Glinda, as she was called now, walked down a grassy path. The moon was high in the sky. But why was she here? There was no reason to be. She didn't enjoy hiking. She had no real liking to sightseeing, not in these woods anyway. She had begun walking in a trance after hearing another announcement of the Wicked Witch and her newly found accomplice, the old Captain of the Guards.
Or what it should have been said, her new lover.
She looked up and narrowed her eyes when she saw the top of a building.
She knew that building.
Goodness, how long had she been walking?
But she kept on walking, even after seeing the top of her old college's roof. Her feet didn't even hurt. Well maybe they did, she doubted she would be able to feel it. She probably couldn't feel a knife being stabbed into her back.
No, wait, she could. She felt it a while ago, and she was still feeling it to this day. The thought alone was like putting salt into the wound, and the blonde woman's face grew more and more unreadable by the minute.
She didn't watch where she was walking. Her shoe caught on a tree root and she fell. She cursed and slipped off her expensive shoes, now ruined by walking and a broken heel.
She let out a frustrated roar, and ripped off her other shoe and bashed it on the ground. The heel dug into the earth like a knife, and she stabbed it over and over and over. She threw the shoes in a rage against a tree, and the bark chipped. She curled her knees up to her face, and cried into the dirtied fabric of her skirts.
She shivered when a breeze whizzed past her, and she rubbed her arms to retain warmth. Her body moved instinctively, and her feet dragged on the grass underneath her as she picked up her ruined shoes. She stood up and her eyes came to meet a long forgotten scared bark. She wanted to take her shoe and bash that into nonexistence too, but something stopped her. What stared back at her wasn't what she had left all those years ago.
Within the heart was two unfamiliar things, a letter and a word.
G&E
Forever
Glinda's eyes could not hold back the bottled up tears, and they streamed down her cheeks, and her hands dropped the shoes and clasped onto the bark. She fell to her knees, and her forehead rested against the tree's trunk. If someone had seen her, it looked like she was begging, begging the tree for something.
For what?
She begged for her Elphie back.
But trees aren't meant to grant wishes, just tell the silent stories carved into them.