A/N: I'm sorry I have been lost to the forces of darkness…er…school. AP Euro. Don't they realize that we're the kids who don't need to define key terms over and over in order to get them?

Oh, and note- this is NOT the end. Hopefully that's apparent, but with my concluding sentence I realize there could be confusion. Intrigued? Good. Go read it, and then REVIEW!

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Fala:

Our parents were staring at us. It was kind of creepy. I'd seen, from my vantage point in the tree, my uncle walk over to my mother (bad idea) and her (predictable) response of glaring, hissing, and yelling at him until he left.

"Fala," my brother hissed, "Get down. You're going to fall, and then you're going to die, and then Mother's going to blame me-"

"Oh, shut up, Liir," I replied, leaping out of the tree and making him gasp and cover his eyes until he heard me land, catlike, safely on the ground. "I'm fine, and Mother would never do that." I thought a moment. "But she just might disembowel you if you said that to her."

Liir appeared to be considering my point.

"You're right," he admitted, "but you still could have died, and then Father-"

"Urgh!" I stormed away from my incorrigible brother, hurrying over towards my parents. Mother had a dark look on her face, and Father's was concerned. Mother looked towards me and Liir at my heels and something in her eyes changed, softened. She turned her head away and back and the look was gone, leaving her eyes blank.

"Fala, Liir," she said, without any real reprimand in her voice, "It's your aunt's funeral. Don't climb on the trees."

"But I wasn't-" protested Liir. Mother held up her hand.

"Please," she said. "Just- don't."

It hit me that her weary voice and dull, lifeless words mirrored the reactions of Glinda and the Arjiki village mothers to their children's escapades. Our mother was never like that. She always did care whether or not her scoldings were fair, she always listened to both sides of the story, always, and she rarely scolded us for things like tree climbing, even at funerals, anyway. And when she did scold, it was nothing like this…this…absentness. She scolded fiercely and thoroughly, the way she did everything, and once she was finished the offender never even thought of doing it again. That was why, soon after we returned to Kiamo Ko, Father gladly handed over all matters of justice to her and once a week she held court in her favorite haunt, the huge, turret-like study.

At first, the villagers resented and were wary of us, not solely because of Mother's and my skin but because Mother had caused their prince to break, apparently, dozens of customs. But as she made an effort to learn their dialogue and ancient laws, and as they realized her rulings were always fair and her dressing downs a more effective deterrent of crime than their old tortures and executions, she won their respect and became better-loved even than Fiyero. On the occasion that "Lady Queen Elphaba," -as Liir, Father, and I knew the villagers called her as subversively as the Munchkinlanders had called Aunt Nessarose the Wicked Witch of the East, though had Mother found out her reaction would have been far more vehement- walked through the town, she drew waves, cheers, and a crowd of children following behind, all of which merely made her laugh genuinely and the tell everyone, a bit more mildly than usual, to please go back to what they were doing and leave her to do the same because obsequiousness made her sick to her stomach. At first, this shocked the adults but then they began to realize that this was merely their new queen's way and began to do as she had said and lessen their response, though not so far as she would have liked. The children, however, listened not at all and continued following her as though she were the Pied Piper of the Gillikinese fairy tale. Speaking of the Gillikinese, about half the children believed that Glinda was the Fairy Queen Lurline, and so whenever she visited they followed even more voraciously and lost their noisy rowdiness to an awed reverence, staring at Glinda with eyes wide (which she loved), until Elphaba told them to shoo, Glinda was just a person and she peed just like everyone else, and her pee didn't give anyone souls, either. When Glinda told the story in a rather mortified voice later, around the dinner table, Fiyero remarked that at least she hadn't said piss to the five-year-old-and-under population of the village. Elphaba had glared, but not angrily, and Ariana, Liir, and I, ages eight and nine, had laughed hysterically at our father both for swearing and mentioning bodily functions. Illyana, an aghast look on her face, stared at us, and Glinda, hiding laughter, set her lips primly and made a moue of distaste.

But now…Mother was standing there, eyes dull, and Father was staring at her with an awful worried look written across his face.

Then, she smiled vaguely at something in her head, and, embarrassing Liir and I, gripped Father in her arms and kissed him.

And there they stayed for a good long time.