Title: Ruby Mines

Author: Aerohead

Email: in my profile

Website: In my profile

Pairing: N/A

Rating: PG13

Disclaimer/Dedication: For L. Frank Baum, Gregory Maguire, Stephen Schwartz, and Winnie Holtzman who own this idea that I'm extending. Thank you for giving me the first part.

Warning: spoiler for the ending of the musical Wicked, but that's pretty much about it.

Genre: General

Summary: His father died. His mother was dying. He was only nine, and the day he turned ten, they came and took him away. And now he can't remember.

Author's Notes: I'm still stuck in a slight rut for OibLTibS, so I decided to write another one-shot based off a character. Three guesses who. This takes place even before Entertaining Destiny, so...about eight years before the current story. If this writer's block keeps up, I might write one of these one-shots about Kade, to clear a few things up. Need permission from the lovely Cree, first, though.

They lived in a dilapidated house on the bank of the marsh where ruddy children played dirty games while hunchbacked adults worked in the ruby mines. He was small for his age – of course, all children there were small for their age; underfed, malnourished children who'd do anything for a piece of bread. They said he was special, that he would rise above his poverty and become a truly great man. No one believed the old gypsy who had made the prophesy, except for his mother, and she had come down with fever some time ago, and it had yet to break.

No one could leave Ovvels. It was not that they couldn't, it was simply that they didn't have enough money to leave. And where would they go, anyway, the Emerald City? It was the worst lie to tell someone, that they could leave behind this life of poverty and rise above everyone else like a phoenix from the ashes.

There were no families in Ovvels, there were clans. He lived in a clan, and it was steadily declining. There were four of them left now, soon to be three. He sat by his mother's bed, dark blonde hair falling into bottomless brown eyes. His name in his clan was Pavel Aran Naeva, which roughly translated to 'little evening forest', though his cousin simply called him 'Little Aran'.

The door opened, letting dim light into the small clan house. "How is she?" Abena asked, moving to her sister's side.

Abena didn't look like the others; she was far too old to work in the mines, so she made trinkets and blew little glass toys. Her skin was fair, though wrinkled, and she was wiry, with twinkling emerald eyes. One, though, was fake; she had cut it from an emerald she had gotten from Glikkus many years ago from a preacher who was trying to bride her to leave her faith and be christened as part of the unionist faith. Smartly, she took the gift, but not the eternal damnation.

"I don't know, she hasn't woken up in days." Aran said, touching his mother's forehead lightly. She was burning with fever, but they didn't have any water to soothe her.

Abena took pity on her nephew and went to a high cabinet he could not hope to reach. "Whenever someone is with fever and there's no water around, always get rosemary extract. It may not do what water does, but it soothes well enough. Got that, boy?" She barked when she noticed Aran's eyes had traveled to the small, delicate necklace that his mother had given to him before she had fallen ill.

The boy's head shot up, and he nodded solemnly. "Yes, Aunt Abena."

The old woman nodded stiffly. "Good." She put some of the extract on a piece of dirty cloth and onto the forehead of the woman in the bed.

"Now what?" asked Aran curiously.

"Now you go help Baina barter for food."

"Yes, Aunt Abena." Aran said, bobbing his head. He got up quickly and moved out into the dying sunlight. Baina grabbed his arm, and pulled him along. "Where are we going?" he asked her curiously.

"Well, it's your tenth birthday isn't it?" She asked with a wink.

"Well, yes." Aran said cautiously. His cousin was much older than him, and sometimes had a rather skewed sense of what was right and what was wrong.

She smiled wickedly. "Let's go to the old caves that no one works anymore." She whispered to him.

He had never been the adventurous type. He was actually normally the type who just went with the flow of things and didn't fight reality. And he wasn't fighting Baina as she pulled him along towards the old mines. He was actually pretty docile as she pulled him.

They arrived at the old caves pretty quickly. They were eerily quiet and a mist seemed to hand over them. "I don't think this is a good idea." Aran whispered.

"Have some courage!" Baina said, pushing him towards the caves.

There was a shot in the distance, and both Quadlings stopped, staring wide-eyed as members of the Gale Force came out of the caves, rifles pointed at the two children. "By order of Oz, we're here to take you to the Glikkus." One man said staunchly.

"Run," Baina whispered, but Aran was rooted to the stop, petrified. "RUN!" She yelled, pushing him back towards Ovvels. "Get my mother!"

He tried to run, he did, but he was only ten, and his body was much smaller than those of the guards. On man grabbed him, and he struggled to get away. Another man tried to grab Baina, but she jumped away from his hand. He lifted his rifle, shooting at a space slightly to the side of her head. "The next one doesn't miss." He said, grabbing for her again.

"Baina, run!" begged Aran, trying to pull away from the Gale Forcer that held him strong.

She looked at him. "But what about you?" she asked.

"I'll be fine, just go!" He said. With only a moment's indecision, Baina ran for the small water town, tripping in the marsh in her hurry.

The Gale Forcer holding Aran wrenched his arm up so his body and face were facing the large man. "What a nice, concerned member of society you are, whelp." He said, backhanding the boy. Aran made a small whimpering noise, and the man glared at him. "Don't you dare do that again, boy, or the next time you do, you die."

Another Gale Forcer sneered down at Aran. "I have a better way to keep him quiet, sir." He said.

"Oh and how is that?" asked the Captain, looking up.

The Gale Forcer picked up his rifle by the nose, and lined it up with Aran's left cheek. Aran closed his eyes, praying to Lurline to just kill him now. The man wound up his swing, before letting the handle of the rifle fly at Aran's jaw bone.

And then there was darkness.