The Witch took a tentative step into the dew-speckled grasses around Kiamo Ko. She had wrapped herself in a long cloak, and the thick soles of her combat boots sank into the loose earth. Still, she shivered and shrank away as the dew clung in diamond tears to the hem of her cape. It wasn't true, what the rumors said, that pure water could melt her. That was ridiculous, of course. But water, and tears too, for that matter, did burn. The memory of their acidic sting was enough to make her shy away from the sparkling ambrosia, even as she longed for its forbidden touch.
She paused there in the open, trembling like a deer, then took a step. Another, another, and the fear slipped and shambled away with a dry rattle of its many bones and left her to her own wondering silence in the still daylight. The morning held its breath and waited in soft sunlit luminosity for the world to move again. Elphaba paused once more, amber eyes glowing bright in the sun, dazzled by the brilliance of the day, then she reached out almost reverently to touch a dancing, flaxen rush and marveled at its soft, sun-born life. These steps. This morning. Fae wondered now for the first time what had compelled her to leave the safety of Kiamo Ko's stone womb. Wondered and remembered a dream and a man (perhaps they were one and the same) and found she did not regret it. This – this sun-soaked radiance, this myriad of colors and the soft dappling chiaroscuro that was the painting of the world in all its amaranthine kinesthesia. This was birth. This was life. This was flight.