Tale as old as time
Tune as old as song
Bittersweet and strange
Finding you can change
Learning you were wrong

Seventeen years ago, it rained. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had taken power a month previous. The weather had been beautiful every day since his coronation. But the day Melena Thropp gave birth, rain fell down in sheets. It sent shivers down everyone's back. It was late fall, and cold enough that the rainfall could almost have been snow.

Frexpar was away, like he usually was. The Governor of Munchkinland was usually seldom home. The town gossips wondered where he had had the time to father a child. The bolder old hens claimed he probably hadn't. They didn't know they were correct and they didn't know the horror of the child, either.

It was green. Not a tinge of green either- undeniably green. As if Fate had decided to punish her for her adultery. The color pointed to the City of Green, to the baby's true father. Melena knew she could not let her husband see the baby. He would never accept it. The midwives had left her. She could always claim the baby was sickly and died a few hours after birth. Frex would comfort her, then. He would take care of her, maybe stay home for a little while. Maybe she would then have a normal, healthy baby. A child she wouldn't have to hide.

She nervously bounced the infant. The baby tugged at a curl of Melena's hair. She wondered if she could drown the thing. Or bury it? Smother it? What would effectively kill it but not cause much pain? She didn't want it to suffer, didn't want to hear it scream. She eyed one of the pillows on the bed. She picked it up with a shaking hand. She held it inches above the child's face before throwing it against the wall. She cursed, forcing herself to stand. She knew what she had to do.

--

The mother and child were soaked by the time they reached the city in the hired carriage. She hid the baby in the loosely woven wicker basket. The baby was quiet, luckily. Melena insisted that as the Governor of Munchkinland's wife she had a right to see the Wizard. When the guards told him who his visitor was, he was eager to greet her. He wasn't so happy when he saw her, soaked and distraught.

"Here," she said thrusting the basket at him. "This is yours, and I'm done with it. Do what you will with it, I don't care."

"Melena?" But she walked out of his chamber, back out into the night before he could get a word in. He peered into the basket, almost dropped it but luckily didn't. The green child cooed when he lifted it from the makeshift cradle.

It was a girl, he acknowledged what Melena couldn't. He had a daughter, green as sin, tired and hungry. A daughter that would be his downfall, who would ruin the perfect image of him that Oz had. A daughter no one could ever know about.