The Lack of Green
Fiyero was stuck in class gazing out the window. The class was life sciences, the air seemed to have a kind soft mourning to it as the world slowly went to sleep as Winter arrived on the scene. Outside the leaves on the trees had all fallen to the ground and been swept into large piles of crunchy browns and reds that crackled when touched. The sky was blue and the grass was not, obviously, it was slowly becoming brown and dying like all the other leaves.
Thinking on this made Fiyero think of the Vinkus, when he was a child he used to play in the leaves during Autumn and this memory made him long to run outside and jump into a pile as if no one was watching. But of course, everyone was watching, everyone always watched Fiyero and his dancing through life attitude, sometimes he wished that all the attention would just go away and people would leave him in peace.
In the distance the school bell tolled and everyone got up and left. Everyone would be heading to the local café to get a hot drink to fend off the growing afternoon cold. Instead, Fiyero took this opportunity to head outside and get a closer look at the wonders of nature.
Being outside was so much better than sitting inside and gazing on. The air was crisp with a harsh chill, making Fiyero wrap his jacket a little tighter around himself as he walked into the forest on the edge of the Shiz campus.
Once the Winkie prince had ventured well into the depths of the forest he stopped in a large clearing and watched his breath cloud in front of him as he sun got slowly lower and the air colder. All around him were bare trees and golden crackly leaves as far as the eye could see.
Smiling to himself, Fiyero stepped slowly onto a nearby leaf, relishing in the slow crunch of the fibres as they broke apart beneath his boot. Soon the Winkie was stepping on leaves left, right and centre grinning like a loony as he created natures own brand of music in the comfort of solitude.
For once no one was around to flirt with him or laugh at his jokes or talk him into doing something stupid. For once Fiyero was free to do as he wanted, and not what everyone else wanted him to do.
He stopped bouncing around for a moment to take a quick breather before he continued with his moment of freedom. Looking through his clouding breath at the dying light of day, he decided there was just enough time to do one more fun thing with the abundance of nature's toys that we scattered around him.
Quickly Fiyero gathered up a large pile of leaves and took a sizable run up before he dove into them. He rolled around and pretended to swim through the red and brown sea. He dove and spun and backstroked and rolled and laughed through the leaves until beneath him was just the crumbled remnants of his fun.
Laying on his back he slowly tore at a surviving leaf and wished there was somebody to share this moment with. As he lay thinking, he thought about how there seemed to be something wrong with Autumn. When he was small he loved it when the leaves fell and he could go outside and play, but now that he was older he noticed that something was very wrong.
He then found his thoughts wondering to what his girlfriend's green roommate was doing now. She's probably curled up in front of the library fire reading some huge text book, he thought but then he stopped, he shouldn't be thinking about Elphaba! He was with Galinda at the moment, even though he kind of didn't want to be.
Just then he heard the Snap! of a twig and a sharp intake of breath. Fiyero shot up and spun around seeing a dark shape inside the shadow of a lone evergreen on the edge of the clearing that he hadn't noticed before. The world seemed to slow as the crumbled gold fluttered off of the prince's jacket and beneath the evergreen foliage the figure realised they'd been spotted. When the Winkie prince took a step forward the figure bolted with remarkable speed back in the direction of Shiz. So Fiyero bolted after it.
Fiyero chased the figure until they arrived back at Shiz and it disappeared through a side door. Breathing in the frosty outside air, Fiyero quickly followed through the door and continued running down the corridor in pursuit only to stop when he spotted a flash of green skin on the fleeing figure and he knew at once who it was. Elphaba! She saw me in the forest! Fiyero was surprisingly okay with this, he knew that the green girl wasn't one to tell people things.
Thinking back to the clearing he thought about the large evergreen tree that stood by the clearing, the only one for possibly miles around. He remembered something Elphaba's sister had said when trying to describe her sibling, 'She likes… trees.' Nessarose had said after a brief struggle to come up with an answer, 'She used to always go off and climb a tree when father was being especially…especially rowdy'.
So Elphaba had probably gone to the nearest thing that was remotely like her that didn't end up insulting her for her looks, and when she'd heard Fiyero playing with leaves beneath her hiding place she had come down to see what was going on. That's when he'd seen her.
Elphaba, the girl whose skin was such a brilliant emerald colour… green…
That's what's wrong with Autumn,thought Fiyero,it's the lack of the most beautiful colour to grace the world.He thought,It's the lack of green.
Once again Fiyero turned to look out the window at the sleepy Autumn soon-to-be-Winter world and smiled as he saw the first few flakes of snow being to fall.