Goodness Knows
Glinda sat in her office, skimming the Munchkinland Gazette while she finished the last of her morning tea. She usually knew all the big news before it hit the papers, but she liked to read the local papers of different regions of Oz every few days to stay updated on local events. As usual, nothing too significant had happened in Munchkinland lately. Then a small story at the bottom of the page caught her eye. A photo of a burning effigy of the Wicked Witch of the West. Of Elphaba. Glinda’s throat got tight. They still had two months until the most horrendifying festival in Oz, the Goodness Festival, originally created to celebrate Elphaba’s death. They were coming up on the 5 year anniversary, and Glinda knew the festival was going to be a big one. She thought she would be able to avoid the mention of it for another few weeks at least though. She looked at the headline paired with the photo, and the words began to swim in front of her. “RUMORED SIGHTINGS OF WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST IN RURAL MUNCHKINLAND” Hands shaking, Glinda kept reading.
“Just two months out from the biggest Goodness Festival to date, multiple reports have been made to Munchkinland authorities about sightings of the infamous green witch. We spoke with Mrs. Marigold, aged 64, who lives just 4 miles from where Dorothy famously dropped down into Oz. Mrs. Marigold says that she saw the Wicked Witch of the West dart into the trees near her house early one morning when she went out to tend her garden. A respected member of the Munchkin community, Mrs. Marigold commented….”
Glinda put the paper down, rolling her eyes. As always happened around the anniversary, people became paranoid and claimed to be seeing Elphaba all over Oz. Especially in that first year, “Green Sightings” were a near daily occurrence, and Glinda had learned to ignore them. At the beginning, she got her hopes up that maybe Elphaba had come back, but over time realized these sightings were no more than rumors and gossip. She folded the paper back and began looking at her agenda for the day but couldn’t quite shake the thought from the back of her mind.
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That night, as Glinda got into bed, she couldn’t help but think of Elphaba. She had always wondered if she had really died. She knew Elphie wouldn’t have melted. At least, she had never melted all those times at school when it was raining, or when she took a bath. But then again, that scream. That wasn’t something you could fake. It had haunted Glinda’s nightmares for years. It still did sometimes, but less frequently, which somehow made Glinda feel worse. About a month after the supposed melting, Glinda had gone to see Madame Morrible in prison. “Is it true?” Glinda had asked. “Could she really have melted?” Madame Morrible’s response wasn’t too helpful. She speculated that it could have had something to do with Elphaba’s use of the Grimmerie, that the ancient magic of the Grimmerie had transformed Elphaba in some way. As much as it pained Glinda to think that her best friend was dead, the idea of her best friend, and her ex-fiancé, running off together and never contacting her again was much more painful. And so, Glinda accepted Morrible’s half-baked theory. But tonight, for some reason, she couldn’t help but wonder if Elphie was out there somewhere. Where was she? Was she okay? And, as much as Glinda tried to force the thought from her brain, was Elphaba thinking about her?