Chapter Text
On nights like these, Boq was sometimes more lonely than he would like to admit.
The dorm was solitary, and he used to think he liked being alone, but he hadn’t been completely by himself in a long time. He’d lie in his soft new bed, and he would think of home.
His bed at home was uncomfortable and scratchy, his clothes were an array of too-big and too-small, and his parents didn't have the time for him, except for when they were angry.
But on some level, the familiar hurt of home held more comfort than the hurt of being utterly alone. At least at home (could he really even call it that anymore?), he had his siblings. Tilla, Miloft, Marnie, Tibben, Etti, Del. He missed his siblings with all his heart, his little sisters especially. He missed braiding his sisters’ hair, reading to Tibben and Etti. It broke his heart to leave them behind.
He couldn’t help it — not really. In some part of Boq’s mind, he’d rather feel a familiar ache than an unfamiliar suffering.
And that longing for togetherness — the longing he chose to stay in — was shameful, but at least it was his.
This time, when he woke up in the small hours of dusk, his thoughts were consumed by something other than the loneliness that had been eating at him in the past two days since he arrived at Shiz.
Unmistakable, all-consuming pain.
Boq gasped breathlessly, his body coiling tight with the shock of sudden agony. Boq’s heart, bones, muscle, and skin felt like they were on fire. Like they were tearing themselves apart somehow and knitting back together wrong.
His heart felt as if it were shrinking in on itself.
And he couldn’t breathe.
He writhed in pain on his dorm mattress, the rich material doing absolutely nothing to comfort him now. The overwhelming sensation left no room for coherent thought, and no room for emotion besides fear. It hurt so much that Boq could barely elicit a sound besides a quiet, cracked, suffocated cry (not that anyone would have even heard it, anyhow. Boq’s new roommate hadn’t arrived at the university yet, so he had the room to himself for a few days). He was gasping on nothing, panicking at the sudden difficulty to respirate.
Before he knew it, Boq Woodsman was no longer in his dorm.
The dream didn’t announce itself.
It simply was.
Boq inhaled sharply, no longer struggling to breathe, as he quickly saw… a field? He was standing in a seemingly endless rolling field, long beige glades of wheat waving in the wind around him. The sun was warming the land a golden hue, and he should have felt warm. Should have. But physically, he didn’t feel much of anything at all.
And this field, he knew this field.
It was one of the long expanses that surrounded Munchkinland. Boq had once played here, ran through the fields, yearning for something, anything more. There was a time when he was still small, the youngest still, and Tilla would hold his hand and help him toddle around there. There was a time when he could balance Tibben on one hip and Etti on the other, and walk around the fields telling them stories.
Boq had never had a certain knack for fitting in, had never fit quite right in social endeavors. However he tried to befriend the other kids in his village, his imitation of their sociality was never a perfect match, so he wasn’t accepted as an equal. It seemed as if there was an ever-changing set of rules that you had to follow, and he could never catch up to their customs.
Although he never had many friends, he did enjoy caring for his siblings, and they loved his stories.
He was imaginative, Boq was.
All daydreams and no hard work, his father would say.
But Boq had worked hard enough to make it here,
hadn’t he?
But that’s besides the point.
Boq was in a field he could only assume was in Munchkinland. It was still, almost peaceful, and the glimpses were too fast for him to do anything, anyways.
And then he heard it.
A horrible, ragged scream rang out through the field, coming from somewhere nearby. It sounded like the scream of a stranger, but somehow the voice was familiar. Scared. In pain. Boq’s only instinct was to run towards it.
Who could that be?
It was then that Boq realized that not only could he not feel anything, but he could not move.
And then he woke up.
After a few minutes that stretched like hours, the pain finally subsided. Boq just laid there for a few more moments, shifting around and trying to catch his breath. His forehead was faintly glistening with sweat, and a few of the reddish-auburn curls that hung over his pale, freckled face were damp with it. Boq was relieved it was over, to say the least.
The relief was immediately diminished by something darker, heavier. The vividness of the dream clung to him, refusing to fade. It felt so real.
He stared at his ceiling for a few more minutes. Waited for sleep to come back to him. His eyes slowly drifted closed. Then his morning alarm went off, ringing loudly from the bedside table, and Boq quietly cursed in complaint.
Oh, Oz.
He had a quiz today.
He rose from his bed, a little dazed from the intense nightmare and physical discomfort that he could only currently describe as “growing pains”.
(never mind the fact that he was 18 years old and most definitely done growing).
No time to think about those.
He quickly showered, got dressed, threw on one of his favorite sweaters (the bluish one with a light orange stripe on each sleeve’s cuff), and grabbed an orange for later.
Boq paused when he was a few feet away from the door, seeing that the wine-colored tulip left on his desk was beginning to wilt.
That was it, his one memento of Munchkinland. He’d plucked it from the ground in his haste that night.
Boq’s legs burned as he sprinted through the dark.
Tearing across the sprawling fields.
Leaving everything behind.
He shouldn’t have cared about such things, but he had been so desperate for anything to hold onto, so he felt it was only right.
Don’t look at it.
Don’t think about it.
You’re late enough already.
No time for such silly things.
Boq slung on his satchel, walked out the door, and closed it behind him.
“Good enough for now,” he mumbled to himself, as he locked the dormitory door behind him.
Today was a new day, and he needed to focus on academics.
He could ponder about homesickness, strange dreams, and powerful pains once his homework was done.