A HUGE thank you to 3Mindy3 who designed the truly awesome image that is part of the cover for this story!
Two
TWENTY YEARS LATER
Elphaba Rozek looked around her room, making sure she hadn't forgotten to pack anything. Everything she owned fit into one small suitcase and a few cardboard boxes, which were mostly filled with books.
There was a gentle knock on the door, and Elphaba turned to see the middle-aged woman who ran the orphanage, Kistine smiling at her warmly.
"Are you ready, Elphaba?"
The green girl nodded, and straightened the glasses on her nose. "I'm ready."
Kistine sighed, coming into the room to look at Elphaba. "So many times I imagined this moment," she said fondly. "Except when I pictured it, I always rather hoped I'd be sending you to your new family."
Elphaba smiled wryly. "You probably also imagined it would be sooner than twenty years, if that was the case," she teased gently.
Kistine had been the closest thing Elphaba had ever known to a mother. It had been she who had christened Elphaba as such, and had shown her pretty much the only affection she'd ever known.
"The carriage is downstairs waiting for you."
Elphaba nodded, picked up her suitcase and grabbed a box.
Kistine grabbed the other box, and followed the girl downstairs. The children they passed waved to her, calling goodbye and wishing her luck.
"Now," Kistine said, turning to Elphaba as the driver was putting the luggage into the carriage. "Work hard, eat well, and make plenty of friends."
"Because I've always had plenty of friends," Elphaba said sarcastically, but embraced the older woman tightly.
"Thank you, Kistine. For everything."
"And keep in touch," Kistine continued, shooing Elphaba away.
"I will," Elphaba promised.
She climbed in to the carriage and waved as it drove away. Elphaba sighed to herself as the familiar streets and signs flashed by.
She could hardly believe it, finally, she was on her way to Shiz University. It had been Elphaba's dream to go there for years, but being an orphan, tuition was rather difficult.
Elphaba had worked full time as a waitress since she was sixteen, the past four years, to be able to save up enough money. When she had reached eighteen, and was legally an adult, Kistine had let Elphaba continue living at the orphanage, so she could continue saving money.
She had refused to take board, so instead, Elphaba had repaid her by cooking, cleaning and helping out with the younger children at the orphanage. Elphaba had expected it would still be a while before she was able to actually apply to Shiz, she wanted to have at least two years tuition saved before she went.
But then luck seemed to be in her favour. In the spring, she had applied for a scholarship for Shiz, and they had granted it to her. It was only a partial scholarship, they would pay for her basic tuition fees, but Elphaba would still need to buy her own books and pay the student fee.
It also didn't cover board, so Elphaba had spent the latter part of the summer scouring the papers until she found an apartment in Shiz that she could afford. Kistine had worried that the low price meant it was likely to be a dump, but Elphaba didn't care. It was cheap, partly furnished and as long as it had some semblance of a kitchen and bathroom, that was all she really needed.
It was a place to live, and she could afford basic rent, utilities and groceries on the small budget she'd worked out. It would be tight, and she'd have to find a job pretty quickly because her savings wouldn't last long, but she would be at Shiz and that was all Elphaba really cared about.
Elphaba couldn't wait to get there and start studying. She was planning to do a double degree of law and politics. Elphaba had her life all planned out, she prided herself on her ambition and her organisation.
She suspected it was because being an orphan, never knowing if the next couple who walked in the door would pick you to adopt; and knowing with every year it was less and less likely… especially when you were like Elphaba.
Elphaba's plan was simple. She wanted to go to Shiz (check); study law and politics (check); and after graduation, she was going to work for her hero- the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Elphaba loved hearing the story of how the Wizard had come to Oz in his hot air balloon, and all the Wonderful things he had done for the people of Oz since. When she had been ten, a musical had opened in the theatre district, a musical called Wizomania, all about the Wizards' arrival. The company had given free seats to the orphans at the orphanage, and Elphaba had been completely drawn into it.
She had only seen it once since- being an orphan didn't exactly give you a lot of opportunity to see theatre. But Kistine had bought tickets for Elphaba's eighteenth birthday, and it had been just as magical then as eight years before; maybe even more so given this time Elphaba had known more about the history and had understood more of the background context.
It was a few hours journey between the Emerald City and Shiz, and Elphaba settled in for the journey. She opened her shoulder bag, looking for the book she was halfway through reading and had placed in the bag that morning.
However, when her fingers brushed glass, she stopped. She pulled out the small green glass bottle, that was literally all she had from her birth parents. She knew nothing about them, which province they were from; whether they too, were green; what they looked like or why they had given her up.
Kistine had told her that she had been left with the bottle on the orphanage doorstep very early one morning in April. There had been no note, just the bottle which had had formula in it, and some form of a blanket she had been wrapped in. Kistine used to tell her the story, of how she had brought her inside, given her another bottle and called a doctor.
The doctor had deemed she was perfectly healthy, and only a few hours old at most; but he could find no reason why she was green. So Kistine had named her Elphaba Rozek- Elphaba, which meant "magical" and Rozek, which she had read in a book one day.
"Why did you pick Elphaba?" she had always asked.
Kistine had always smiled in return. "From the moment I first saw you, being born the special way you were, you couldn't be anything else but magical."
As Elphaba got older, Kistine's words seemed to be accurate. She didn't realise until she was about five and they began to occur in waking hours, that what Elphaba had always assumed were just very vivid dreams, were actually more than that.
The older she got, the more vivid they became and the stronger they became. Sometimes they were visions, sometimes they were merely feelings… most often was the melody of a song which seemed to be in her head constantly. She had never heard it before, but she used to walk around humming it constantly.
One day when she was eight, one of the kids in the orphanage had asked Elphaba what it was and how she knew it, and Elphaba couldn't answer. Kistine had consulted an old woman, Yackle who had experience with magic and things like that.
Yackle had told them that what Elphaba was experiencing could either be visions of the future, or visions of her past, from before she was left at the orphanage. In other words, some kind of signs or messages about her birth parents.
Kistine dismissed that as nonsense, but it made sense to Elphaba. The orphanage had an old, rarely in tune piano that someone had donated for the children to play on. It had taken a few months, but Elphaba had taught herself at age eight to read music and play the piano. When she was eleven, she wrote down the melody that was always dancing around in her head; but it wasn't until she was thirteen that the words came along with it.
Elphaba suspected her "powers" were another reason no family had chosen to adopt her. She was strange enough being green, let alone having visions- whether they were of the past or the future. She always wrote them down, but she couldn't give meaning to any of them.
"We're here, Miss," the driver said, opening the door a few hours later and Elphaba looked up from her book in surprise.
"Oh. Thank you," she said and climbed of the carriage, looking up at her new home.
Well, it was old and didn't look like much, but Elphaba was never one to go off appearances. You couldn't, when you were green. She already had the key, so she picked up her suitcase and left the driver to follow with the few boxes as she headed inside.
She was met with a long, steep flight of stairs. Slowly, she headed up and came to a door, which opened to reveal the inside of her home. It was mostly a large open room with a stove and such that made Elphaba guess that area was to be the kitchen.
There was a small bathroom off to one side, in a separate room thankfully, which had a toilet, sink and a small tin bathtub. There were only two windows, one at each end of the room, and the floors were bare and wooden. "Partly furnished" apparently meant a thin mattress which sat on the floor; a small empty wooden closet; and a small dining table with mismatched dining chairs.
Elphaba immediately set down her suitcase and began to make a list of what she'd need to buy immediately, and what could wait until she had a job and was working. Cleaning supplies, obviously. She had clean blankets so that was fine, and she'd need a lamp so she could work at night. Other than that, it was mostly small kitchen things so she would be able to cook for herself, and eat.
The driver finished carrying in her boxes, tipped his hat and left, wishing her a good day. For a moment, Elphaba basked in the knowledge she was on her own, in her own house; but then she decided to get to work.