Chapter Text
It always began with an unnaturally dark sky. A calmness that was quickly engulfed by green-tinted horror as dark tendrils stretched across the open sky. Even traveling at fifty miles per hour down the stretch of rural country road, Glinda Arduenna could see the clouds beginning to rotate dangerously above her, barely backlit by a once bright afternoon. Light that would be—in a moment—completely stifled into oblivion.
Her attempt to race the supercell traveling north-northeast from the Oklahoma border had failed. The radio had cut out a while ago after she left the interstate, not wanting to get caught in the traffic headed towards the town of Oz, Kansas. That decision, she realized quickly, was a mistake. Glinda huffed, gripping the steering wheel hard has the winds picked up, battering the sides of the SUV. The rain was melodic; and had Glinda not grown up in the heart of twister country, she would almost think it beautiful. But despite living in Los Angeles since she was six-years-old, the country never truly left her.
At least the knowledge didn’t, anyway. Not to mention the lines upon lines of classic-textbook examples of a storm ready to break drilled into her brain from her meteorology classes. Instability, vertical wind shear, cold air swirling with warm far above her in a tantalizingly dangerous dance. The weather was ripe for a tornado. And though Glinda couldn’t see one yet, she felt a familiar prickle under her skin. Foolishly she kept going, the headlights barely illuminating what was in front of her as the storm darkened and her heartbeat thundered deep in her chest.
She hadn’t stepped foot in tornado alley since leaving it sixteen years before. And—had she a choice—she never would’ve returned at all. But the responsibility left behind by her late parents hadn’t vanished overnight. Oz was their home…just as it had been hers once upon a time. She had no choice but to come back and neatly tie up what has been left unfinished. And that unfortunately meant returning someplace she really didn’t want to be.
Glinda blinked as the radio gave an ominous crackle, blipping back to life for barely a moment.
“…tornado…confirmed funnel…outside of Oz. I repeat, a tornado…on…ground. Shelter in place.”
Squinting into the abyss of nothingness just ahead of her on the road, the once compact dirt had quickly turned to mud. The wind was howling, mixed with the distant roar of sirens coming to life. Glinda silently hoped that the tornado was nowhere near her; that it was just a bad dream. But the faster she pushed the car to go, its engine whirring in protest of her desperation to escape the fear, it emerged. In a bright power flash caused by the snapping of a distant power line, her eyes found the shape.
A horribly well-defined dark wall of certain death.
It was somehow darker than its surroundings, just a column of nothingness within the other nothingness around it. Glinda gasped in pure terror, slamming her foot on the brakes at the sliver of a glimpse. The tires skidded beneath her body; the van gave a lurch, digging into the mud. It’s back end swung loose to one side, sending her into a wild and uncontrolled tail-spin. And, as the van swiveled about in the opposite direction of the ghostly twister, Glinda screamed as her headlights caught on the edge of a watery ditch before she slammed nose first into it.
And for a while, there was nothing else. No more panic. No more storm. No more driving through an empty field of nothingness straight towards a monster that had haunted her mind since childhood. There was nothing but the haze of unconsciousness and the echo of distant sirens as a beast ripped across the Kansas prairie.
“…hello…?” A voice—one clear as day—disrupted her peace. Glinda didn’t move right away, her eyes remaining firmly shut but her thoughts halting from their violent whirlwind. She wasn't dead. She hadn’t been swallowed whole by the storm. “Hey, lady. Are you alive?”
A hand touched her arm, giving it a push. When she didn’t open her eyes right away, that same hand forced itself up under her chin, feeling for a pulse. Choking in surprise at the sudden intimate contact, Glinda forced herself back into wakefulness. The darkness was gone. Afternoon had returned; scrapes of blue peeking out from the pale clouds above trailing behind the twister. She was still nose first in the ditch, held dutifully in place by her locked seatbelt. She had weathered the storm, though the memory of it would surely be burned into her brain for the foreseeable future. With her hands still clutched in a vice-grip around the steering wheel, Glinda blinked rapidly as something dribbled through her brow and into her eye.
“…what…happened?”
“You took a nose dive into a ditch. I was right behind you; I saw the whole thing. Not sure why you braked like that when the storm wasn’t even close.”
“Close?” Glinda scrunched up her face, only to hiss in pain as she did. Catching her own reflection in the now hanging rear view mirror, there was a cut across her forehead just above her brow.
“You probably smacked your head into the wheel. You need a better car, the airbags didn’t even deploy.”
“It’s a rental,” Glinda murmured, her words bland in her cheek. She forced one hand to release its grip, delicately swiping blood out of her eye so she wasn’t half-blind. What a good way to start her cross-country move.
“Then I hope you got some halfway decent insurance or a good lawyer who can pay you out for those defective airbags. This thing is toasted.”
“Noted.” Sighing in pain at the headache beginning to throb in her skull from the impact, Glinda finally glanced at who she was speaking with. She half expected to be speaking to no one at all; maybe she was just hallucinating with a head injury. But what she found instead was somehow even more bizarre. “You’re green?”
The woman leaning into the car via the open driver's side door was the most peculiar shade of oregano that Glinda had ever seen. Not only that, but she was dressed for the country in a thick black bomber jacket that had seen better days and a pair of wire-framed round glasses spattered with mud.
“I am.” The woman replied unenthusiastically, tossing her dark emerald eyes in irritation as though she’d heard Glinda’s words a thousand times before. She probably had, actually. It wasn’t every day you came across someone who was fully green from tip to toe. No doubt the surprise was commonplace. “It’s a skin condition and nothing contagious. I’ve always been green.”
“O—oh.”
“Look, we should get moving. It’s going to start raining again soon, there’s another system headed this way.”
Glinda felt herself become ill at the mere thought. “Another supercell?”
“Shouldn’t be, the CAPE is totally spent. But you never know. I’m guessing you don’t wanna to be stuck in here when that next storm rolls over us.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then let’s move. Pardon my reach.”
Glinda blinked as the green woman reached over her without hesitation, the leather of her coat shifting as she unbuckled her seatbelt with a hollow click. Still awkwardly tilted forward in the ditch, Glinda nearly slid down under the dashboard, groaning in pain as a hand pushed against her sternum which had slammed into the seatbelt strap on impact. “Sorry.”
“S’ok.”
“On three. One, two…”
Glinda huffed as she was awkwardly pulled out of the van, stumbling in the deep water and mud of the ditch. Her pristine white shoes vanished into the muck as she stumbled, dazed and clinging to the green stranger for balance. Apparently her baby-deer steps annoyed her new companion, who gave a mighty snort and swung a shoulder beneath her arm, half-lifting her up with practiced ease. As they scrambled up the steep incline back towards the road, Glinda felt physically ill, plopping into the dirt and rolling onto her back as her head spun.
With the adrenaline wearing off, she knew for a fact tomorrow would not be a good day.
“You don’t look too good,” the green woman claimed, bending over her knees to look at her. “Feeling alright?”
“…no.”
As if on cue, Glinda was rolled over onto her side as she wretched, heaving the remnants of her tiny lunch onto the road.
“There, there.” A green hand awkwardly patted her back. “You’ve probably got a bit of a concussion or something.”
“Great way to begin my trip,” Glinda sputtered in annoyance, wiping her lip off with a hand before laying down onto her side in the soft earth. “I hate Kansas.”
“Wait, you mean you’re not a storm chaser?” The green woman sounded baffled. “You’re a civilian?”
“Do I look like an idiot to you?” Glinda growled from between her clenched teeth. “I was trying to get around the traffic on the interstate; it was gridlocked for miles. I thought I had more time.”
“So, let me get this straight. You just sped almost 70-miles-an-hour straight into a funnel cloud on an open dirt road and you’re not even a chaser? Have you lost your mind!”
“I wasn’t expecting a tornado—”
“It’s Kansas, you should always be expecting a tornado! You damn tourists are always out here trying to get yourselves killed for a bit of a thrill.”
“I’m not a tourist—”
“Tell that to your car. Honestly, driving on country roads in the middle of a storm warning? It’s no wonder you’re face first in a ditch.”
Glinda huffed irritably but conceded to the point. It was foolish of her not to stop when the sky began to darken. Had the power flash not illuminated the monster crossing the road in front of her, she would’ve driven straight into it. Closing her eyes for a moment to try and stop her world from spinning, Glinda cracked one when the sound of approaching tires reached her ears. From down the road, a run-down old Cadillac bumped and bumbled in the ruts. It was the strangest looking car she’d ever seen, painted an obnoxious shade of bright blue and jangling with chimes and hanging bells off the mirrors.
As the car rolled to a stop beside them, filthy as sin and squeaking on brakes that had seen better days, the window rolled down. The old woman inside was as wild as the storm Glinda had just missed. Bright blue eyes, shock white hair, and a bosom-y chest patterned in tie-dye and weighed down by bottle-glass necklaces on leather strings.
“Are you kids ok?”
“Howdy, Miss Tattypoo.” The green woman greeted, tilting her head in a friendly way. “We just missed the funnel, it spin off to the north. I’ve got an injured civilian here, can you take her back into town with you?”
“Sure hon, load her up.”
“You heard her. Load up, prissy-pants.”
Glinda blinked in surprise as she was hoisted off the ground by the arms, her eyes vibrating from the suddenness of it. She dug in her heels to keep from stumbling, nearly hitting the side of the Cadillac with her body by falling onto it.
“W—wait, my luggage.”
“I’ll handle it, you just get in.”
“But—”
“Lady, just get in the car. That rain cloud will be over us in a matter of seconds.”
“My name is Glinda,” Glinda snapped, fumbling awkwardly with the button on the door handle as she was half shoved into the soft leather seat.
“Ok, Glinda. You’re definitely a tourist with a name like that,” the green woman snorted, slamming the door closed. As rain began to fall, she ambled back to the SUV, hauling only one of Glinda’s suitcases from the trunk and throwing them into the Cadillac with as much grace as the tornado which just ripped across the prairie. The rest of her luggage was left behind, closed back up into the van. The green woman gave the Cadillac a smack. “Good to go, ma’am. She can find a tow-truck in town to get the rest of her stuff.”
Glinda blustered in protest. After all, she had a job interview tomorrow. And she knew for a fact her business formal wasn’t in the suitcase randomly saved from the back of the wrecked SUV. “Hold on, who even are you?”
“Not interested in humoring tourists, that’s what I am. Bye, Miss Glinda.”
Waving a hand, the green woman turned and wandered back down the road. Glinda watched her in the side mirror, the stranger seemingly unbothered by the rain and wind as it clawed at her long, dark hair.
“She’s somethin’, isn’t she?” The Cadillac sputtered as it came to life, beginning its journey anew down the country street. “The grumpiest grump you’ll ever meet this side of Oz.”
“What is she doing?”
“Storm chasin’, o’ course. That’s what all people in Oz do for fun.”
“You mean she was running after that tornado on purpose?”
“Her and plenty o’ others. That’s what we do here in the Emerald City. We are the tornado hot spot of Kansas; if you ever want to see a storm, you’ll see one here. Though, I like to think my eggs and bacon is the thing that really brings the out-o’-towners back each season.” The old woman’s bright eyes flashed. And for a moment, Glinda almost thought she saw familiarity in them. But it was brief, and she certainly would’ve remembered someone so queer. “The name’s Locasta, girly. Locasta Tattypoo; breakfast extrodinare.”
“Glinda Arduenna,” Glinda mused, sitting back in the seat as she delicately wiped blood off her face with a hand. “So…who is she?”
“Her? Ah, not someone to be worryin’ about, dear. Elphaba Thropp’s got her eye for one thing and one thing only…and that’s a twister.”