The Scarecrow reached into the trapdoor and pulled the Witch out. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Fiyero, I'm fine you know water can't hurt me." She smiled and reached up to touch his face but paused frowning.
"Touch. I don't mind; you did your best," he said.
She considered him as a scarecrow and how he had changed from handsome prince to shapeless straw figure. The skin of his face and body had gone from glowing and flawless to rough and wrinkled. His sapphire eyes were no longer deep blue oceans. He was not the same, but Elphaba thought she could still see the Fiyero she once knew under all the straw and burlap.
"You're still beautiful to me." She decided.
Fiyero regarded her with slightly sad eyes. "You don't have to lie to me Elphaba."
"It's not lying," She said her words full of love. "It's just looking at things another way."
He gave her a sad smile as she repeated the same words he had once spoken as she questioned her own beauty.
The next hour or so was spent gathering the necessary items for traveling.
As they had gathered a pile of things Elphaba stood with a list checking off the items while Fiyero made sure they were there.
"Capes?" - "Check!"
"Rope?" - "Check!"
"Blankets?" - "Check!"
"Knives?" - "Check!"
"Matches?" - "Che- wait a minute!" he said, then in an undertone he connected the dots: "Matches - fire - burning - AHHHHHHH!"
Elphaba guffawed as Fiyero shrieked in an astronomically high, girly voice.
When Fiyero's panic had subsided and Elphaba's laughter abated they went back to checking over their list of supplies, Fiyero somewhat more wary than before.
"Water skins?" - "Check!"
"Various tools including a miniature shovel?"- "Strange… But, check!"
Fiyero and Elphaba read through the articles that were left on the list and then shoved it all into two large backpacks. When the backpacks were full they hoisted them onto their backs and made to leave when Elphaba cried; "Stop! I have to go back!"
"Why we have all our things we should get going?"
"No wait! I left the Grimmerie!"
"Elphaba…" Fiyero began but she was already running up the stairs of the west tower. Fiyero tilted his head to the side perplexed. As they were packing Elphaba had told him that she had given the Book of Spells to Glinda.
Elphaba raced up the stairs, through an archway, up more stairs, onto a landing, across a hall, up three more flights of stairs to the top of the west wing tower. By the time she got there, having sprinted the entire way, she was out of breath.
She trudged over to one of the cushioned, leather backed chairs that sat around the room and collapsed into it.
Elphaba let her gaze wander around the room searching for where she had hidden the book.
Then her dark eyes locked onto a table.
Ah ha. She thought I always forget there's a false bottom on that.
She got up and crossed the room to where the table stood. Then careful not to knock anything over Elphaba undid the false bottom of the table and slipped her hand inside. She had to rummage around for a second before her hand came in contact with something made of paper and worn leather. Elphaba grabbed it and pulled it out. The thing was a heavy, leather bound book.
She opened it and grinned: it was the Grimmerie's twin.
Elphaba had spent her two years of exile copying the entire book down. The finished copy now lay in her hands, but the real book lay with Glinda.
Elphaba stared at the word covered pages. The archaic symbols were so farmiliar and yet so different. They were the same letters, same meanings, but written in Elphaba's handwritting. Another difference was, unlike the Grimmerie, the words stayed where the were written: no racing around the page forming spells that shoudn't exist: spells of destruction and of death.
Pushing those thoughts away she desended down the tower to Fiyero and slipped the book into her messenger bag.
"Now lets go, I want to put as much distance between Kiamo Ko and us as possible before tomorrow." Fiyero said, as he began to walk towards the heavy pair of oaken double doors but Elphaba hesitated her eyes falling on a still wet patch of the floor.
"She thinks we're dead." She didn't even have to say Glinda's name for Fiyero to realize whom she was talking about.
"That's how it has to be"
"I know," she sighed and looked back at Fiyero. "I just wish it could be different."
They shared a moments silence before Elphaba said; "We really can never come back can we." It was a statement not a question but she still felt the need to say it.
"You know better than I that we can't."
"I just wish-"
"I know. I do too…"
Elphaba felt almost on the verge of tears, then she stealed herself and gazed out the doors.
"Lets go..."
"Elphaba is someone following us?" said Fiyero anxiously looking over his shoulder. "Fiyero," the question was starting to get on Elphaba's nerves. "For the billionth time! No!"
"-But," he began,
"NO! And that's final."
They continued on in silence for almost half an hour before Elphaba said, "We need to stop for the night."
"Why? I'm not that tired?"
"Yes, but your also made of straw. The regular laws of physical exertion don't apply to you." Fiyero frowned and looked down at himself. He sighed as he remembered his own clothes and flesh converting into canvas and hay. The tiniest trace of irritation flashed through his mind before he reminded himself of what could have happened to him if Elphaba's spell hadn't took hold. The Gale force would have destroyed me that's what. He thought.
As he thought he heard Elphaba flop down beside him.
She lay on her back gazing at the sky. It was just starting to turn dark, long streams of burnt orange and red racing all across the evening sky.
Fiyero sta down beside her and wiped stray strands of hair from her face.
"It's beautiful isn't it?" Elphaba murmured.
Her emerald eyelids were starting to close, heavy with sleep.
"Yeah." Fiyero whispered as he stared at her. Elphaba was truly the most beautiful person in all of Oz, he thought. Even though he knew most people despised her because of her skin, he thought it only made her more beautiful.
"Night." He whispered as Elphaba's face slackened and she fell into the land of dreams.