Um okay well.. first and foremost I'd like to thank you if you're here reading the intro to my fic and I hope that you'll keep reading. This is my NaNovel for the wonderful (insane) NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for 2009. My goal: Write a 50k novel in 30 days within November while not failing out of college. Should be fun. Ahem I meeeaann.. I'll be trying to update here as often as I can through the month. This'll be my fifth year attempting nano and I've won all four years before this so I hope I can pull it off again. Obviously this fic is mostly a Wicked fic with some musicalverse elements and some bookverse elements but it very similarly follows the plot of Lion King I love to do fics like that.. it of course won't be a /copy/ of Lion King.. but if you watch the plot you'll see certain elements of it that'll remind you - as a tribute only of course. I don't claim any rights to either works only the original stuff and plot ideas and the insanity etc. Also it's a bit AU cause it stems from another one of my fics so you'll notice differences from this prologue. Elphaba's life remains exactly as it is in the book until she's eleven and there the book and my fic split.. She runs away to live with her Great Grandfather and he is training her (in hopes) of her acknowledging her title of Thropp Third Descending and later taking over for him when he's too old to do it anymore. During this fic he is taking her on a diplomatic visit to the Vinkus because he believes relationships with the Arjiki are important.. and Elphie will of course meet our dear Fiyero and she will get to see his world in a way she never does in the real play/book of Wicked. So I really hope that you enjoy this story where Elphie and Yero both learn a little bit about what it means to grow up and about becoming a good person. There will be adventures with our favorite couple and you will laugh with them and cry with them when the going gets tough and ultimately I hope that this will touch your heart and make you think a bit differently about that tumultuous journey and some of life's hardest lessons that happen when we turn into what we all so wanted to be as kids 'the adults'. Will Elphaba and Fiyero be able to stick it out and save the Arjikis and themselves in the face of danger? You'll only know if you keep reading. Beware.. I'm writing 50k in thirty days I apologize for my grammar mistakes and as for warnings.. right now this fic is rated T, but depending on how it goes it may go up XDD so.. other than that I think I've rambled on quite long enough. Thanks for reading! - Beck
Prologue
The figures were silhouetted up against the colors of a sky which looked as if it were on fire. It was, perhaps, the most beautiful sky that the young woman had seen in all of her life and the strange glow of it cast a beautiful light upon her skin. The sky itself and the land below it seemed to be of two separate entities with a stark color of separation between them. The sky was burning vermillion red above the horizon line. It was the starkest of orangey- reds that the young woman had ever seen. Streaked through it looking of the same pattern as a paint brush dragged carefully across a canvas leaving stringy threads from the bristles was the color of medium orange and hints of yellow. There were orange and yellow clouds. Well, they weren't truly orange and yellow but they were thin and high in the sky and the light of the sun hit them in just such a way that they too looked the colors of the gorgeous sky. It was a wide, vast expanse of vermillion fire in the sky for as far as could be seen with nothing interrupting it. This panorama of sky was all around her like she was standing in the middle of a circular dome of it. Directly bisecting the beauty of the sky was a line, straight across and not broken from its horizontal plane by a single thing or shape – perfectly straight, was the blackest of blacks. Everything below the horizon was perfectly black. The only exception in either of these was the huge, yellow-orange disc of the sun hanging half above it and half having disappeared below. It burned with a fervency that the girl had never seen anywhere else before. She had never seen a sunset that red, nor that beautiful, and certainly not an unobstructed view with nothing in the way before.. It was the most gorgeous sight she had ever seen in her entire life. Even the true colors of the grasses at her feet were muted in soft orange glow. It was obvious at the nearest bits it was green, but everything spreading out around them looked more orange until a few feet away it disappeared into that vast blackness of the horizon line.
The only brokenness of this perfect expanse was the two figures here now mounted on their ponies. The darkness made them look as if they were one with the horses instead of man and beast. It made her grateful for the riding lessons she'd received as a young child that made her able to sit proud and tall on the high back of her horse with the regal man beside her so that she looked as though she belonged with him. Even though the two horses really were nothing to brag about, she still felt proud. They'd come all the way from the Gillikin/Vinkus border after all so all of them were looking a bit the worse for the wear after so many days of travel. There had been no place to really clean up and he had warned her not to expect the kind of grand palaces and manor houses in the Vinkus that she was used to when they went on Diplomatic visits within the Emerald city or Munchkinland or especially the Gillikin. She shifted a bit in her saddle and looked at the man beside her carefully.
He was a tall man and well built with the same kind of slender build that she posessed. He rode well with his back straight as a ramrod and comfortable in his saddle. He had a pale complexion that was covered right now by a slight tan from their travel in the increasingly warm sun and temperatures of moving westward. He had a broad forehead and kind, gentle eyes of a slate grey. They could look warm or, when he was angry, look as cold as frozen water in the midst of a harsh winter. His hair was silvery-white from age and he wore it pulled back in a queue tied at the nape of his neck that was a few inches long. His posture was perfect and his clothes were always impeccable, pressed and starched so he could look as if he'd come from an important meeting when he might have been taking tea and listening to the radio. He had large hands that had a gentle touch to them and perfectly kempt nails. His smile was a bit crooked and he had a dimple in the middle of his chin that had not been passed to the girl beside him.
The girl was tall of a similar shape as the man beside her but not as tall, though she did stand at an impressive five feet eight inches and in the next two years she would gain two more inches before she stood at her full adult height. She was also extremely thin. More so than him even by proportion of teenage girl to older man she was still thinner than he. Her body was angles all angles and no curves, something she despaired of ever gaining now that she was going to be sixteen in less than two months. She had long, lithe legs and narrow hips, almost flat really. Her waist was slender and her chest small enough she could have masqueraded as a boy if she so chose, but some of her features – such as her graceful, slender neck and face were so clearly beautiful and feminine it detracted from the despair of missing hourglass figure she so desired. Her face was regal and slender with clearly defined high cheekbones and a long, very straight nose. Her lips were slender and feminine and her smile was a shade crooked just as his was. Her eyes were very serious and wide, deep chocolate brown in color with a few flecks of hazel in them and ringed by thick lashes. Her brows were thin and expressive in the expanse of her face. Her ears were delicate and there was a small puncture hole in the lobe of each, filled now, as usual, with a set of tiny pearls given her by the man beside her when she was twelve years old when she had begged him to allow her to have her ears done and he had (reluctantly) agreed, mumbling something about girls ought to be waiting until they were at least fifteen for earrings. Her hair was of a very deep deep brown (nearly black) and it hung in thick lengths down her back to her waist. Currently it was braided and pinned up to keep the dust from their travels from getting into it, however. Her hands were small and delicate, folded loosely about the reins of her horse, concealed in riding gloves that matched her deep blue riding habit. She truly was a beautiful young woman, though with one slightly unorthodox characteristic. Her skin, for however smooth and perfect it was (she didn't have a single blemish on it save the scars on her knees from falling in gravel as a child) was not like anyone else's she had ever met. It was the color of new spring leaves, of dark green grass. This color was perfectly unbroken all over save the dusky grayish-violet color of her lips and the shading of the same in her eyelids. However, the color of her skin was strange enough that it was always the first thing people noticed, and only a careful observer bothered to look past it and see the earnest determination within the young woman and that was the true beauty.
"Look there Fabala. Everything out in front of us for as far as your eye can see, all of that is the Vinkus." Came the voice of the old man. "This ends the Grasstrail train." He said softly, putting his hand over his eyes to shade them so he could see further into the light.
The duo was certainly a fairly odd one, even in Oz where everything was a little bit.. well.. unique. Even in such a place as this, they were a bit odd, you had to know the history to understand how the young woman had come to hold such a special place in his heart. After all, being an old man and alone, life had not afforded Peerless Thropp many chances to love until his great granddaughter Elphaba had entered his life. His wife had died early and his granddaughters one had been sickly and died in early adulthood and the other, Elphaba's mother, had died several years before giving birth to her third child, Elphaba's brother Shell. He had been alone until Elphaba's arrival and he thanked the Unnamed God every day for bringing her into his lonely life and giving him a reason to continue living again, a reason to be hopeful that he had not spent his entire life struggling to make something good for his family only to have them run away and throw his gifts of toil, a life spent working hard for them, right back in his face because they didn't want it. Elphaba had given him faith that the world really was still good, something that had been lacking in him up until this last five years. He had honestly begun to doubt that. She had changed all that.. and she had needed his love too, after her family's ignorance and how they had hated her for being different… They needed each other then and still did now and that was the plain truth of it. They had each taught each other more than they wanted to admit because both were mutually stubborn, having similar personalities as well as the shared blood that ran through their veins and, perhaps, Peerless hoped, the same destiny. He had struggled to make something of Munchkinland with his time as Eminent Thropp in hopes that Elphaba, the Thropp third descending now, would one day take his place and lead the state in a way that he would have wanted.
"Come on, I'm an old man Elphie and all of this traveling isn't settling well with my old joints I'll tell you. Haven't been out here since I was a young man and believe me I'm going to be feeling some muscles I didn't know I had tomorrow morning, mark my words." He said with an affection nudge of his shoulder to hers. "And that.. I think may be our escort." He nodded far down the bluff where another horse and rider had appeared, looking the size of a pin dot compared to the rest of the landscape around them. He sat tall on his horse as well, and it didn't wear a saddle or bridle but just a blanket. He was riding barebacked. As the man came closer to them, his features became more clear to Elphie, who trembled in disbelief at his sheer size. Even from his seated position on the horse she could tell he was a good half a foot or more taller than her. Little did she know, most Arjiki men were well over six feet in height. His skin was dark like well oiled leather and he looked to be perhaps five or six years older than herself. Across his chest and his shoulders were a very obvious kind of diamond shaped pattern in startling blue that actually stood out, even against his dark skin. She didn't know how it was possible, though she did guess that the diamond pattern was tattooed into his skin. Despite the strange tribal markings, he was handsome with a kind of foreign beauty that Elphaba had only imagined. He seemed to hold mysteries – this whole place was full of them and it gave her shivers and sent her natural curious streak into overdrive. She wanted, suddenly, a deep seated need within her spurring her on, to know about this place and to understand it truly know it. It was a quality in her that her Grandfather kept telling her meant she would make a good leader. Elphaba didn't know if she would ever make a good Eminent Thropp, but she couldn't bear to break the old man's heart by saying so. She would rather die trying.
The man's head was shaved like most here and he wore skin pants and no shirt- she noticed this straight off, as well as his strong muscled body, strong enough to have snapped her in two if he so desired, luckily he was smiling and seemed friendly, his dark eyes as curious as Elphaba's own though polite enough to keep his questions in check. She felt surprise and mollified when he barely glanced at her skin. Most people stared so much it made her want to shed it like a snake. The man's smile was compelling though and so was his wave and his greeting in the dialect spoken in Munchkinland rather than Arjiki (for which she was grateful since she didn't speak it save a few words and polite phrases). "Hello and welcome. You enter the land of the Arjiki tribe now." He said, his accent warm and his voice different from any Elphaba had ever heard before. Peerless had been here before and knew many of the customs, but it was all new for her.
"My name is Kayin I will be your guide to the present place our tribe is camped. You have no need to fear now our tribe is glad of your visit and much ready to speak with you." He said.
"I thank you for riding out all of this way to escort us." Peerless said with a nod.
"It was my pleasure. I hope that both our peoples will come to benefit from this visit and that you will both enjoy your time here."
Elphaba spoke now for the first time, "I already am. This is the most lovely place I have ever seen and I have been here a sum total of twenty minutes." She whispered in awe.
Kayin nodded, "It puts you in perspective of your real place in the universe to be in such a place as this."
"That it does." Peerless agreed, still gazing at the skyline as the sun sunk lower towards the black horizon line.
"We should go, for it does not due to be out on the open plain alone after dark when more formidable things are also up and about. Come and we will have a grand feast and you will both have the chance to get cleaned up and refreshed. I daresay such an opportunity will be welcome after this journey for I have heard it is no small one."
Elphaba and Peerless exchanged an obviously relieved glance and each gave their horses a gentle nudge in the flank with a renewed kind of vigor only brought about by the promise of a good meal and a bath and the beauty of this place could bring about. Already she knew, as she looked around, that this land called the Vinkus was special.. more special than any place she had ever been and she knew there were going to be wonderful adventures here…
