So it's been a while and this obviously isn't an update on one of my other stories... I'm working on it, I just have the second most severe case of writers' block I've ever experienced. Who knows if anyone's still following my stuff anyhow? Ehh...
Point: Here's a story for ya. Hope you enjoy it. (It's not edited, which is bad, I know. Fragments a-plenty. Those are my favorite grammar mistakes.) For those of you who are rereading this (why, I have no idea, but thanks!) I just now, after reading the wonderful, ego-enhancing review by CardboardCreative, remembered that those dividing lines from Microsoft Word just don't show up when uploaded... so time changes and whatnot were tres confusing. Sorry 'bout that! It's fixed now.
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
A small Elphaba sat silently near the fire, curiosity gleaming in her deep brown eyes. She watched with a look of puzzled concentration as a lean Quadling placed a rod with a pale red, globular mess at the end into the flames. Her eyes widened as the end began to glow orange. Turtle Heart glanced furtively at the entranced green toddler and smiled imperceptibly. He brought the cooler end of the rod to his lips and blew. The glob began to take a rounded shape. Turtle Heart heard Elphaba gasp in amazement. He took another rod and shaped the small, hollowed end, spinning it slowly over the flames. Finally he was satisfied with the shape and withdrew it from the fire. He broke off the newly fashioned glass ornament and carefully smoothed out the excess material. It still glowed softly in the glassblower's hands. Out of the corner of his eye, Turtle Heart spied Elphaba crawling toward him, her eyes fixed on the object in his hands.
"Little One to like?" he asked softly, encouraging Elphaba to come closer. She turned her gaze to him, eyes wide, and nodded. Turtle Heart sat cross-legged on the floor, holding his artwork out to her.
Elphaba climbed eagerly into the man's lap. She examined the glass from every angle, but did not touch it. Instead, she moved Turtle Heart's hands with hers to position the glass object.
"Does Little One to know what thing Turtle Heart to make?"
Elphaba made no move to respond. She seemed to study her funny, distorted reflection in the rounded glass piece.
"Is to be a heart," the glassblower explained, but he knew that she already knew that. He knew that she wanted to hear the story anyway. "Is to be a heart…" he repeated.
At this, the child twisted to eye him curiously.
"A heart is to be the only thing Turtle Heart to be unable to make unbreakable," he said forlornly. "Heart is not made to be broken, but Turtle Heart cannot to make unbreakable, even when he is to use every Quadling magic he is to know. He cannot to make it for Little One to play with like little green looking glass."
The tiny Elphaba arranged her face as if to say 'Oh? We'll see about that', and took the small pink heart into her tiny hands. She handled it gingerly.
Turtle Heart laughed. "But Little One is not to play right now, she is to protect! It is not to be the same."
Elphaba stood and took on an unreadable expression even Turtle Heart could not decipher. But he knew one thing: she was not going to give the heart back. He smiled.
"Little One does not to have to give heart back, but if she is to play with heart, heart is to break and Turtle Heart cannot to fix. Nobody can to fix. Elphaba must to keep her heart safe. Is she to promise Turtle Heart?"
Again, Elphaba stared blankly up at him.
The Quadling sighed. "Little Girl does not to need to say anything. Turtle Heart is to know that she will to take care of it."
Elphaba nodded fiercely, turned tail and ran to her tiny room to hide her precious trinket.
Elphaba Thropp, having just turned seventeen, packed all of her belongings to go to Shiz University. She looked around her almost bare room, her eyes scanning for things that she might have forgotten. Then she remembered that she hadn't checked under her bed for any stray shoes or books. She stooped by the bed and felt around blindly. She grimaced at the feeling of a thick coat of dust sticking to her fingers.
Her fingers moved over a floorboard that slid around under her touch. Confused, Elphaba pushed the bed aside. She relocated the floorboard, dug her nails under an edge and pulled it up with ease. Under the board was a small sack fit with a drawstring. Elphaba removed the bag from its hiding place.
With nimble green fingers, she undid the sack and emptied it into her hand. Out fell a lot of scrap cloth, a strange blue rock, and a small, pink heart made of hollow glass.
She only saw the heart, though. Her father yelled that her carriage had arrived and she re-packed everything in haste, stashing the sack in her cloak's inside pocket.
Galinda Arduenna was not one to be ignored, especially by those of a lower class. After all, she was the one who was to be doing the ignoring. When her freakish green roommate ignored her despite her unrivaled sense of fashion, Galinda started on new tactics to get Elphaba to worship her as the rest of Shiz did. It was one thing knowing that a person could care less about you, but it was quite another thing to share living quarters with that same person.
So, Galinda Arduenna did the unthinkable: she was nice to the green girl. Things didn't go according to plan, though. Instead of making Elphaba jealous of her, she accidentally became her friend.
She also accidentally came across Elphaba's trunk of keepsakes and accidentally got an emotional rise out of her.
"Elphie, what's in this box?" Galinda asked excitedly. Instead of waiting for an answer, she unlatched the thing and picked through it quickly. "Ohh! Elphie owns something pink?"
Elphaba, who was reading and not paying attention to Galinda's antics, shot up from her seat by the window.
"Put that down!" she yelled.
Galinda froze and placed the pink glass heart back in the box. Elphaba snatched the box from her and set it carefully on her bed. She silently began rearranging the things inside.
Galinda quietly moved next to her and watched Elphaba's shaking hands move the assorted objects.
"What are they?" Galinda asked finally.
"They're keepsakes."
Galinda pointed to a green crystal-like bottle. "What's that one?"
Elphaba touched the bottle. "It was my mother's. It's the only thing I have left of hers. I don't know why I keep it. I barely knew her and she was a drunk."
"What about this?" Galinda pointed to a broken wooden bird.
"My father gave that to me when he actually liked me. He carved it himself."
"What happened to it?"
Elphaba smirked. "I bit it. I was only a toddler. What did he expect?"
Galinda smiled at something she recognized. "And this is your acceptance letter from Shiz!"
Elphaba nodded.
"And this?" Glinda asked, pointing to the little heart.
Elphaba's eyes seemed to fog over. She picked up the glass with both hands. "This… It's hard to explain."
"Who is it from?"
"My mother's lover… possibly my father's too. He was called Turtle Heart. He was a Quadling glassblower," she began, the story sorting itself out in her mind, "He could make anything out of glass unbreakable except for one thing: a heart. I think he had a kind of magic with glass, but somehow it wouldn't apply itself to a heart. He gave this to me and told me to protect it, and I have. I feel a strange connection to it."
Elphaba packed her things away again and returned to her book, leaving Galinda to ponder the enigma of Elphaba Thropp. An hour later, she realized something.
"Elphaba, you mean thing! You do have a heart! You just keep it locked up in that tiny little box with little bits of your childhood." Glinda sighed. "And it would be made of glass, wouldn't it?"
Elphaba couldn't argue.
Fiyero Tiggular, Prince of the Arjiki Tribe in the Vinkus, was a light sleeper. At least, he was a light sleeper when his Fae wasn't lying next to him at night. She had run away in the Emerald City five years ago before she had a chance to graduate from Shiz University. He found her just a month ago, and he'd so far been the only one.
He couldn't explain it, but even though he knew her for only a total of two years (most of which was by name only) he knew that he was completely in love with her. He'd seen her disappear on people before, so it was only natural that when he found her side of the bed empty that he would become paranoid.
It was only recently, though, that he found out that Elphaba's nighttime disappearances didn't even stray from the corn exchange. He watched her one night. She'd walk over to an elephant skull that was mounted on the wall, pull out the bouquet of wilted flowers from the hole in the top, and remove some trinket. It glowed slightly. She looked puzzled each time she took it out as if she didn't know what to do with it. She would glance at him sometimes and then go back to studying the thing from the skull. Eventually, she would get frustrated, put it back, and slip back into bed.
One night as she did this, Fiyero slid out of bed and touched Elphaba's shoulder. She jumped slightly.
"What is it, Fae?" he asked her. She turned and held the object out to him in open palms. It was a glass heart, from what he could tell.
"Why is it glowing?"
"I don't know. I've had it forever… It never glowed, though. Not until a few weeks ago."
Fiyero picked the fragile heart up. He didn't notice the apprehension in Elphaba's eyes as the heart left her hand. She began to raise her hand to take it back from him, but she stopped.
"It's nice," Fiyero told her. "You shouldn't hide it."
Elphaba seemed to struggle with her thoughts for a moment. "…You keep it."
Fiyero looked uncertain about taking a keepsake from her. "Are you sure?"
Elphaba's eyes flickered with determination. "Positive. Just… keep it safe."
Something was wrong. Something in the air, something in herself… It wasn't just that she'd failed in her assignment to kill Madame Morrible. She rushed to the corn exchange and hoped that Fiyero wouldn't be there.
"Fiyero?" she called hoarsely as she raced up the stairs. "Fiyero, please don't be here to answer me…"
She crashed through the door and her eyes landed on him. There in the middle of the room, in the middle of a puddle of blood. Fiyero.
"Yero…" she gasped. She fell onto her knees beside him and tears clouded her vision.
Fiyero's eyes opened slightly.
"Fae," he croaked, "The Gale Force… you have to run."
Elphaba shook her head. Tears began streaming down her face.
"Fae…"
Elphaba's eyes fell on a few shards on the floor.
"The heart broke… I'm sorry. You asked me to keep it safe…" he apologized weakly.
Through her sobs, Elphaba looked at him like he was crazy.
"You think I'm worried about a stupid trinket?" she cried. She grabbed his hand.
"I love you, Yero," she choked.
"Love you, too, Fae…" He closed his eyes. His breathing became more shallow.
Elphaba leaned into his shoulder, still crying. "Before you go," she whispered, "I have to tell you… I'm pregnant."
She felt his grip tighten slightly on her hand, and then his entire body went slack. But she didn't let go. She couldn't.
Liir wandered through the deserted halls of Kiamo Ko. Auntie Witch was dead, Dorothy was gone, Nanny was completely useless and Chistery had taken to ignoring him lately. He had nothing better to do than recount his younger days in the castle. As he walked he quizzed himself on which rooms were which.
…Library… Closet… Bathroom… Irji's room… Manek's room… Nor's room… the Playroom…
He came to a spiral staircase at the end of the hall.
Auntie Witch's tower.
He took a deep breath and climbed the stairs. He opened the heavy wooden door to find everything in its ordinary place, but covered with years' worth of dust. His eyes fell on a large crystal ball. He'd spied Auntie Witch staring into the glass many times. On occasion, she would squint or point at something as if she'd seen something.
Liir walked up to the crystal ball and looked into it. He didn't see anything. He sighed, causing a fog to rest on the surface of the ball. He lazily drew a heart, the first shape that came to mind, in the moisture.
Suddenly, images swirled into focus just under the surface of the glass. Liir watched in awe. He saw a tiny green girl holding a glass heart sitting in the lap of a Quadling. He saw the little Auntie Witch handle the fragile object carefully and watched her hide it. The image changed again to reveal a teenaged Auntie Witch and—he couldn't believe it—a young Glinda the Good talking, as friends would. He saw the two looking at that same glass heart, talking. The picture reformed again. This time, Liir saw a slightly older green lady. This time she was in a musty loft with a strangely familiar man of about the same age. They kissed. He saw an elephant skull on the wall start to glow. The image fogged over again to show the two again. The young Auntie Witch took the glass heart out of the elephant skull. It was glowing. She gave it to the man. This time Liir notice the blue markings on the man's skin. Blue diamonds! Now he remembered… Nor would always brag how her father, Prince Fiyero, had tribal markings that were blue diamonds.
Suddenly, the image went up in scarlet smoke. The smoke cleared to show the young Auntie Witch sobbing over the limp, bloody body of the strange man. The glass heart was broken on the floor.
Liir looked away from the glass. Even though he felt as if he never really knew Auntie Witch, the scene was too painful to watch. He glanced back at the glass to find that it was clear again.
Experimentally, Liir breathed on the glass once more and wrote his name. Immediately, an unfocused image flared up into the glass. All he could make out were colors: green, flesh tones and specks of blue. Next, the crystal ball showed Auntie Witch rocking a wicker basket. Inside was the baby Liir. Liir ripped his eyes away from the glass.
His mother... Auntie Witch… they were one and the same. Liir wiped a stray tear from his face. She was his mother! How could she ignore him the way she did?
Then a thought struck him. Perhaps her real heart was like that glass one. Once it's been broken once, it can't be used for much else. Liir sighed. Even with this philosophy in mind, he didn't feel any better. He could now understand the situation, but he could never forgive her, just like she could never forgive Fiyero, for breaking his heart.
Well, hopefully that made sense. (I have a tendancy to rapid (think water) write... there's no leisurely, lazy river pace... there's no dam to keep the idea in my brain and therefore no resevoir of what I just wrote.) Not even joking, I don't remember what happened in this and I just finished writing this 15 minutes ago.
Review?
e.r.