Chapter Text
Things come back to her, slowly.
It’s like a puzzle, except the pieces only show up randomly throughout the months.
On her first day, after the robed person fed her some sort of stew, she lay in the bed she woke up in and has a vision.
There were two young girls sitting on a hill. The one with wild blonde hair was Hildy. The other girl’s face is hardly recognizable, but her name was definitely Lucy.
“Hilarious, I tell you,” Hildy relaxed against a tree, finally taking a bite out of the sandwich she’d been flailing around for the past six minutes. “It plays on Saturday nights,”
Lucy looked tired.
“You already said that,”
“Just wanted to make sure you know when it comes on; it’s a real hoot, I promise,”
The girls finished their lunch and trudged down the hill back to the schoolhouse.
The card in her blazer shows an image of a familiar face in black and white with the name Hildy Jean Russett written next to it (alongside some other words she’s too tired to read).
Miraculously, she must be Hildy.
Once they know for sure she’s not going to die, the elves bring her to the horse stables. And just like that, BAM cars, cameras, electricity, and the knowledge of a whole different world filled with modern technology floods her brain.
The kind one takes Hildy outside and helps her sit on the grass. He sits next to her, looking calm and regal with his long hair and gown. She’s in a different realm. Like Dorothy.
Then new faces pop up in her head and it’s just too much .
Hildy folds into her knees and tries to cry. It just comes out as wheezing. The elf consoles her the best he can.
(Something tells her Hildy Russett doesn’t cry, or is at least very bad at it.)
The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, and The Scarecrow.
The Cowardly Lion loved Werther’s Originals, his gal Sal, his friends, and was braver than he knew.
(Hildy enjoys the image of a worried lion with large glasses that comes up whenever she tries to remember his face)
The Tin Man was blinded by his own shine, but truly put his heart in the things he cared about.
The Scarecrow....
Hildy suddenly feels foolish. She’s telling herself stories in bed like a little girl.
It’s not a story, though, it’s real. She’s just not sure what happened. Or the people involved really. She’s filling in the blanks with something familiar.
Hildy’s father was tall and lean muscle with brown hair and curls like her own, buzzed short. He loved her to the moon and back, which is what he said every night after they finished a chapter of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz together.
They had a system. Father read the narration and the other character voices, while Hildy read for Dorothy.
(As well as any other character that she happened to especially like, such as Ozma in the other books.)
This was good because it tired her out, so she fell asleep easily despite her noisy head.
“‘And oh, Aunt Em! I’m so glad to be at home again!’” Hildy read with as much conviction as she could muster this late in the evening.
Father grinned and shut the book.
“And there’s where it ends,” He said.
She had known it was coming, but now that the end was truly here she felt a little empty.
“Well, guess that’s goodnight then,” Hildy yawned.
As Father opened her bedroom door, the two dogs, Rusty and Rover came swarming around his legs, having been waiting for him.
“Love you to the moon and back,” He said, laughing as he pushed his way through the wall of dog and into the hall.
Hildy wakes up in the morning with their true names in mind.
Hildy Russett, Robert Wilson, Meryl Streep, Stud Stampler. Those are the characters.
She can’t help but feel like she still knows more about the others than she does herself.