Chapter Text
As long as Elphaba had been capable of thought—which at eight autumn’s old was not a very long time—he knew he was different.
For instance, he had known he was a he and not a she for as long as he could remember. Which, again, hadn’t been a very long time.
But no one else, except Dulcibear, believed him.
Nessa was too young at only five summers old and their little sister, Melena, was but a babe.
Elphaba wonders if his mother would have been accepting, but he would never know because she was dead. She had died giving birth to his youngest sister Melena, who had been (obviously) named after their deceased mother.
Ever since this happened, which had only been a few weeks ago, Elphaba had taken to self-isolating and trying to avoid his father, Frexspar. Frexspar, who had been arguing with someone named Turtleheart about things like “ka-study” and “visit-ashion rights”, whatever that meant. But Elphaba had never gotten to meet, or even see, this Turtleheart. Father always ensured Elphaba was far, far away when he came to visit, whether it was playing outside, alone, helping his nanny Dulcibear with taking care of Nessa, or his studies.
Which is how he found himself outside on this particular day, this day that would change his life for good.
Because Elphaba didn’t get to see the sun very often, he was a pale boy, on top of being long and lanky. He was often told he was a crooked child—crooked jaw, crooked hooked nose, crooked face. He was told he even stood crooked. How anyone could stand crooked was beyond him.
Maybe that’s why he was a boy but looked like a girl—he was born crooked.
A crooked crook of a boy.
Today would be one of the first times he was going to meet someone who was just as crooked as he was, someone who also felt like they could never do anything right, or even stand right.
Elphaba wanted to get as far away from the mansion as possible, which is how he found himself in the tulips.
The tulip fields covered almost all of Munchkinland as that was their main export, besides corn. So much corn.
He almost didn’t see her at first, mostly because her honeysuckle hair blended in with the yellow tulips she was hiding in, and also because she didn’t look very much like a she. Elphaba looked more like a she than she did, but he could tell with the way she moved and acted, like a frightful little creature, that she was a she and not a he. He couldn’t say how he knew, maybe it was the same way he knew he was a he, or perhaps it was his magic, that he simply knew he had.
Sometimes these things just were.
She was younger than him, smaller and rounder too, but older than Nessa.
And she was looking straight at him.
The pair stared at each other for a moment before the girl hissed, “get done a’fore my grandmamasicle sees you!” The girl was North Gillikinese. Elphaba had heard the accent before when father met with foreign dig-ah-nit-taries. He always remembered the ones with accents, thinking that to him they sounded more crooked than he did. But he was still a boy, according to them. What did he know?
The North Gillikinese girl had close-cropped, boyish hair that she somehow managed to pull off. The gold strands wound in loose, short curls that were mussed over her forehead. She had a few smudges of dirt on her clothes and cheeks and was wearing—stupidly—white pants with a ruffled pink shirt. He immediately thought she was rather sweet looking, despite her harsh words, full pink cheeks with a dusting of freckles across them. A freckle under one eye that matched another above her lips.
Her face isn’t ‘metrical. She’s crooked like me. And it was that thought that had him bending down and hiding amongst the flowers with her. “Giligrene! Giligrene, where are you?” a high-pitched voice called out, lacking the same accent as the girl but sounding tonally similar, Elphaba noted. Family? I can understand hiding from family, and it was that thought that had him staying with the girl as her grandmamasicle swept through the fields and missed her.
Finally the voice petered out and the girl turned tolook at him, almost pouting. “You almost got me caught!”
Elphaba felt the need to apologize, not knowing why the girl—Giligrene?—was hiding from her family, only that she must have a good reason to, like him. “Sorry!” he whisper-shouted, holding his hands up defensively.
“Stupid boy,” the girl grumbled, flushing a little as she got comfortable in the flowerbed.
Stupid boy? Elphaba blinked rapidly because he must’ve misheard. “Stupid boy? You think I’m a boy?”
The girl blinked at him then, her eyes almond-shaped and a dark, stormy gray. Eyes like winter. She had the paleness of a Northern Gillikinese, but she didn’t have the eyes of one. Usually those Gillikinese were blue or green. And she was scoffing at him, her little arms crossed over her chest. “Obviously. You’re just a boy dressed like a girl. Just like I’m a girl dressed like a…stupid boy…”
He wasn’t sure where the suggestion camefrom, only that he blurted it out. “Do you wanna switch clothes?” She wasn’t that much smaller than him. Well, maybe a little, but her clothes were loose and baggy on her, like they weren’t really hers.
The girl blinked at him with those strange silver eyes. “You wanna switch clothes? But…you’re wearing black!”
It sounded like an accusation, which made Elphaba look down at his plain black dress. “Yes…? What’s wrong with black?” He blinked at his clothes, then looked back at her still looking and feeling a bit foolish.
“It’s just really…not pink, is all,” the girl answered rather…limply, as if she had realized too late that her words weren’t exactly polite, but Elphaba didn’t care. Not when this girl saw him as a boy.
“Well, pink is a girl’s color, so why would I wear pink?” It was a strong re-bubble… rebutt-le? Whatever Dulcibear had called it that one time he had a good answer to one of his father’s dumb questions.
The girl seemed to get flustered and looked all ruffled like an angry bird. “Well, I am a girl so what other color would I wear?!”
Elphaba just shrugged. “That’s what I mean. You’re a girl so ‘course you’re wearing pink.”
He watched the comment land heavily, but not in a bad way. The girl blinked at him and leaned forward, twirling a short curl with a pudgy finger. “You really think I’m a girl?”
The boy nodded, very firm in this knowledge. “Yeah, it’s kinda obvious. You’re really pretty, you’re wearing pink, and you’re looking at the dirt like it’s gonna bully you. It’s just dirt, though. And see, pretty things like you grow from dirt.” He gestured to all the tulips around them, stating all of this very matter-of-factly. He didn’t seem to have heard the words he said or perhaps he just didn’t understand their impact.
The girl demurred slightly, inching closer as she twirled another curl around a short finger. “You think I’m pretty? A pretty girl?”
Elphaba watched her with dark brown eyes and he blinked again and slowly nodded, wondering if he had said the wrong thing. She was pretty. She looked like one of Lurline’s cherubs.
What happened next, he could never have predicted:
He was suddenly tackled to the ground by a yellow and pink blur, and a squealing, dirt-covered one at that.
“You’re the first person ever who thinks I’m a girl! Oh, can we be bestest friends?! I’m Gil–Gilly. What’s your name?” Giligrene—Gilly—excitedly introduced herself.
Elphaba wasn’t used to physical affection, not since his father had discovered his “crookedness.” So he wasn’t used to being tackled to the ground by a short, chubby little girl, who somehow managed to be all knees and elbows. He sputtered as one or all of them landed in his skinny stomach, knocking the breath out of him. He was barely able to get his own name out. “El—Fae.” It seemed they were both using different names, but neither called the other out on it.
For that, Elphaba—Fae—was relieved.
A small hand was suddenly thrust into his bigger, yet more slender one. “It’s good to meet ya, Mister Fae!” The girl, Gilly, shook his hand very aggressively. Though, maybe that wasn't the right word. Maybe she was eager, most of all, but it certainly felt aggressive as his whole body moved with the force of it
“Uh, r-right. It is nice to meet you, too, Miss Gilly.”
And on that one summer afternoon outside Colwen Grounds, a lifelong friendship was forged in the shared knowledge of feeling crooked.
The pair spent the rest of the summer together. Each learned more about the other, such as: Fae learned Gilly was an only child, whereas Gilly learned Fae had two siblings. He never named them, just like Gilly only ever referred to her parents as “Momsie and Momsible,” never by their names. They knew each other’s favorite colors: pink for Gilly, of course (“Pink is the favoritest most holy of colors of Saint Galinda! She’s a saint for Lurline.”), and black for Fae (“I just like it. Helps me blend into the dark.” To which Gilly had balked, “You ain’t scared of the dark?”), though he also admitted once to liking the color purple, a dark eggplant kind of purple (“It was my mother’s favorite color.”).
They also learned why the other wasin Munchkinland, Fae purposefully vague about where he lived, just saying he lived Rush Margins. Gilly, in turn, told him that her “grammy parents” (grandmamasicle and popsicle) vacationed here in the summers, since the Gillikinese summers were getting “too Gods darn hot for us old folks,” or so Gilly had said.
Gilly clearly did not like her grammy parents.
She would often turn up in blues and greens, sulking in clothes she crowed were “boys clothes.” Each time Fae would offer to switch with her, to which she just pouted and shook her head. “I’ll never wear black. Never ever ever,” she swore to him rather dramatically, arms crossed over her chest. He’d offered one such day as they played by a riverbed.
Fae swore to himself that one day he’d get her to wear black. He even told her so, to which she said, “I’d sooner kiss a gross boy a’fore I ever wear black, Mister Fae.” Then she actually turned her nose up at him, which of course made him laugh and splash some water at her, to which she, of course, squealed and splashed him back.
It soon devolved into a waterfight that they’d remember every time water touched their skin, a memory that would both haunt and soothe them until the end of their days.
But all good things must come to an end, and so, too, did the summer. Gilly couldn’t write yet, so no promises were made of letters exchanged. Simply the casual, childish promise of:
“Next summer?” one of them would ask.
“Next summer,” the other would promise.
They enjoyed three summers together before everything changed.
For good.
For the better.