Tale As Old As Time
Prologue
Now wait just a clock tick! I know it's hard for all of us to get it through our blissful blond(ish) brains that something like Wicked could actually choose some people like Gregory Maguire, Winnie Holzman, Steven Schwartz, Marc Platt and the other persons at Universal to own it. But it's happened, and it's real, and we can wave our ridiculous wands around all we like, it won't change anything. It doesn't belong to us, it never did, it belongs to the aforementioned people!
Little feet beat a frantic rhythm against thick green carpet as three-year-old Danilo Tremaine ran after his giggling older sister. Though he was two years younger than she, and shorter, he'd almost managed to catch up.
"Ahhh!" He squealed as he was cooped off his feet and into the air.
"Gotcha!" His captor cried, gleefully sweeping him around. "Humph, you're getting too big!"
"Mama!" Danilo protested, laughing. "You're silly."
"Oh, I'm 'si-wy' am I?" His mother replied with mock severity. The boy nodded. "Hmm…well we'll just have to see how silly I am once I get my hands on your sister!"
"Ahhh," Both children screeched. The girl, Elianora, who had stopped when her brother had been captured, dashed again for their bedroom, not caring that she ran right out of her pink slippers.
Her bubbly laughter rang out as she sprang on to her big bed and dove into the downy covers. Seconds later her mother jogged into the room, still carrying her giggling little brother as well as her slippers and the bath towel that had been dropped earlier on.
"I beat you! I win!" Elianora joyfully announced as she emerged from beneath her comforter.
"Yes you did," her mother agreed. She pretended to be plum tuckered out as she set her son on his own bed and helped him crawl beneath his blankets.
When Danilo was settled, she set her daughter's footwear at the end of her bed, and draped the fluffy pink towel over a hook on the wall, both of their little bathrobes followed neatly to their places. Then she took her own place in the rocking chair between the beds, her throne of sorts.
She was Glinda the Good, ruler of Oz, powerful sorceress, the Good Witch of the North and a Mother. The latter title had taken over five years ago as her favorite.
"Mommy tell us a story," Elianora demanded. "While we wait for Daddy."
"All right," Glinda agreed. This bedtime ritual was a favorite as well. "Would you like to hear about the Sneetches, or Rapunzel, or Cimorene, or-
"No, we always hear those. Tell us a new one."
Glinda wracked her brain for a fairy tale or nursery rhyme they hadn't heard and couldn't think of one.
"I think you've heard them all. Pick your favorite," she tried.
"No, a new one. Make one up like Daddy does."
Glinda nearly protested, she wanted to tell them that making up stories was Daddy's thing and that she simply couldn't do it. But before she could an idea popped into her head. She'd tell them of how she fell in love with their father; she'd just tweak it a bit to sound like a fairytale.
"All right, I'll tell you a tale," she began in her best tale-telling voice, "Of a beautiful princess, a Tinman and of Witches and Dragons and Nomes."
"Oh my," Elianora cried anxiously.
Glinda waved out the lights until only the faint glow from the fireplace and the children's nightlight remained and shifted to a more comfortable position.
"Once upon a time…"
A/N: Credit for this also has to go to Patricia C. Wrede, I've borrowed a couple ideas from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles (awesome books!) for this, though this story is in no way a crossover.