#oziandra rain

[wickedyearsquoteoftheday]

“Yes. And Candle might come back. And Trism too.”

He wasn’t hurt. “I leave the front door unlocked for one of them and the back door unlocked for the other. They know where I am. I’ve cherished them both, Rain, and I do still. Whoever they are. I love both Trism and Candle. It isn’t impossible for you to love both Tip and Ozma.”

[wickedyearsquoteoftheday]

One day when the cloudburst began earlier than usual, the girl showed up fresh from her lesson. She hunted for Os and Zs all over Glinda’s parlor, in the gnarly filigrees of preposterously carved furniture. She all but capered with the fun of it. “I know Oz, now,” she said, and in the carving of the lintel she found that common ideogram, a Z circled with an O. “Usually letters don’t hide inside each other,” she told Glinda firmly.

“No, that’s true. In Oz, I suppose, something is always hiding, though.”

[wickedyearsquoteoftheday]

“Your wares comes from all over,” said Tip to the Bear.

“So do my clients,” he replied.

“And this is a stuffed scissor bird. I think they’re extinct now.”

“Well, that one is extinct, anyway.”

The Bear shuffled to his feet and poured himself a cup of tea. “You’re standing on a flying carpet,” he said.

“Is that so?” asked Tip and Rain at once.

“Assuredly so. Full of flies.”

[walks-the-ages]

Anyways Rain my beloved 💚💚

Even more weird kid™ and autistic than your grandma.

[wickedyearsquoteoftheday]

The world they left behind - the commonplace world of now - felt a little more tightly pulled together, as in a blackout between scenes of a theatrical piece stagehands rush on and plump the pillows. Each glowing rotting leaf on its trembling stem stood out to be counted.

Rain looked, noticed. She did not count them.

[wickedyearsquoteoftheday]

“What else did you see?” asked the smile of the wolf teeth.

“I saw no sign of any crying child smacked too often by a tired mother, or any old Dame Beaver wanting release from her daughter-in-law. I saw no kidnapped father, and no mother gone AWOL.”

“Just because you didn’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there,” said the phantom of a dog named Killyjoy, who had been sniffing at something dirty and interesting in a bottom drawer that he couldn’t scratch open.

“What else didn’t you see?” asked the spiders in a chorus of shrill, pinched voices.

“I didn’t see the edge of Oz.”

“Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” said Killyjoy.

“I know,” said Rain. “That’s one thing I know.”

“What else didn’t you see?” asked the drawer of bat skeletons, in an uncoordinated recitation that took Rain a while to decipher.

“I didn’t see the woman who brought you all here,” said Rain.

“Just because you don’t see her doesn’t mean she isn’t there,” said Killyjoy, wagging his ghost tail and panting over his extended ghost tongue.

[wickedyearsquoteoftheday]

The snake seemed to be trying to turn a different color, to blend in with the bit of lichen on one side and a scrap of stone on the other, but it was slow work. She squatted down to watch it go. “Whoa-ey. I din’t know snakes could shift to green and back again.”

The creature’s lidless eyes were baleful and patient. “A lot could go green if they tried harder,” it said. “Keep it in mind.” Rain reared back, never having met a talking Snake before, nor heard of one even. She thought they were only storylike. The Snake finished its conversion to camouflage, and she couldn’t see it anymore.

[promptsidestory]

Tip: Can you live without knowing?

Rain: I have lived without knowing most of my life. Isn't that what we're all so good at? That's the easy part.