Disclaimer: The Land of Oz novel series is credited to L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz film belongs to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, and Oz: The Great and Powerful belongs to Disney. This story is an amalgamation and retelling of the first two, but mostly, a sequel to the latter.
Prologue/Teaser
For the longest time, Dorothy Matilda Gale had been told that she was odd.
The first time she had heard it was on her fourth birthday, and it was Dorothy's mother, Mrs. Annie Gale, who said it. It had likely been meant as a joke, given that she had been wearing a smile at the time, but this made little Dorothy wonder; Was she really odd, and if so, why? It certainly could not be for her brown eyes, dimpled cheeks, or her tousled brown hair, because other people had at least one of those features too, and she braided her hair into manageable pigtails anyway.
The next person who told Dorothy she was odd was the wife of her father's brother, Emily Gale, who Dorothy simply called Auntie Em. When her then six year-old niece asked what it was about herself that made her an "odd little one," the older woman explained that it was Dorothy's habit of talking to animals as if they were people. Jeff Wright, the son of a neighbor, agreed that this trait was a curious one, but he promised this made Dorothy "one of a kind," not odd. Uncle Henry, who was the older brother of Dorothy's father, told her that Jeff was too simple a young man to tell fibs, so this made Dorothy feel better about being different.
Unfortunately, when school started last autumn, Walt Phillpotts had called her an odd duckling because she preferred reading a storybook over playing tag with the other children, stared deeply into empty air for long whiles, and because she loved peanut butter and honey sandwiches, but hated peanut butter and jam. Now it was spring of the new year, and although most everyone was nice to her, Dorothy no longer felt that her being different was a very good thing.
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