Disclaimer: Wicked's not mine. Nessa's not mine. I DO happen to own a pair of her shoes and a really spiffy-looking replica of her Act II costume, but only because I took the time to construct them out of glitter, red sequins, hot glue, epoxy, a pair of my old theatre shoes, a jacket, fancy buttons, black fabric, and a large load of red paint. If you want it, make one yourself.
Author's Note: Really, you'd have to be crazy to take your first steps in theatrical character shoes, even if they ARE really shiny. I figured that one out after taking the aforementioned Nessa costume (yep, I'm dressing like her for Halloween!) out for a run this weekend. Funny thing is, the jacket and skirt are surprisingly comfortable.
Form over Function
By Sale
Comfort had never been an important factor when Nessarose Thropp went shopping for shoes. In fact, she'd even go up or down a size…or two…or sometimes even three if a particular style wasn't readily available…after all, it wasn't like she was ever going to actually have to walk in them, right?
In any event, she'd never expected to find herself staggering and stumbling through her own mansion, comprehending the magnitude of her past shoe-shopping mistakes. As she mentally cursed her own clumsiness, Nessa finally realized the amount of strain those gorgeous, sparkling slippers, with their illustrious 2" heels, were actually putting on her feet.
Back at Shiz, she had witnessed more than her fair share of socialites whining and complaining about how uncomfortable it was to spend all day walking around in pumps and stilettos. Now, of course, it had become blatantly—dare I say painfully—clear that she understood exactly what it was they had all been griping about all those years ago. The pressure on her toes was virtually unbearable.
Even though she'd only been ambulatory for around two or three hours, her feet were already throbbing like crazy. To be brutally honest, Nessa wasn't even sure the infernally garish slippers were even her size to begin with, simply because her toes unexpectedly jammed up against the toe of the shoe every time she shifted her weight a certain way. Her father, it had appeared, had miscalculated his daughter's shoe size ever so slightly, and in the end, the consequences were—to her at least—catastrophic.
"Oz, if Elphaba had told me what she was going to do to my shoes before she started casting that ridiculous spell, I could've just told her to at least let me change into something a little more comfortable…maybe a nice, sensible pair of flats," Nessa tried to reassure herself, knowing fully well in the back of her mind that she really didn't own very many pairs of "comfortable" or "sensible" footwear.
She staggered, cringing, into her room and collapsed onto her bed, fully convinced that there were at least two rather large blisters forming at the spot where the back of her shoes had been incessantly rubbing against her ankles.
Walking, Nessa concluded,is highly overrated.