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The city’s bells tolled for a witch who would never hear them.
Glinda stood on the highest balcony of the Emerald Palace, the dawn light thin and listless as though the sun itself hesitated to touch the world below. The streets were crowded already, but there was no joy in their noise. Vendors called out halfheartedly; the usual bluster of merchants was muted, like they were performing a play they no longer believed in. A wind threaded through the avenues, carrying the scent of smoke and damp cobblestones, and for a moment she thought - stupidly, irrationally - that she could smell the sharp, metallic tang of Elphaba’s magic in it.
She tightened her fingers around the railing, nails digging into the gold-leaf pattern. The city she had sworn to protect felt unbearably altered. It wasn’t just grief - it was as if every brick knew.
She had been so certain that she could walk out of Kiamo Ko and simply… resume. Return to her position, her duties, the smiling figurehead they wanted her to be. She could tell herself that she had done the right thing, that she had prevented more bloodshed, that she had kept herself and others alive. But the logic was brittle. She could feel it splinter every time she blinked and the image of a hat sinking into water slid back into her mind.
The bells tolled again. She counted them. Seven chimes, drawn-out and hollow. The number meant nothing and everything; seven years had passed since they met at Shiz, though it felt like a lifetime compressed into a single heartbeat.
Below, a group of children darted between carriages, shrieking with laughter. Their mothers called them back, scolding in warm, affectionate voices. Glinda could almost hear Elphaba’s dry comment about “future hooligans of Oz” and almost see the faint twitch of a smile that would follow it. That smile - quiet, reluctant - was now hers alone to remember. No portrait in the palace, no mention in the history books, would preserve it.
Her chambers waited behind her, a suffocating suite of gilded excess she had once adored and now found unbearable. Every cushion, every chandelier felt like it belonged to another life - one that had never known the sound of Elphaba’s voice softened into something like trust.
She stepped back inside, closing the balcony doors with unnecessary care, as though sudden noise might shatter something more fragile than glass.
On the table by the window, the hat sat where she had placed it the night she returned. She hadn’t moved it since. Its brim was still warped, its crown still slanted with the familiar defiance of its owner. She had considered, once, hiding it away - letting the palace staff tuck it into some archive where it would gather dust unseen. But she couldn’t. It was the last proof that Elphaba had existed beyond the propaganda and the whispers.
Her hands hovered over it now, not quite touching. The urge to press it to her chest was almost physical, but she knew the flood that would follow. She could not afford tears yet; the morning’s Council session would demand her composure.
Still, her fingers brushed the brim. The felt was rougher than she remembered, smelling faintly of smoke and something darker - like rain over scorched earth. She closed her eyes and let the sensation linger, half-hoping the air would shift, that she would hear the familiar uneven tread behind her. But the room remained still, a tomb dressed in gold.
Somewhere below, the bells began again. Seven chimes. Always seven.
The Council chamber smelled of old parchment and polished wood, but the scent did little to mask the coldness that clung to the air. The heavy green curtains were drawn tight against the glare of the sun, as if keeping out the brightness might soften the harshness of the day’s purpose.
Glinda sat at the polished oak table, her fingers folded neatly in her lap, but her mind was far from the speeches and protocols surrounding her. Around her, the Council members spoke in clipped, careful tones - discussions about the transition, the future of the city, and the official narrative they were to present.
“The people need certainty,” one minister intoned, his voice steely and without compassion. “The Witch’s crimes must be made clear. Her name, her memory, cannot be allowed to inspire sympathy.”
Glinda nodded, her smile a practiced, polite curve. But inside, her heart recoiled. Sympathy. That word tasted bitter. She thought of Elphaba, alone in the library, poring over spellbooks with a stubborn light in her eyes, not a monster but a woman desperate to be understood.
Another voice cut through the room. “We must move quickly. The Emerald City cannot afford division, especially now. The people want to believe this chapter is closed.”
A shiver ran down Glinda’s spine. She wanted to argue, to say that closure was a lie, that history was never clean or final. But the words caught in her throat, tangled with the heavy cloak of duty draped over her shoulders.
The chamber was suffocating, the air thick with the weight of expectations that left no room for grief or doubt. Each nod, each carefully chosen phrase, felt like a stone piled on the grave of the woman she had loved.
After the meeting, Glinda wandered the palace halls like a ghost, passing portraits that glowed with the remembered faces of past rulers. None looked like her today. None carried the burden she bore beneath her skin.
Her footsteps echoed against marble floors, the sound hollow and lonely. Somewhere distant, a clock chimed, marking time that felt irrelevant in a world shifted off its axis.
In her chambers, the silence pressed close once more. She sat before the mirror, tracing the delicate lines of her face, searching for the reflection of the girl who had once dreamed beside a green-skinned friend with fierce eyes and a fierce heart.
The hat lay on the vanity, a silent witness to her unraveling. She reached out, fingertips brushing the fabric, grounding herself in the memory of warmth it held.
Tonight, the meetings would continue. Tomorrow, the speeches, the smiles, the lies. And Glinda would wear the crown, but never the peace.
Because some things were never meant to be forgotten.
The door to her chambers closed behind her with a soft click, severing the last threads of the outside world. The heavy green drapes were drawn, swallowing the pale light into folds of shadow. Here, the grandeur of the Emerald Palace felt less like protection and more like a cage woven from gold and glass.
Glinda moved slowly across the room, her footsteps muffled against the thick carpet. She barely noticed the glittering chandeliers or the gilded furniture; the room was a shell, hollowed out by absence. Her fingers brushed against the embroidered silks of her gown, the fabric stiff and foreign against her skin. With a careful motion, she slipped it off, letting it fall in a shimmering pool at her feet.
Beneath, she wore the simple shift she had favored in quieter days - light, pale, and soft. The contrast was stark.
She sat heavily on the edge of the bed, eyes fixed on the small wooden chest tucked beneath the frame. It was unremarkable except for the thin silver lock that held it shut, a lock she alone had the key to.
For a long moment, she hesitated. Then, with trembling hands, she lifted the lid.
Inside lay a single object: the black felt hat, stiff and worn, heavy with memory. Its brim curved sharply upward in defiance, as if daring the world to forget.
Glinda lifted the hat carefully, cradling it in her lap like a fragile relic. She could feel the imprint of Elphaba’s hands on the fabric - the ridges of fingers long gone, the faint scent of smoke and rain mingled with something deeper, something almost alive.
She closed her eyes and breathed in, letting the scent flood her senses. It was a whisper from the past, a voice she had longed to hear in the silence.
Hours passed in quiet communion. The palace noises faded away - the distant footsteps, the muffled conversations, the restless hum of the city beyond the walls. In this small, dim space, time seemed to bend and fold.
Memories surfaced unbidden: the sharp snap of Elphaba’s laughter, the weight of her gaze when she thought no one was looking, the fierce determination behind every word and gesture.
Glinda pressed the hat to her cheek, a futile attempt to hold onto something real. The fabric was cold, but in her mind it warmed with remembered touch.
A single tear slipped down her cheek, falling onto the brim.
She did not brush it away.
Tonight, the world outside demanded strength and smiles, but here - in the quiet, in the dark - she allowed herself to grieve. To remember. To be utterly and irrevocably broken.
The flickering candlelight in the cramped dorm room cast long shadows across peeling wallpaper and scattered textbooks, but it could not dim the brightness of the moment.
Elphaba sat cross-legged on the floor, brow furrowed over a particularly stubborn spell, the lines of her face illuminated by fierce concentration and something softer- curiosity, maybe even hope. Glinda watched from her bed, the air between them charged with something unspoken.
It had been years since those nights at Shiz, but the memories burned as vividly as ever.
Elphaba’s voice broke the silence, rough but steady. “You don’t have to pretend with me, Glinda. I see through it.”
Glinda’s heart thudded against her ribs. She wanted to tell her what she really felt - how scared she was of the world and of losing this fragile bond. But the words tangled in her throat. Instead, she smiled - small, hesitant - and nodded.
They had been an unlikely pair, thrown together by fate and circumstance. Glinda with her polished grace and cautious optimism; Elphaba with her fiery spirit and sharp edges. Yet something had drawn them close, a thread of understanding woven between whispered confessions and stolen glances.
There had been laughter too - bitter, sharp, joyous - all tangled into a tapestry of moments that no longer existed outside Glinda’s mind.
She remembered the night they’d sat on the rooftop, the city lights flickering below, and Elphaba’s rare smile that made her eyes crinkle just so.
“I don’t want to be the villain,” Elphaba had said, voice low, almost breaking. “But they make it so easy.”
Glinda had reached out, her fingers brushing Elphaba’s arm, offering what little comfort she could. “Then don’t be.”
Those words had hung between them, fragile and potent.
Now, in the cold palace chamber, those memories were both balm and poison - proof of what was lost, and of what could never be reclaimed.
She clung to them desperately, even as the world demanded she forget.
The emerald halls of the palace gleamed with polished grandeur, every surface immaculate and every face carefully composed. Yet beneath the glittering veneer lay an invisible tension, a taut wire stretched thin beneath the weight of expectations. Glinda moved through it all like a dancer performing a well-rehearsed routine - her smiles perfect, her posture regal, her laughter light enough to mask the shadows gathering behind her eyes.
The day began with a series of audiences. Advisors and nobles filed through the grand reception room, each bearing petitions, complaints, or veiled demands. They came expecting the same gracious Glinda who had once charmed them with sparkling wit and warmth, the innocent “Good Witch” who could soothe unrest with a glance and a kind word.
But Glinda felt the cracks beneath the façade growing wider. She listened to their concerns with practiced patience, nodding and offering carefully measured promises, even as the memory of Elphaba’s voice whispered sharp questions in her mind. How many lies were she willing to bear before they broke her? How long before her own reflection became a stranger?
In the Council chamber, the weight pressed heavier still. The ministers spoke of “security” and “order,” their words cold as steel blades, but Glinda heard the underlying fear - their terror of the unknown, of the power Elphaba had wielded, of the truths that no longer could be spoken aloud.
At one meeting, an influential nobleman suggested purging the archives of any mention of the Witch’s early kindnesses, of the times she had saved the city from shadow. The room murmured assent, and Glinda forced herself to nod, swallowing the lump in her throat.
Later, as the sun streamed through stained glass, casting fractured rainbows on the polished floors, Glinda found herself alone in the vast hall, her breath shallow and quick. She touched the small pendant at her throat - a delicate emerald that once symbolized hope - and closed her eyes.
In that moment, a sharp image seized her: Elphaba’s face, streaked with soot and tears, her eyes fierce and vulnerable, speaking words Glinda had never dared to hear before.
“Don’t let them erase me,” the voice seemed to say, “not even you.”
The thought cut deeper than any blade.
Each public smile became more strained, more brittle. Each handshake, each nod, a performance rehearsed until it bled. Glinda’s chest ached with exhaustion, her nights haunted by dreams where she reached out for a hand that vanished before her fingers could close.
She found herself studying the mirror more often, searching for cracks, for signs of the woman she had been before the world asked her to choose between love and survival. The crown sat heavier on her head every day, a reminder that power demanded sacrifice.
Her closest confidantes noticed the change - the brief flicker of hesitation before her smile, the way her laughter sometimes faltered. Yet none dared ask, for fear of what answers might lie beneath.
At times, Glinda caught herself speaking Elphaba’s name aloud in the quiet of her chambers, a whisper meant only for ghosts. The silence that followed was suffocating.
One evening, during a grand banquet, she stood beside the throne, the city’s eyes upon her, waiting for the words that would inspire and reassure. Her lips parted, but instead of the rehearsed platitudes, a memory surged - a stolen moment in the garden, Elphaba’s hand warm in hers, a promise unspoken but understood.
She swallowed the rising tide of emotion and spoke, voice steady but hollow, the carefully crafted mask settling back into place. The crowd applauded, but Glinda heard only the hollow echo of loss reverberating in her chest.
The palace walls seemed to close in with each passing day, the bright colors fading into shadows. And in the silence between the demands, Glinda’s heart broke a little more - fractured by the impossible choice between the world’s expectations and the truth she carried like a wound beneath her skin.
The palace was swallowed by night, a heavy silence draped over its emerald stones like a shroud. The city below hummed faintly, a distant murmur of life continuing unaware of the breaking heart within the walls.
Glinda slipped from her chambers, bare feet soft against the cold marble floor. The weight of the day pressed on her - the relentless strain of smiles, speeches, and the unspoken erasure of the woman she had loved. Now, finally, alone, she could feel the fragile threads of her composure unravel.
On the balcony, the night air was sharp and biting, the cool breeze tangled with the faint scent of rain and earth. She cradled the hat in her hands, the fabric rough yet familiar beneath her trembling fingers. It was a talisman, a ghost, the last tangible fragment of Elphaba’s presence.
The moon hung low and full, casting silver light over the city’s darkened rooftops. Glinda closed her eyes, imagining the shape beside her - tall, defiant, unyielding. The faint smell of woodsmoke clung to her hair in memory, and the quiet strength of Elphaba’s voice wrapped around her like a shield.
“I never wanted you to leave,” she whispered into the night, the words fragile as glass.
The silence swallowed her confession. The hat seemed impossibly heavy now, as if burdened with all the love and loss folded into it. She pressed it to her chest, breathing in the phantom warmth, the echo of a hand she could no longer touch.
Her knees buckled, and she sank to the cold stone floor, arms wrapping tightly around herself. The sob that broke free was sudden and raw, a sound she had long buried beneath the weight of duty and expectation.
Tears streamed down her face, mingling with the night air as she let herself fall apart. There was no crown here, no audience - only the truth of a heart shattered beyond repair.
In the quiet, broken fragments of memory came rushing back: the fierce arguments and quiet reconciliations, the stolen smiles in the corridors, the desperate hope that somehow, someday, the world might understand.
But it never would.
And Glinda knew, with a sharp clarity, that no matter how brightly she shone, no matter how hard she tried to be the “Good Witch,” the world was forever smaller without her.
The hat rested against her chest, soaked with tears, a silent witness to a love that could not be undone, a grief that would never fade.
The palace had long since emptied of voices, the grandeur stripped away by the quiet hours of night. Glinda lay still beneath the heavy covers, the shadows pooling around her like ink in water. The weight of the crown was gone, but the weight in her chest pressed down harder than ever.
The hat, folded carefully beside her on the pillow, was a hollow comfort - soft felt stained with memories and loss. She traced its shape with trembling fingers, feeling the imprint of a presence that no longer breathed, no longer spoke, no longer reached for her.
In the darkness, the room seemed to contract, drawing her inward until the walls whispered secrets only she could hear. The city slept beyond the thick glass, wrapped in its own fragile peace, unaware that one of its brightest lights had been extinguished.
She thought again of the words she had never said, the truth she had never dared speak aloud: the world was smaller without Elphaba. And no matter how fiercely she tried to shine, Glinda knew she could never fill that space.
The silence stretched, endless and unyielding. Her tears, slow and steady, soaked into the fabric of the hat, a quiet testament to a love that refused to fade.
Somewhere deep inside, beneath the grief and the duty, a fragile hope lingered - a whispered promise that memory might endure, even when the world had moved on.
And so, with the dawn far away, Glinda held the weight of light in her hands, a fragile flame burning in the darkness of a smaller world.