Story: Lurline Queen and Kumbric Witch (chapter 6)

Authors: bleeding.blade

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Chapter 6

Title: Chapter 5

It was, thought Fiyero, Crown Prince of the Tribe of Arjiki of Vinkus, an absolutely stunning fall day—perfect, if rather unfamiliar, weather with which to begin a hopefully perfect and entirely unfamiliar university career. Everything around him was strange and different and new and exhilaration lent an extra spring to his already agile step.

Although Fiyero loved his land fiercely, he was also acutely aware of its shortcomings. The sere plains and craggy mountains of his desert homeland had created a hardy and taciturn people who were suspicious of all things “dispensable”—higher education included. His father Tigelaar, however, had been an educated man—the first in their Tribe—and his experience of the wider world of Oz through the microcosm that Shiz had provided had created the conviction that the Vinkus’ path to greatness lay in both the edification and exposure university life offered.

It was also during his time at Shiz that Tigelaar had met Alaric—the current ruler of the Kingdom of Gillikin and the father of Avaric and Galinda Arduenna. Both men had hit it off right away, for Alaric had recognized the keen intellect that lay underneath Tigelaar’s seemingly barbaric Winkie exterior and Tigelaar had likewise understood the fierce ambition that burned beneath Alaric’s outwardly flippant Gillikin airs. That boyhood friendship had paved the way for the summers their children had spent at each other’s homes—visits that had grown in consequence after the premature death of Alaric’s young wife, for Fiyero’s mother had then assumed the role of maternal presence in Avaric’s and Galinda’s lives.

Thinking of Galinda made Fiyero smile. He remembered the first time he’d met her when they’d both been six years old. She and Avaric had stood out amongst the children of the Tribe with their fair hair and even fairer skin. Fiyero’s cousins had been a sturdy and rough-edged lot and they had ridiculed the Arduenna children for their slender and seemingly useless physiques. The eldest, Manek—already a bully at that tender age—had rattled his sabre threateningly at Galinda. Finding his initial taunts ignored, he had rapidly escalated his displays of violence, using his sword to drive Galinda against a wall. At that point, Galinda had glanced briefly at her older brother, who had then given her the tiniest of nods. In one startling instant, she’d pinioned Manek to the floor, one bony knee pressing against his sternum, while two pale and slender hands held the point of his sabre against his throat.

It was a demonstration none of the Winkie children ever forgot, and later on, when rumors of Galinda’s beauty and elegance began to filter through the ruling houses of Oz, Fiyero would smile thinking of the blonde-haired waif who not only beat them all soundly at swordplay, but outran and out climbed them as well.

“Is there anything she can’t do?” He had whined then as a sullen and envious eleven-year old to fifteen-year old Avaric. Galinda’s older brother had simply laughed. “Well, she can’t hold grudges for one—which is a fortunate thing for Manek.”

He stopped sulking when after an unusual absence of three years, he saw Galinda again when they were both fourteen. The golden-haired vision who’d descended from the carriage had stopped all the Winkie boys in their tracks, including Manek. She’d always been a pretty child, but at fourteen, she’d shed all the vestiges of prettiness to assume a stunning and almost otherworldly beauty.

That was when it occurred to Fiyero that perhaps he could marry Galinda one day. It took a great deal of courage on his part, but when he finally brought up the subject with his father, Tigelaar had heartily laughed.

“Took you long enough to conceive the notion,” his father had snorted. “I was beginning to get concerned.” Tigelaar had warned him quickly, however. “There are no guarantees. Alaric likes you well enough, but he’ll never settle for anything less than the best possible match for a daughter such as his.”

With that as his goad, Fiyero took to his studies with newfound vigor. Although he bested his peers intellectually and athletically, it occurred to him at that point that he could no longer afford to benchmark his worth against the nobility of Vinkus. All the princes of Oz would press for Galinda’s hand in marriage and he would have to beat them all.

So with a zeal that surprised even his father, Fiyero doubled the time he spent training in fencing, archery and riding. In his spare time he read extensively, focusing on the subjects whose mastery he thought would impress his prospective father-in-law the most.

And so it was that the remainder of Fiyero’s childhood passed well this way, until he turned sixteen and was sent away to be educated in the city. His father had beamed while his mother had wept, and with the absence of ceremony characteristic of his people, Fiyero of the Tribe of Arjiki of Vinkus left his sun scorched land for the shade-dappled city of Shiz.

Now, the first day of university life had finally arrived, and Fiyero found himself almost running in excitement. The day was to begin with an Assembly of all the First Year Students, and he was sure to see Galinda there. Slowing down his pace as he arrived at the Main Square, he found the space populated by a staggeringly large number of people his age.

Fiyero blinked. His years in the sparsely populated Vinkus had not readied him for such throngs, and he wondered with some dismay as to how he could possibly locate Galinda amidst the swarm. Then a ripple of movement to his far right caught his attention, and as if his consternation had conjured her presence, he suddenly beheld the Gillikin princess, the horde parting deferentially—if not reverentially—as she made her way through the throng. Fiyero shook his head and grinned. He shouldn’t have expected anything less. Then shouldering his way through the pack, he managed to plant himself in Galinda’s path, whereupon he lay his right fist upon his heart and angled his head downward in a Winkie bow. “Even in a crowd such as this, filled with the noblest and fairest of Oz, you manage to stand out surpassingly, Lady Galinda Arduenna.”

“Fiyero!” She laughed and kissed him thrice—twice on one cheek and once on another—in a gesture the Gillikin reserved for the most intimate of family and friends. The affection with which Galinda greeted him was enough to earn him the ire and envy of a good portion of the watching crowd. “One merely gravitates to the familiar in the midst of the unknown, my dear Arjiki prince,” she said, shaking her head with a smile, “and the greater the unknown, the more seemingly alluring the familiar.” 

“Modest, as always,” Fiyero chuckled, though he belatedly realized that Galinda’s tactful reply had recontextualized his verbal slight of Oz’s noblest and fairest.

“Oh, how rude of me,” Galinda suddenly exclaimed. Then gesturing to the girl on her right—Fiyero hadn’t even noticed she’d had a companion—she made the introductions. 

“Fiyero, allow me to present Elphaba of the Line of Thropps of Munchkinland and the Thropp Second Descending. Elphaba, this is Fiyero of the Tribe of Arjiki of Vinkus, the Crown Prince of his house and a friend of mine from years long past.”

Fiyero turned to the girl named Elphaba, and when her emerald eyes locked with his hazel ones, he felt something in his chest unaccountably constrict. Apart from Galinda, she was, quite possibly, the most beautiful creature Fiyero had ever seen, with her raven hair, her viridescent eyes and her translucent skin. 

She nodded at him—from across countless miles it seemed—and murmured with the hint of a smile, “A pleasure to meet you, Crown Prince Fiyero.”

Then the Headmaster had called for all the first year students’ attention, and as their company parted in the midst of the scrambling crowd, it occurred to Fiyero that on the very first day of his career in university, the trajectory of his life had somehow irrevocably changed.

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