasped one of his hands and is pulling, and you mechanically follow, clutching your hooves against the other.
For a brief, despairing moment, you think the situation hopeless; but then something gives, suddenly, swiftly, and you’re dragging the man through the windswept grass, wonderfully free. You release him, your hoof coated in something you don’t recognize at first; straw, you finally realize, and are all the more perplexed.
The rain keeps beating down, unrelenting, unfeeling to your plight, and all you can do is gesture at the two trembling figures, clutching to one another; shout for them to follow you before turning and running. Their footsteps crunch against branches, slip through mud behind you, and despite the rain and the cold and the wind, you’re not alone any longer, and it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world.
The sensation proves to be fleeting.
A few weak candles are still clinging to gasps of fire when you stumble in, looking like you just emerged from a lake, and when you turn back, eager to urge them in, your body stiffens; your blood trembles beneath dripping hair.
The man isn’t human at all, you realize, and your hooves unconsciously move to your shreds of clothing, wiping away the straw that is solidly matted to them; that came from him, from his body, you realize, horrified. The flames catch his every shade of gold, and against rationality, against logic, you realize he’s one of those rag dolls that you used to see hanging in cornfields; undoubtedly alive.
What’s even worse is that one of his legs is gone, ripped clean off, and you realize it must still be trapped under that monster of a tree. He isn’t bothered by it, either, not in the least; merely bewildered, it looks like. He clings to the other figure; a shadow of a cloak, so deeply covered that you wouldn’t even be able to tell it were a woman if you hadn’t already heard her voice.
For the longest of moments, you simply stare at them; startled, disbelieving. There’s nothing to offer them, no excess help you can really give. You’re not even sure what they are.
And then the woman steps forward, black cloth swirling in the puddles along the floor, curtly asking if you have a bed, a chair, anything, and you manage to gesture dumbly to the back room.
With surprising speed, she helps the straw man through the doorway, and you’re left standing below a slow drip of rainwater, wondering just who you’ve blindly invited into your home.
III.
You know you shouldn’t be listening, that’s it rude to eavesdrop on conversations that have nothing whatsoever to do with you; by the sound of their voices, there’s obviously a very serious subject worthy of discussion between them, and you have no business within it.
This, of course, does not keep you from lingering near the doorway.
They speak in careful, hushed tones; still, you manage to catch snippets of sentences amidst the dull roar of the storm.
“It‘s my fault --”
“-- I told you, I can’t feel anything! I’m fine - “
“Fiyero, your leg is gone --”
“You worry too much --”
“ -- or have you already forgotten the spell?”
“I don’t like seeing you like this --”
“ -- it wasn’t as though the lightning was your fault --”
“Just let me try --”
And then the woman brushes the folds of her cloak away, uncovers elegant hands (and her skin, why is her skin not quite the right color? It must be an hallucination, you decide; you‘re beginning to see things) and her tongue wraps its way around sharp, soothing gibberish; a foreign language, you fleetingly decide, but then something’s happening, something impossible, and suddenly, his leg has reappeared.
You can’t understand it, staring unabashedly into the darkened room. One moment, his leg was gone, and the next, it was there, perfectly whole, flawless in every way. He wraps careful hands around it, smiles, and you’re beginning to feel lightheaded.
It’s the most spectacular thing you’ve ever seen, and with your lanky limbs trembling, a gasp stuck to the roof of your mouth, you slip against the wall, and you can think is magic, magic, magic.
IV.
Finally, when the hours have quietly slipped by, when you’ve resigned yourself to a damp wooden chair, when the rain has finally calmed itself, the woman emerges from the room; awkwardly stands before you, little more than a shadow in your home.
Unsure of what else you can do, you gesture to the chair across from yours, and to your faint surprise, she takes it.
“Thank you,” she finally says after a pocket of awkward silence, and it’s easy to tell that gratitude isn’t an emotion she expresses often. “For your help.”
You do your best to nod in response, unable to keep your gaze from wondering to the darkened doorway over her shoulder.
“He’s sleeping,” she says, noticing your eyes; shoulders stiffening under the folds of her cloak, neck craning so as to avoid the light catching within the depths of her hood. You try to smile, nod once more, but she makes you nervous, so very nervous, and in all your fidgeting, you accidentally knock over one of the candles with your clunky hoof.
And before you can even react, try to reach for it; her hand shoots forward, wraps long fingers around the wax just before the flame touches the table.
You might have been amazed at her speed if you weren’t already preoccupied with her hand, glowing dull emerald in the light.
She pulls it back within folds of cloth, as though she has been stung; as though the flame has burnt her.
After a long moment, she sighs, defeated, and throws her hood back, revealing long, tangled raven hair; undoubtedly green skin.
“Say what you will,” she snarls as you stare, unmoving, from across the table. “Everyone seems to have an opinion of me; let’s hear yours.”
You struggle to find words.
“Who are you?”
It’s all you can manage to say, awkward, trembling, but you have faced entirely too many surprises tonight; you deserve at least one concrete answer.
It’s her turn to look bewildered.
“Do you mean to say,” she starts, deliberately, disbelieving, “that you don’t know who I am?”
“No,” you answer, and it’s the truth. “Should I?”
She doesn’t provide a response; merely falls back against her chair, the shadow of a smile emerging amidst the sharp curves of her face. She waves away your further persistance, merely saying that she is no one, no one at all, and somehow, you get the impression that she revels in the fact that you don’t know who she is; that her identity is so well-known that to find someone who has never heard her name is everything but an impossibility.
You don’t know whether to feel sympathetic or frightened.
V.
It’s ages before she takes a good, long look at you, and when she blinks, leans forward in surprise, softly says, “you’re a Goat,” as though it’s some sort of grand revelation, you nearly laugh.
“Not familiar with Animals?” You can’t help but comment, snidely.
“Not for a long time, no,” she snaps in response, and her expression is so grave that the smirk is wiped clean from your face. “Have you been living under a rock for the past few years, or are you just oblivious to your own race?”
The whisper of a chill runs along your back (lost voices, prison cells, quiet secrets), but you do your best to ignore it.
“The last time I spoke to an Animal was --,” her sentence awkwardly hangs in the air, and an expression tinged with pain lingers along her face; her lips stiffening into an unforgiving sneer; “an Animal that could understand me, could respond of its own will,” -- her eyes close; her nails press into the damp wood, “was months ago, at the least.”
“Where are you from,” you ask, scarcely able to hide your panic, boiling beneath your skin.
“Oz,” she says, and it’s a nightmare, coming true.
VI.
“I once lived in Oz. I was told -- there were rumors of something happening, something bad, but I never - I never thought much of them. When I left, I was sure it --someone would come for me, would bring me back when it was all proved false.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Years. I think. It‘s difficult to keep track of time here.”
“It must have been, if you never heard of the wi -- if you never knew ”
“Was it really so horrible? I can’t - I don’t understand --”
“If horrible to you means corruption of the highest level; unsupported, foolish hysteria; Animals, losing their voices, being carted off to Oz-Knows-Where -- then yes, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it that. Would you?”
“I - I can’t --”
“Be grateful for your good fortune; that you escaped before the storm.”
Her eyes fill with the glint of something otherworldly, each dip and curve in her skin growing hollow, and in the shadows, her face looks utterly evil; utterly wicked.
“It’s all you can hope to have at this point.”
VII.
You wish to know more; more of Oz, more of her, more of the reason why a woman of strange skin and a man made of straw are traipsing around in the Bad Lands. She waves away each question with a tired hand, a warning gaze; but still, your curiosity presses on.
She speaks in vague, gentle tones; few tidbits of information that don’t tell you much at all. They lived in Oz all their lives. Unfortunate circumstances were numerous. They are running away; escaping. They can never go back.
(Who is chasing you? No one. Who wishes you harm? Everyone.)
“Isn’t it sad, though? To remember your time there?”
She laughs, then; a hoarse cackle that sends unvited chills through you.
“Remember?” She says, like it’s the most amusing word she’s ever heard. “I long to forget.”
She will say nothing else on the matter, and you wonder if it's for the best.
VIII.
Your eyes meander over to the doorway; perfectly dark, empty.
“Will he be all right,” you suddenly ask, remembering the bile in your throat at the sight of his single leg.
“He’s fine,” she says with a voice that has suddenly obtained a slight slur; she’s growing tired, arms lifeless along the worn grooves of the table. “He -- he didn’t even feel it.”
“His leg was ripped off!”
“He doesn’t feel pain,” she says, as though it’s the simplest thing in the world to accept. “Not anymore.”
“That’s impossible --” you start, disbelieving, but she holds her hand up so suddenly, so sternly, that the words leak back down your throat, lost.
“Don’t act as though you know what’s possible and what’s not,” she hisses, long nails reflecting the faint flames of the dying candles. “You don’t.”
You can accept that, you suppose.
She suddenly tips her head, pulling at the thick material of her dress; clutches between her fingers a few pieces of straw, brilliant gold in the light. She smiles wearily at them; what seems like a strange mixture of sadness and happiness enveloped in her face, and glances over her shoulder to the doorway.
“He didn’t have to; but he did.”
She delicately wraps her fingers around them; clutches her soft fist to her chest; lost in something you could never begin to understand.
“I love him,” she says, almost desperately.
You’re not sure what to say to that.
IX.
Somewhere in the fringes of your soft sleep; when you and her have slipped once and once again, only to be awakened by melting wax, faint light, the blurry gaze of the other, wide as though looking upon a stranger, you remember something; scribbled lines in a crumpled letter; carefully folded under the thin folds of your bed.
My days teaching here have not been by any stretch ideal; but there have been small instances of happiness. There is one student, a very bright young woman, who has shown me great kindness.
Startled from lucid shadows of dreams, you glance to her crumpled form, perfectly still, still trapped in an prolonged interlude; hands twitching with what you can only expect are restless dreams.
I think you would like Miss Elphaba; she is wise beyond her years. I only wish her skin - for you see, she is green in color; a very odd rarity - were normal, for then she may make friends with greater ease.
For a moment, you rest in the hole of your wrapped arms, watching her.
“Elphaba,” you whisper, without thinking.
She jerks, nearly stirs but does not wake, and she must be the girl mentioned in your uncle’s letter; it seems impossible (you can’t imagine this shadow, this utterly frightening enigma of a woman calmly sitting in a classroom, taking notes like any other good student), but it must be.
“Elphaba,” you say once more, a little louder; nudging her thin fingers.
A grimace follows the sharp pattern of her face, and she brushes you away, mumbles something; not now, Nessa; it’s too early to go outside; buries her face in her shoulder.
You barely have a moment to breathe before she sits upright, startled from sleep; looks to you with wild eyes.
“What did you call me?”
X.
“My Uncle, he’s a professor; he used to send me letters all the time. About his classes and his students -- he once wrote me a letter speaking of someone named Elphaba, who was green. That -- I mean, is it you?”
“Yes.”
“He spoke so fondly of you.”
“I thought fondly of him. Doctor Dillamond was my favorite professor, by far.”
“I’m glad he wasn’t completely unhappy. You gave him some comfort, it seemed; some hope for the world.”
“Hope.”
She says it as though it’s a filthy word.
You don’t want to know, you don’t; so many dreams you managed to cling to have been effortlessly shattered in a matter of hours, and you don’t know if you can withstand any more of this. You want to believe in goodness, however fake it may prove to be in the end. It’s all you have left.
You are a fool in the end, and cannot help but ask.
“Do you know what happened - what became of my Uncle?”
Elphaba averts her gaze, focuses sad eyes on the whisper of a flame, and the room is quiet and quiet and quiet; filled with nothing but the truth, and it’s the most horrible feeling you’ve ever known.
XI.
There is nothing left in Oz, for you or me. Perhaps -- one day, things may be different, but it will take time.
Quite a bit of time.
XII.
The rest of the night is spent in restless fits of sleep; your body caught in countless awkward positions that leave you stiff with each startling time you wake. You dream of being struck by falling trees; of sitting in a classrooms with green shadows; of being unable to speak, no matter how hard you try. Each one leaves you cold to the touch, waking to melted wax on your hooves, a glimmer of emerald across the table.
If your sleep merely consists of restless dreams, than hers is filled with nightmares; horrible, terrifying nightmares that startle you awake you over and over again, that cause her body to jerk, her frenzied words to sharply echo through your home. With a hoarse voice, she calls out to those who must be far from her; Father, Nessa, Glinda; and they must slip into the scraps of sleep you cling to, because unfamiliar shadows linger in every quiet corner, and all you can do is watch them, try to touch their fleeting figures.
There is one moment; and you may have imagined it, you may have dreamed it up entirely amidst your fits of sleep; that she slams her body against the table so hard that you feel it against your bones, and when you rise to see what’s wrong, she begins to chant, foreign, broken words that mean nothing. She screams, louder than all the times before; Fiyero, Fiyero!: and before you even know what’s happening, there’s a faint shuffling in the other room and a dark shadow stumbles out; the straw man.
He hurries to her, takes her thin body in his arms. I’m here, Elphaba, I’m right here, you hear him whisper; and still, it seems like ages until she finally wakes, trembling, gasping. Her hands, a faint stroke of color, emerge from all the black, clutch to him, and in the last little flame; for one candle is endlessly stubborn, and clings to its light; you can almost see the ghosts of tear stains along her face.
Over his shoulder, she looks to you, looks straight into your eyes, half-closed across the table.
You blow out the flame.
That look; the look of someone who has weathered enough hardship to last ten lifetimes; who has known pain unlike anything you could even begin to imagine; who has nothing more to say than this is what the world has made of me; has never left you.
XIII.
You wake to silence.
Every limb seems to ache, your body curled through thin puddles on the floor. It takes you a moment of blurry, haphazard vision, of groping for something solid in all the haze, to realize that a blanket has been thrown over you. Except that you don’t remember ever going to get a blanket. You fling it away, disoriented.
Finally, you rise to unsteady hooves, and it is only then, with a glance around the small room, pockmarked with dim sunlight; it is morning, and you are alone.
At first, you’re sorely tempted to believe it all to have been merely a dream. You were lonely, you were frustrated, you were losing your mind; you simply invented fanciful strangers; imaginary friends, or something like that; to keep you company in the endless night. It’s an easy solution, one that could be simply swallowed without another thought.
You can’t ignore the straw strewn across your damp bed sheets; the table, where all the melted wax has been cleared away and inexplicably replaced with three whole candles, so neatly placed that it must have been intentional.
And there is the fallen tree, you realize, traipsing out into the faint light of morning; an enormous shadow amidst the speckled green, the blotted brown. You gently place a hoof against it, begin to walk beside it; almost as though you expect it to lead you somewhere else entirely, somewhere far, far away, where all of this will fail to be real any longer, and you will find something that is worth finding.
You reach the end, and when the quiet forest comes forth to greet you, it and nothing else, all you can do is wonder what is supposed to happen next.
XIV.
You go on, as though it meant nothing at all.
You still take long walks in the morning, weaving through the thin shadows of trees, losing yourself in the foliage and quietly hoping that you may never find your way back. You still leaf through tired books when the sun hangs high in the sky, read the stories you’ve read a thousand times and struggle to believe every hollow word. You still spend your nights bathed in candlelight; learning to be lonely.
There’s still hope, there must still be hope, but your dreams of home have become nightmares; horrible, unexplainable visions of having your tongue ripped out, of drowning in a mere pail of water, of emerald shadows being ripped to shreds, and when you wake with a gasp --think of your poor uncle, who is gone, gone, gone --
All you can believe is that something bad has happened in Oz, and there's no turning back now.
XV.
And when it storms, you stand in your crude doorway, stare into the shadowed night, and wait.
You never see them again.
~