Title: Cleansing
Author: Angel Leviathan
Disclaimer: Wicked, characters, concept, etc, aren't mine.
Rating: PG
Notes: Bookverse, but uses a point on the map
of the musical curtain.
-
The Truth Pond had seen many visitors in its time. People
asking petty things, women wanting the truth about cheating husbands, husbands
wanting to catch out cheating wives, children asking if they would be friends
forever, people asking if they deserved what they had, suffering or otherwise.
It had been a relatively small body of water when it came into existence. Now
it could pass for a reservoir and not a seemingly innocent pond.
Its visitors had always had questions, were always seeking answers. Nobody had
ever sat by it and picnicked, too superstitious to lounge on its banks. Nobody
had ever visited without hoping to return home with an answer to some
all-important question.
It had never had a visitor who hadn’t asked a question.
Until the frail woman with the white hair and ostentatious
dress appeared. Her shoes were clearly not designed to walk its muddy
banks, but she strode ahead anyway, ignoring sticking heels and the times she
was almost thrown off-balance. She stared straight ahead, and only into the
water once it could almost lap at her feet. Mud stained her shoes and the trim
of her dress, splattered her legs underneath the pale blue skirts. Manicured
nails used to gripping a sceptre were ragged, due to her childlike chewing of
them on her journey. A tiara sat atop her head, looking rather out of place
amongst the dry, limp, strands of hair, now far beyond
taking to being curled.
She gazed into the water, as if hoping for some great vision to come to her.
She saw nothing but her own reflection. That, she supposed, was her final
punishment. She saw nothing but what she was. Alone, widowed,
childless. Clinging to her last shreds of dignity,
hiding beneath the jewels and sparkles of her overly elaborate dress, as she
had always done. She was hailed as a wonderful person, a kind woman, the
most decent you might ever meet. Had she always been this frail, she wondered.
Had it spread from her mind and finally consumed her body?
She slipped out of her shoes in a surprisingly graceful movement for a person
of her age and stepped into the water. She didn’t stop. She kept walking,
without hesitation, head held high, wishing the water might burn her. She had
had a friend who couldn’t touch water. The green woman who
still sometimes berated her in her dreams. Water had been her end,
hadn’t it? Or was it the house that killed her? No, the house was the younger
girl, the bitter one. The child with the pigtails had destroyed them both. Or had
she not fought hard enough? Had she done it herself? No matter. The water was
soothing. She suspected that death by melting had not been as comfortable as
this.
Lady Glinda was announced to be missing the next
morning and dead by afternoon.
Fin