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The air beyond the desert stayed warm even after dark.
Elphaba noticed because she had not expected it to. In Oz, the temperature dropped once the sun was gone, and winter brought snow. Here it did not. The air stayed warm and damp, carrying the smell of flowers that continued to bloom out of season.
In the five months since they had crossed the desert, they had built their home at the edge of a clearing where the ground dipped toward a narrow stream. Palm trees crowded the perimeter, their fronds casting uneven shade across the soil. Fruit had already been growing when they arrived. Bananas hung in loose clusters, and citrus split the air with sharp sweetness. Melons lay half hidden in the undergrowth, as if abandoned mid-harvest.
Fiyero had insisted that the land was trying to bribe them to stay.
“It has bananas,” he said seriously, a strip of straw caught against the seam of his jacket.
Elphaba looked at him.
“You are extremely easy to persuade,” she said.
“I’m extremely flammable,” he replied. “I take joy where I can.”
He announced his intention to build them a house that same afternoon.
Elphaba watched him drag a fallen branch across the clearing and wedge it between two palm trees. Straw gave way where muscle should have been, and the branch slid down the trunk and landed at his feet.
Fiyero stared at it.
“I think the angle was wrong,” he said.
“You are working with some limitations,” she said.
“I’m adapting,” he replied. “This is new.”
He tried again. This time the branch held for a second before his hands slipped.
“I was a prince,” he said. “I wasn’t issued practical skills.”
“You had servants,” she smirked.
“Exceptional ones,” he grinned. “And you once called a tree a home.”
Elphaba exhaled through her nose.
They decided to compromise.
What they built relied on the palm trees instead of pretending it could stand on its own. Branches tied between trunks. Platforms layered where the trees grew close enough to cooperate. It favoured balance over strength and stayed light where weight would have caused problems.
Elphaba used her magic, but selectively.
She didn’t raise the structure herself or finish it in a single motion. Instead she reinforced wood before it split, guided roots away from places they did not belong, and settled the ground so the weight was distributed evenly. She adjusted angles a moment early, just enough that his hands never had to fail in full view.
Fiyero watched, nodding along as if he were following a plan rather than being spared one.
“I was about to do that,” he said.
“I know,” she replied. “You were thinking very hard.”
He grinned without argument, which made her smile and ache at the same time. She made sure he never saw how often she adjusted things just before his straw bent under the strain. Once, before her, he would have lifted the branch without thinking. She focused on what still worked and left the rest unsaid.
Two days later, with the worst of that behind them, Fiyero surveyed the finished structure, suspended neatly between the palms.
“I appreciate that this exceeds my previous standards for housing,” Elphaba smirked.
“This is a noticeable improvement,” he said. “It has walls.”
They had been settled in the clearing for nearly two weeks before Elphaba understood that they were not alone. The Animals spoke to her without hesitation, as if it had never occurred to them to be afraid. It took time for her to accept that here, she was safe. No one beyond Oz knew she existed, because no one had ever survived the desert to carry stories with them. She had crossed it because she had magic, and Fiyero had crossed it because he was no longer human, and the desert had nothing to take from him.
Encouraged by this, Fiyero made a point of befriending them as well, though he grew increasingly concerned by the way a few of the Birds kept glancing at his shoulders.
“Before we proceed,” Fiyero said to the flock lining the edge of the roof one morning, “I need to clarify that I am not available as housing.”
One of the Birds tilted its head, considering him.
“We have houses,” it said.
“Good,” Fiyero replied. “I am also not food.”
A Deer looked him over once, thoroughly.
“Obviously,” it said. “We have standards.”
By the time the clearing felt like home, five months had passed since the desert, and Lurlinemas was close.
In Oz, the season had always announced itself with snow, with lanterns in the streets and ribbons on doorframes, a public holiday enforced by cold. Here, beyond Oz, the heat lingered, the palms stayed green, and nothing in the air suggested December at all.
They still wanted to celebrate it. Or rather, Fiyero did. As the holiday drew nearer, Elphaba found herself thinking more often of what had been lost and what could not be undone, of the body Fiyero now lived in because of choices she had made. The season sharpened those thoughts whether she invited them or not.
Fiyero, meanwhile, seemed determined not to notice any of it. Their first Lurlinemas together as a couple mattered to him, and he treated that fact as sufficient justification.
He decided that meant elaborate decorations.
The first attempt involved string.
Elphaba returned from the stream to find him standing on a crate, a coil of twine looped over one arm and a handful of shells clutched in the other. He was trying to thread them together, pulling the string taut between his fingers. It slipped each time, sliding through straw that could not hold tension the way hands were meant to.
Several shells already lay scattered on the ground below.
“You know you can do that sitting down,” she said.
“That would feel too much like surrender,” he replied, not looking at her. “Besides, I’m almost done.”
The string slipped again. A shell dropped and cracked against the floor.
He stared at it for a second, then reached for another.
She watched longer than she should have. The movements were careful, cautious in the way of someone compensating for a body that no longer obeyed. His fingers bent too easily. The string cut shallow grooves into straw where skin should have resisted.
“That’s not going to stay,” she said.
“It will,” he said mildly. “I just need cooperation from the materials.”
He managed to knot the string at last. The line of shells sagged immediately, uneven and lopsided.
He tilted his head, considering it.
“I think it looks festive,” he said.
She nodded, because saying anything else would have meant explaining why her chest felt tight.
His second attempt involved a tree.
Elphaba returned from tea with the River Otter family to find the furniture rearranged. A young palm frond had been dragged inside and propped upright in a clay pot, its roots wrapped with careful optimism in damp cloth. White flowers had been tied into its leaves as shells and scraps of ribbon hung beneath them. Fiyero stood back from it, head tilted, clearly pleased.
“It’s not snow exactly,” he said, before she could speak. “But I hoped it might feel close enough.”
She stared at it.
The tree was too sparse, too green, bending slightly toward the open wall where the light came in.
“It seemed important to have,” he smiled. “Symbolically.”
She watched him reach up to adjust one of the ribbons. His fingers slipped through the fronds, straw catching and snagging. The ribbon fell. He tried again, slower this time, pushing the ornament into place with the flat of his hand instead of his fingers.
It slid off immediately.
He frowned at it, then tried to tie it with a length of twine. The frond bent under the pressure.
“Fae,” he said lightly, “did your treehouse ever fight you this much?”
She swallowed.
“You don’t have to make it perfect,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I just wanted you to like it. I thought it might feel familiar.”
She stepped forward and adjusted the ribbon with a flick of her fingers, magic tightening the knot without sound. The frond straightened obediently.
Fiyero smiled.
“There,” he said. “See? Team effort.”
Something in her chest twisted.
She saw the care in his movements and the way he corrected himself before his weaknesses showed. She saw how easily she could step in, and how often she already had.
She loved him. She was grateful for him. But that did not undo the damage.
Every small failure reminded her that this was not a temporary state. The more effort he put into pleasing her, the more certain she became that one day he would understand what she had taken from him. And she waited for the moment when gratitude would no longer be enough to justify what she had done.
She turned away under the pretense of straightening a chair.
Her breaking point came two days later.
By then, the decorations had settled into the background. The palm frond stayed upright thanks to her magic. The shells stayed uneven. Elphaba told herself that she had adjusted. She told herself the tightness in her chest had eased.
She smelled smoke just after dusk.
She followed it around the side of the house and found him standing beneath one of the palms, a red paper lantern already hung and swaying slightly in the heat. He held a small match at the end of a taper, angled carefully away from himself, his body turned at an awkward distance to compensate.
“You shouldn’t be doing that,” she said frantically.
“Fae,” he groaned, “I’m being careful.”
The flame touched the wick. The lantern caught, glowing softly. For a moment it looked warm and familiar.
Then the air shifted.
The edge of his sleeve darkened.
The flame lifted. It caught along the edge of his sleeve. The smell reached her a second later.
She screamed his name and lunged for him, hands shaking badly enough that her first spell broke apart before it finished forming. Fire caught the straw beneath the fabric, fast and bright.
“No,” she said, too loud. “No, no.”
Magic surged again, clumsy with fear this time, and slammed into the flame. It went out at once. The lantern went dark. Smoke rose and thinned into the night.
She grabbed his arm before she could stop herself, fingers digging into his sleeve as if he might vanish if she let go.
Only then did she look at what remained.
Straw showed through the burned fabric, blackened and brittle at the edges.
Fiyero looked down at his arm. He brushed at the singed straw, inspecting the damage with mild interest.
“That could have gone better,” he said.
Elphaba’s hands were shaking.
“What were you thinking?” she hissed.
“I wanted them lit before it got fully dark,” he replied.
She stared at him. At the place where straw showed through fabric. At how close it had come.
“What do you think would have happened if I wasn’t here?” she demanded.
He looked at her then, properly, confusion replacing the easy confidence she had come to dread.
“Elphaba,” he said. “It’s alright.”
She stepped back, her breath coming too fast, the words already rising and refusing to be stopped. Every fear she had swallowed since the desert, since the house, since the first decoration that had slipped from his hands, spilled out at once.
“You could have burned completely,” she spat. “How easy do you think it is to find more straw in a rainforest?”
“I was only lighting a lantern,” he said gently.
“You were being foolish!”
Fiyero went still.
“Fae,” he said. “There’s plenty of water everywhere. It would have been alright. Everything’s fine.”
She could hear herself now and could not slow it down. The body he lived in. The life he had left. The way he kept trying to make this place, this season, this version of himself acceptable for her.
“I cursed you,” she said.
He crossed the space between them without thinking and stopped when she flinched.
“That is not what happened,” he said.
“It’s exactly what happened!”
She couldn’t look at him.
That was when he reached for her, carefully, as if afraid of doing the wrong thing again.
“Elphaba,” he said, steady now, placing his hands on her arms. “You do not get to decide my regrets.”
She pulled back just enough to look at him.
“I know,” she said. “But I get to decide mine.”
His hands loosened at her arms as if the words had shifted something he had not prepared for.
They stood there until the heat drained from the moment. He brushed ash from his sleeve and turned back to the lantern without relighting it.
She realized then that he had misunderstood her, mistaking fear for rejection and grief for judgment.
“I regret everything with Nessa,” she said, her words coming too fast. “I regret leaving the Grimmerie when it could have had something to help you. I regret every spell I rushed because I thought I was right.”
Her breath shook, but she did not stop.
“I love you,” she whispered. “But I regret that loving me cost you the life you should have had.”
He stepped closer, firm enough that she could not retreat without making it obvious.
“You saved my life,” he said. “You didn’t take it from me.”
She shook her head.
“You kept me standing when nothing else would have,” he continued. “If you hadn’t done what you did, I wouldn’t even be here to argue with you about lanterns.”
“That doesn’t make it fair,” she muttered.
“I didn’t need fair,” he said. “But I did need a life with you.”
She looked up at him, searching for hesitation and finding none. His expression was steady. Certain.
“I am not ruined,” he said. “I am here because of you, not in spite of you.”
Something in her chest loosened. Not fully, but enough.
She nodded, exhausted by the effort of holding herself together.
“I can’t lose you again,” she said.
“You won’t,” he promised. “Besides, I was flammable as a human too.”
He drew her into his arms then, careful and sure, holding her as if she were the unsteady one. She let her weight settle against him, breathing in until the shaking slowed.
It was only later that she noticed how quickly he stepped back.
As Lurlinemas drew nearer, the decorations stopped multiplying. Half-finished ideas lingered where he had left them. Cloth was folded and set aside. He went quiet at odd moments. He left the house when she entered it, then returned with nothing in his hands. He took the longer route around the clearing, as if he needed the extra seconds.
She told herself it was nothing. She told herself he had always been restless, even before he became what he was now.
And while she could accept that during the day, at night, she could not.
Sleep often came unevenly, and when it did, it carried the same variation of loss. She was running again, but not from pursuers. She was searching. Calling his name. The trees closed in, the ground shifted, and he was always just ahead of her, close enough to see and never close enough to reach.
She woke with her heart racing and her hands clenched, the certainty of his death still sharp.
When the fear loosened enough for thought, she knew better. Leaving Oz had been the only outcome that kept either of them alive. Staying would have meant capture or death. Oz had hunted them openly and would have done so again without hesitation. Whatever else had been taken from them, they had survived. Together.
She loved him as he was now. His body had changed. His soul had not. She did not want a version of him that existed without her, and she knew he would not have chosen a life that kept them apart. Any form together was better than safety alone. She believed that with clarity when she was awake.
At night, clarity failed her.
Normally, Fiyero would be beside her. He did not need sleep, and anchored her with his voice, his hand steady at her back.
“You’re here,” he would say. “I’m here. We’re safe now.”
But for the last week, every time she’d woken, he hadn’t been beside her.
And even though it was almost Lurlinemas Eve, tonight was no different.
Without him anchoring her, her thoughts turned inward and sharpened. Love did not protect her from blame. Knowing the truth did not stop the questions. She replayed her choices, the spells spoken too quickly, the cost that followed them. She told herself again that they had done the right thing.
She sat in the dark and loved him anyway, even as the part of her that hated herself spoke louder.
She did not sleep again.
She lay awake until the dark thinned and the sounds of the clearing shifted, until her thoughts sharpened into something familiar and unkind. She counted the space beside her where his weight should have been. She told herself she would wait until morning. She told herself she was tired of waiting for clarity to return on its own.
If he was having second thoughts, she would hear them from him. She would not be spared for her own good.
She knew the thought was unfair. That did not stop it from replaying in her head.
She rose quietly and stepped outside. The ground was still warm under her feet, damp with night. She followed the narrow path toward the stream, anger carrying her where fear usually slowed her.
She saw the lantern light first.
It was low and contained, set away from the house. He stood near it with his back turned, shoulders squared, his hands busy with something she could not see. He did not turn when she approached.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said. “Why?”
He startled, turning too fast, nearly dropping what he held.
“Elphaba,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“That wasn’t the question,” she said.
He looked at her for a long moment, as if recalibrating. Whatever he had been preparing did not include this version of her. Barefoot. Awake. Finished waiting.
“I’m not,” he said.
She folded her arms tight against her chest.
“You stopped sleeping beside me,” she said. “You leave when I enter a room. You take longer paths to avoid me. You stopped decorating.”
“I didn’t think you would notice,” he said.
“I did.”
He exhaled and glanced toward the lantern at his feet. It was unlit. Everything about it had been kept under control, as if restraint alone could prevent disaster.
“I planned to wait,” he said. “I thought New Year’s Eve made sense. Endings. Beginnings. Something official.”
Her throat tightened.
“And now?” she said.
“I’ve been caught,” he said sheepishly.
She laughed once, sharp and unsteady.
“You do not get to vanish on me,” she said. “If you are reconsidering this, you say it.”
“I’m not,” he said, too fast to be convincing.
“Then tell me what you are doing,” she said. “Because it is Lurlinemas, and you keep finding reasons not to be near me.”
He stared at her, genuinely caught off guard.
“What?” he said. “No.”
He ran a hand down his sleeve, fingers snagging briefly on straw, but he did not seem to notice.
“I was trying to give you space,” he said. “Which I am learning was a poor strategy.”
She stared at him, the anger giving way all at once.
“You scared me,” she said. Her voice broke despite her effort to keep it steady. “I kept waking up alone and wondering if you wanted to leave.”
He crossed the distance between them without thinking and stopped only when she flinched, then slowed immediately.
“Fae,” he said. “I would never do that.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks before she could stop them. She turned her face away, furious with herself.
He reached for her anyway, tentative now, then steadier when she did not pull back. He gathered her close, one arm firm around her shoulders, the other careful at her back.
“I know I’m not good at subtlety,” he said quietly. “I’m flammable and brainless, after all. It’s a bad combination.”
Despite herself, a sound escaped her that might have been a laugh.
“I should have explained,” he said quietly. “I just needed time for something.”
His thumb brushed beneath her eye, gently wiping away the tear there. He did it again when another followed, slower this time, as if learning the shape of her face all over again.
“I was going to do this properly,” he said. “With less fire. With fewer opportunities to panic.”
She felt his breath shake against her hair.
“I have been planning something,” he said. “I wanted to be clear. I wanted you to have no doubt about what I am choosing or why.”
He glanced away, then back again.
“I kept thinking if I did it properly, you would not have to wonder. About me.” He shook his head once. “Then it wasn’t finished. Then it needed fixing. Then I convinced myself one more adjustment mattered.”
His mouth curved, thin and tired.
“So, I kept leaving to check on it. And I did a very poor job of pretending I was relaxed.”
He stepped back just enough to look at her and opened his hand.
A ring rested in his palm. A gold band with a blue diamond set into it, shimmering even in the darkness.
“An Animal helped me,” he said. “A Badger who works metal. He refused payment and asked too many questions.”
She stared at it, then at him.
“The stone belonged to my family,” he continued. “I took it with me when we left Kiamo Ko.”
Her heartbeat thudded wildly in her chest.
“After the lanterns,” he went on, slower now, “I realized how badly I needed you to understand something. I was not hesitating. I was not weighing options. I was not wondering if there was something else.”
He met her eyes and did not look away.
“I have never been halfway with you,” he said. “Not once. I have never been waiting to see how things turn out. I chose you before I understood what that choice would demand, and I chose you again every day after.”
He swallowed. “You are the only person who ever made me want a future that lasted longer than the moment I was standing in.”
His hand tightened slightly around hers, as if grounding himself.
“I am not here because I have nowhere else to go,” he said. “I am here because this is where I want to be. With you. In whatever shape this life takes.”
He breathed out, steadying himself.
“I do not want to just keep surviving with you,” he said. “I want to live. I want a life with you. As your husband. If you will have me. Appalling decorations and all.”
She sobbed then, fully, pressing her face into his chest as if that was the only place left that could hold her together.
“I loved the decorations,” she said into his jacket. “They were terrible. I was starting to miss them.”
His arms tightened around her.
“I’ll make more of them,” he said. “Every year. Worse each time.”
She pulled back enough to look at him, tears still clinging to her lashes.
“You would really choose this again?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Every version of it. Every cost. Every fire hazard.”
She nodded, breath hitching.
“It would be an honour,” she said, the words shaking as she spoke them, “to be your wife.”
For a moment, he couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes as if the relief might undo him, then leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers.
“Happy almost Lurlinemas,” he said softly.
He was still holding the ring, turning it between his fingers like he did not quite trust his hands yet. Then he reached for her and slid it onto her finger, careful despite the tremor. The stone caught the light.
She stared at it, then let out a shaky breath.
“I ruined your plan,” she said.
He looked at her, then at the ring, then back again.
“Well, waiting has never been our strongest skill,” he said.
Despite herself, she laughed.
“We have terrible impulse control,” he continued. “But it keeps working. I see no reason to interfere with success.”
A sudden rush of wings cut through the quiet.
“Oh,” a Bird said from the branch above them. “So that is finally happening.”
Elphaba jumped.
“I thought we agreed on privacy,” Fiyero sighed.
“We agreed on not using you as housing,” the Bird replied. “This is different.”
Another Bird fluttered down, tilting its head at Fiyero.
“You have been practicing,” it said. “Out loud.”
Fiyero groaned.
“Practicing what?” Elphaba asked.
“A speech,” the Bird said promptly. “It was very long.”
“And very bad,” another Bird added, landing beside it.
“I rewrote it,” Fiyero muttered.
“Six times,” a third Bird said. “You kept saying ‘I am not ruined’ and then stopping.”
Fiyero groaned.
A fourth Bird peered at Elphaba’s hand.
“The shiny thing arrived late,” it observed. “He was very upset about that.”
“It needed adjusting,” Fiyero said.
“You apologized to imaginary versions of her,” one Bird said.
“Repeatedly,” another added.
“And then interrupted yourself,” a third said. “To clarify your intent.”
Elphaba laughed, the sound breaking loose as she leaned into him.
“I’m glad you didn’t wait,” she smiled.
“So are we,” the first Bird replied. “Another week and he would have started rehearsing responses.”
“To questions she was not asking,” the second said.
One of the Birds tilted its head.
“Also,” it added, “you are flammable. Practicing emotional speeches near lanterns was a poor decision.”
“That was one lantern,” Fiyero said.
“You caught fire,” the Bird replied. “That makes it relevant.”
The flock lifted off together, voices overlapping as they vanished into the trees, already debating whether the speech would have improved with time.
Elphaba laughed again, softer this time.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose I owe you an apology for interrupting.”
“You do not,” he said. “Lurlinemas has always involved poor timing.”
She smiled despite herself.
“Then I am glad we started early,” she said.
He laughed under his breath and leaned in to kiss her temple.
“Next year,” he said, “I promise fewer emergencies.”