Nor stood on her tiptoes, stretching herself up to see over the border wall. Coming up behind her, Fiyero swept her up and set her there. He held her tightly, careful that her wobbly toddler legs didn't carry her over the edge. She looked out over the mountain side, and into the valley below with a wide-eyed innocence. It was near dusk and the whole world was awash in crimson and violet.
"Pretty," she cooed in an awestruck voice.
"When I was a little one, my governess or sometimes my nursemaid would bring me out here. There was one that I will never forget. She would always sing to me. She loved to sing, always. She had a lovely voice, I remember."
"Guvness?"
"That's right. But that is something you or your brothers will never have. If it can't be done by me or your mother, well, then it doesn't need to be done. No crochety old hag for my little ones. Especially not for my Nor. Only the best."
A flock of white pfenixes took flight from a nearby crag and flew over them. Nor watched their progress.
"Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high/There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby," Fiyero began to sing to her. She was at the age when everything fascinated her. She gazed at him with something like wonder.
"Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue/And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true." He lifted her onto his shoulders, giving her an even better view of the land.
"Someday, I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me/Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me."
"Someday, I'll wake and rub my eyes and in that land beyond the skies you'll find me/Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true."
No time for dreaming now. No point in it anyway. Nor shook herself and returned to the present. She swept her long white hair back into a single braid and pulled a silvery-gray dress over herself. Elegant, in it's simplicity.
She gazed at herself in the mirror.
"I remember, she sang so beautifully, I thought she must be my mother. My real mother was quick to correct this, though I saw little of her in those early years, can you blame my confusion? Attending banquets and other high-class social gatherings were more important to her. Leave the child rearing to the servants. And the girl had grown to love me like her own and so did nothing to sway my opinion. When she was finally found out, she was dismissed. I never saw her again after that," her father seemed to say to her across the years.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly/ Birds fly over the rainbow, why then - oh, why can't I?/If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow why, oh, why can't I?
There had been happiness. And then Fiyero had been cruelly ripped from their lives to fade into mere memory and soon enough the authorities had come for them too.
Those days were long gone. Here there be monsters.
Or so the saying goes.