"Cross to the shifting sands, my old friend…" Frank's last words ended on his tongue as his lifeless eyes stared at the Wizard and Dorothy. The man that the Wizard knew as the former council leader was dead.

"Come, there are some things I want to show you before you depart", Dorothy told the Wizard with a hint of sadness in her voice. She then took him to another room that was filled with quirky inventions. "During my time when I was not attending to duties in Raghbad, I'd tinker with things…"

"Inventions?"

"Yes, inventions. Things. Items." She waved her hand in front of her and invited the Wizard to step further into the room. "Feel free to take whatever you wish."

"Thank you", he replied. To which Dorothy then looked at him. "If you ever need anything, you know where I can be found…"

Meanwhile, the witch was growing increasingly antsy and impatient while waiting for the Wizard. "Come on! I wanna be let in!", she groaned. She was about to shove her way past the guard, but then the door suddenly creaked open. The Wizard slowly started to emerge. He initially appeared like he was in a daze.

Staring at him was his adversary, the witch who had opposed him for all the years he had ruled the Emerald City. But that was in a different timeline, the one that Dorothy knew. This was different.

He was still trying to absorb all the information that Dorothy had told him. He couldn't believe any of it. Never would he have known that the multiverse was real. Never would have known that she was the one who had sent him to Oz to begin with. Never would he have known that there were many different versions of Oz—an unlimited number—with different story lines and filled with different beings with different personalities. Different versions of him. The possibilities were endless, and he still could not grasp the enormity of what was told to him. What was conveyed to him. All what Dorothy had told him swirled rapidly in his mind. And he could not tell anyone. Not even to Finley.

The witch expressed relief when he emerged from the dark void and stepped black shoes onto the snow once again. "Oh, thank the Faeries, I thought that—" But her words ended when the Wizard did not say anything. He simply wrapped his arms around her and held her in a tight embrace.

"What's this for", she asked confused, but then slowly returned the favor when she realized that this was not an ordinary hug. As they continued to embrace each other, he remained silent. Words that Dorothy had told him and images of the future—what could have happened had things played out differently—continued to swirl vividly in his mind. Could Theodora have killed Finley in another timeline, the Wizard thought to himself. And China Girl, too? It was a thought that even he had issues wrapping his head around. Could Theodora have really become that wicked? Someone as sweet and as kind as her?

Now that the Wizard was thinking of it, this scenario was not so hard to imagine. The witch herself had not acted nicely towards him when she was under stress. She did have a wicked side to her.

But it was not so much about Theodora truly becoming wicked that troubled the Wizard. He had seen her at her worst, or so he had thought. It was the fact that, when pushed in the right direction and given the chance, anyone could become wicked or irredeemably evil. If the right factors played out. If the stars aligned just right.

What troubled the Wizard was that the concepts of goodness and wickedness were not immutable forces fixed at birth. No one was born bad. These events were highly fluid and incremental steppingstones based on a number of complicated moving parts. And if Theodora could become wicked, does that mean he could become wicked as well? And what about Glinda? Or Finley? He saw how the Emerald City had turned against him in his hour of need. Were they villains, too? Did they become wicked? Was Ozian society itself wicked?

Who were the villains? Who werethe antagonists? Or were they all wicked in their own way? Maybe there were no villains or true antagonists at all?

As they embraced for what seemed like many minutes, these were the thoughts that consumed the Wizard. He thought about what Dorothy and the late council leader had told him. He thought about how they met, even though they were from very different worlds and from very different places. Everything that he had been told was so thought-provoking, so amazing in its complexity that even he did not have credible answers. But maybe that didn't matter. It happened and what he was told seemed credible. Despite being an inventor and a problem solver, the information Dorothy had given him was so fundamentally eye opening that he began to question everything he knew. And after the pair finally broke their embrace, the only words the Wizard said were "nothing…just…never change". He said no more, despite the witch's probing into what he meant.

The pair started to walk back to the landing site and the wonderful machine that brought them up the mountain. The Wizard tried to remember the name of this flying contraption. He thought he remembered what the man who accompanied them had said: a helicopter. He definitely needed one of those to travel around the land.

But when they got to where the helicopter had been, it wasn't there anymore. It vanished.

With the sudden realization that there was no way down, the Wizard placed his hands on top of his head. "Oh no!", he said in exasperation. "Where's that…that thing! That thingamajig that was just here! It's gone!" He started to panic at the thought of being trapped on top of the mountain. What was he going to do? Was he going to have to climb down?

"Oh no!", the Wizard raised his head and moaned again in disbelief. "We are trapped! Trapped I tell you! There's no way down! We can't be up here forever! What are we going to do? There's no way to get down! We are stranded! We are doomed!"

As he flailed his arms around in an animated manner and his tone anxious and panicky, Theodora simply smiled as she gazed at him curiously, like an adult would to a lost and confused child. As the Wizard continued to shout and catastrophize about their predicament, he finally turned around and grew quiet. "What?", he then asked.

Her hands below her belt, Theodora continued to smile at him with a daring glint in her eyes and a sense of mischief in her voice. "We could always fly down, Wizard…"

But this made him even more on edge. "Fly….fly….fly….oh NO, I don't think so. You see, I'm not good with heights. I'm not…I'm not…I get queasy when I start doing that. Nooo…noooo, the Wizard does not do well with heights!"

But the witch simply grabbed his hand with hers and used her other hand to push him slowly towards the ledge. She then started to prod him closer and closer, much to his chagrin and resistance. "It's okay, Wizard", she said as she smiled at him with ease like what they were about to do was a walk in the park. "I won't let you fall", she giggled as her voice brimmed with confidence. But this did nothing to quell his fear and anxiety. As she started to move him closer to the edge, the Wizard placed his hands over his eyes as he continued to resist. "No, no, no, no, no…" His voice then hit a crescendo when he started to look down.

"I'M GOING TO DIE!", he screamed from fright. "I'M GOING TO DIE!"

He remembered that time when he had to jump off a cliff when he was being chased by the Winkie Guards. Even though Glinda placed him in her bubble, he still did not get over that wild initial journey to her castle. And as far as he knew, Theodora had none of that magic. What was she going to do? Was she just push him off the mountain?

As he continued to stand near the edge and covered his face with his hands, the witch gently grabbed them. "Wizard…", she started to say. "Wizard!" This made him stop repeating his "no's" as she now held his hands with hers.

"What", he asked timidly.

"Do you trust me", she asked. When he didn't respond right away, she then asked the question again, but with a big Duchenne smile that lit up her face and her wide eyes. "Do you trust me?"

And this is when he realized what Dorothy was trying to do. This wasn't her being careless. She intentionally made sure that the helicopter was not there after the Wizard's departure. This was a test: could he really trust the witch who was standing beside him? Because if the events that were foretold to him were to be averted, he had to learn to trust her.

"Yes", he finally said. Suddenly, Theodora's ring began to glow red. Still holding his hands with her own, the pair began levitating off the ground and into the air. This was met with "oh god" and other nervous exclamations from the Wizard's mouth. "Just don't look down", the witch cooed as she started to giggle.

"Uhhh…I looked down…I looked down!", he bemoaned. As he did so, the pair started to gently float over the Winkie countryside. They were incredibly high, so high in fact, that the forest below them looked like small miniature trees.

"Okay, so don't panic Wizard…but…I'm going to have to let you go…"

"What?" But before the Wizard could even grasp what was going on or what had just been said to him, Theodora released her hands with his and he began to fall. Before he even had the time to scream, the witch with lightning speed went behind him and caught him in midair. He was now kicking and flailing his arms.

"Just hold on, Wizard…"

"Do I have a choice!?"

His back now to her, she wrapped her arms around him and dove with incredible speed towards the forest floor below them. "THEODORA!", the Wizard screamed from fright. "Isn't this fun!", she yelled as a rush of air from the high velocity hit them. The witch loved this adrenaline rush as she clenched her teeth and snickered.

"THEODORA!"

She merely laughed as they descended rapidly. To the Wizard, it was initially like they were on a terrifying roller coaster ride. He closed his eyes, but then he didn't feel anything. The only thing he felt was falling. Free falling. He slowly opened his eyes. He saw the witch's arms still wrapped around him, and her hands still over his chest. But he felt a surge of endorphins. He felt free. She then gradually slowed their speed as they approached the forest below them. Finally, both of their feet gently touched the ground beneath them.

The Wizard didn't know whether to hit her or thank her as his feet touched the ground. "Wasn't that amazing", she said exuberantly as she unwrapped her arms from his body. He turned around but felt dizzy. "Next time, ask me before you do a crazy stunt like that!"

"But how did you feel, Wizard?"

"It felt…it felt…amazing, actually…"

She nodded her head and smiled at him. "I know. Growing up, I would always want to do this with Gli…. well, growing up, I would always want to do this. It was a dream of mine. Making me feel free. Making me feel alive."

The rest of the trip back to the castle remained uneventful but the witch asked him many questions of what transpired while they had been separated. "What happened inside, Wizard", she asked of him. "Did you find out who was responsible for writing that letter? Did you get the answers you were seeking?" To which he either deflected as best as he could or simply responded with basic word answers. And when the Wizard did not delve into any details of who he met or what was told to him, the witch became quiet herself and put the matter to rest.

Twilight descended on the land as the pair approached the main entrance and the glass rotunda of Theodora's castle. It looked exactly as it was before the pair had left that day. It did not look dark and foreboding like her castle did when Dorothy had arrived at the land, and neither did the Winke Country appear desolate from ruinous years of war. The Wizard silently embraced the land's beauty as the pair strolled past rivers, streams, brooks, forests and finally, the witch's well-manicured gardens. It looked the same as it did when he first arrived at the land. It looked the same as it did this morning. That was all the Wizard had hoped for. And he was going to do whatever he needed to do for that not to change.

"Do you want something to eat", the witch asked as the pair stepped into the glass rotunda of her castle. The rich, red velvet carpet and all the ornately designed jewelry and necklaces were still there along with the finely painted portraits of Ozian aristocratic noblemen hanging on its walls. "I can prepare something and—" But the witch became quiet as the Wizard smirked and crossed his arms on his chest. "What", she asked him as her eyes narrowed.

"You cook", he playfully smiled at her. This made the witch bashful as she quickly lowered her head. "It's like what you once told me: sometimes a great leader becomes by doing the most ordinary of things. I learned that from you, Wizard…"

The Wizard then arched his eyebrows and smiled. The witch's eyes followed his facial expressions as she noted his grin. "What", she asked as she imitated him with a mischievous smile of her own. "What are you thinking, Wizard?"