Title: Click Your Heels, Dorothy
Author: Pippin Third
Summary: If gravity let us go, we could all go flying...
Disclaimer: I own the Matrix. Sue me. /sarcasm

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The girl at the corner stall doesn't belong.

She wears a pair of boots two sizes too big, laces untied and sprawled all over the sidewalk like cracks on pavement. Bright red cracks. She never trips when she walks, never stumbles while running. It's all about having Somewhere to get to, she insists, and getting there when you can. Her wrists are free of watches; for a bracelet, she has a length of blue ribbon tied into a knot.

Winter, she calls that time of the year when people put up twinkle lights and play with tinsel. Homes are lit, but outside there is no fire. Out here, there is no heat. Just signs that scream HOLIDAY SALE, 40 % OFF ON SELECTED ITEMS (exclamation point times three) in big, bold letters. Just the thin, weary Santa leaning on his shoddy iron pot, ringing his dismal looking bell under the pale glow of a lamp post. Just lovely cool snow (...fall on your back and spread your arms, but don't move. don't move. for angels can't be crafted from a shape in the ground...) and biting frost - a weather to kill flowers with.

Nettles on pine trees turn to plastic. The girl doesn't approve of artificiality.

She doesn't approve of stupidity, either. Clowns make fools out of themselves as they try to act funny. Powdered faces, thick lips, ugly polka dots on baggy clothes. They scare all the little children. When the circus comes to town, the girl buys herself a ticket to see the trapeze artists leap about in the air. They ignore the twenty-foot drop to the safety net strung out below them in case they slip.

They never slip. The girl wonders why they cling to wooden poles. If only they'd let go, she believes they can fly.

if gravity let us go
we could all go flying
and i'll meet you
somewhere in the milky night
away past the satellites

She believes in the little things.

the breeze is dressed so lightly
and it breathes onto this fire escape

She believes in the woman on the radio with a voice like rain on the day you forget to bring your umbrella: you question your ill fortune, oh but wait, the weather's lovely, and luck turns to fate.

where all our secrets melt like ice
leaving only water

A voice like that.

She watches birds as they glide and places her faith in the feathers of their wings. The wind tousles her black hair, blowing strands into eyes that are a light shade of green (blue?). They forever question the girl's surroundings, forever challenge the world in which she exists but doesn't belong.

Not where other little girls wear sandals and skip.
Not where the are so many presents but none with her name on it.

day so soon
hear the traffic move
sirens all fill this room
till we both have to shout

Not where children her age laugh when Bobo throws a pie at Dinky's face.
Not where beautiful men and women land on platforms and get called down from liberating heights by a pot-bellied ringmaster.

from the road
watching the stars explode
you and i breathe so slow

Not where the the radio crackles with static.

Across from her, a man walks out of the bank and stops in front of an old pickup. Its windows are tinted, and Click Your Heels, Dorothy has been scratched onto the peeling finish. The man retrieves a mobile phone from his coat pocket and makes a brief call, before snapping it shut again.

He looks around. Their gazes lock. He smiles at her gently, tilts his head, salutes. She nods back.

Later, the girl will return to the orphanage. She will take a seat on the sagging couch and get yelled at by the matron to read out the day's headlines. She will frown lightly but do as she's told, grab the newspaper from the coffee table and pause. Recognize the... act of terrorism on Christmas Eve... bomb went off... bank wasn't robbed... mysterious suspect... Asian features...

Right now, however, the truck drives away. The girl scans the sunset just as shops begin to close and shadows grow long in the fading light. She searches for the reason her feet are always stuck on asphalt or wet grass, and a way to break that reason.

The girl knows for certain that something is wrong in a world, when stars meant to glitter until the end of time fall from the sky.

how strange the sound.



*

A/N: The woman with a voice like rain is Bic Runga, and the lyrics used in this fanfic are from her song . In the first movie, Trinity seemed to display a stubborn streak not to mention a certain affinity for high places - I tried giving her a (small) backstory that could explain that part of her personality. And yes, it was Ghost who blew up the bank. :)

Trinity is an orphan, selling flowers on Christmas Eve. It's an idea. Let me know what you think. - Third