AN: Another chapter would make your day? Well, I hope this leaves a bit brighter note, even though it's shorter. I think I like it. Major book refrences, though. So I hope you all can get it... you know how often they mention the Kumbric Witch... well, here comes some really odd ideas...

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Kumbricia

I need to speak. I'm going crazy in here. Absolutely insane. Why doesn't Fiyero just give up, stop caring for me, and let me die? No one could blame him. But my Yero, ever persistent. He doesn't know when to give up. I love him for it, too.

Do you hear that? I love you! Of course you don't hear it. But you know. You'd better know. I don't know what I'd do if you didn't. But I do wish you wouldn't push me to live. Don't hate me for it, but I do.

The doctor was here yesterday. He said he'd only seen one other person fight the battle this long, and they died eventually, anyway. I'll stop fighting soon enough, I believe. It's not that I believe in suicide, but my body can't take much more. Honestly, my mind can't take more either. All of this inability to speak, to feel, to touch… how could someone live like this? I, who have always prided myself on being "numb", lose control now that I am. Maybe I am selfish. But wait, I don't want this life to end only for myself.

I want it to end for you, Yero. What good am I for you when you sit around and force yourself to take care of me day after day? How can you love when I cannot love you back, in this condition?

I am useless, now. I should die, maybe. What good can I do? I cannot help the Animals, cannot help anyone like this. I am a burden. I am the burden of all burdens. I am an active mind with a useless body. And a useless woman to my husband. Yes, I am a burden.

If I told you that, you'd deny it vehemently. You'd find some strange and pathetically romantic reason that I should stay alive, mobile and audible or not. But if I were gone, you could find someone, couldn't you? Is your arranged bride gone? Could they find you another? You can't be the king you will be if your queen is forever diseased, can you? I could barely understand why you loved me before, and now I can't begin to grasp it. Though I do believe it. Watching you take care of me, it's one of the few things I will ever believe in, your love for me.

I once told Boq that I didn't believe in anything, including love. His challenges were foolish. First he brought up Lurlinists and Unionists, and later the other, smaller, less common religions. My only religion now is Fiyero's love. It's dreadfully depressing and dismal, I know. I used to scoff at people who believed in love. It always seemed to fall apart. I'd see the men watch different women each day, or the women become absorbed in themselves. That hasn't happened here, and I don't know why. Perhaps it has yet to come.

Not that I doubt your devotion at all, oh, hero of mine. I could never. You married me; you chose me; you loved me; you held me; and in what seem to be my darkest days, you've cared for me. But you are a passionate man. Could you not direct that passion to another woman, if I am to die? Would you, for me?

I hope he could, because I don't know if I'll make it. I thought I was stronger than this, but I am weak. So much of what I thought of myself has been proven wrong since the beginning of my college years. And he has proved so much of it.

I've always said I hate it when you prove me wrong. But I do think I love it. If I hated it, I wouldn't have let you take me on that picnic. You've proven to me that I can love, and that someone can love me. You've proven that I was not destined to forever be indifferent, even if the times when joy came end up being as short as these past two years – I can't decide if I love the year before we married or the year we have been married more. Whatever it is, I love you.

I remember that time I told Boq I didn't believe in anything. When I'd fervently denied everything else, he brought up Kumbricia. Well, yes, I'm aware that some people, in some dark sect of the world, and in the outer parts of Oz (maybe even near the Vinkus), worship Kumbricia rather than Lurline or the Unnamed God.

"Yes, of course. I'll believe in that as soon as I am happy, Boq. Prove to me I can be more like others, love and smile like others, and I'd be content. I want to be selfish. I want so much more than these well-meant good deeds and deadly sins. I'd believe in her, I'd be her damned priestess if she'd send me something, something undeniably good." I told him.

That was the day before you walked into life sciences, actually.

Now that I think about it, hasn't Fiyero been something undeniably good in my life?

Kumbricia, I believe, save me now.