AN: Elphaba's mystery sickness is at long last revealed! Okay, just so you guys know, it is kind of hidden in here, so see if you can find it before the end of the chapter, where I'm going to just come out and say it for those who couldn't, and kudos if you do! For those of you wondering, the final poll result is as follows: "I don't know" has 0% "She's ill" and "She's coming down with something" are tied at 7% with one vote each, "She's (majorly over)stressed" has 30% with four votes, and finally, in first place, with seven out of 13 total votes at 53% we have...*drumroll* "Something else entirely"

Oh, and did I mention there's a huge surprise at the end? No? Well there is, so no skipping ahead! You'll just have to read and find out like everybody else! Why? Because I'm evil like that, heehee! jk, jk, I just don't want you to spoil it for yourselves, that takes all the fun out of it. As Willy Wonka once said, "The best kind of prize is a SURprise, haha!" Oh, remember I said I'm ultimately going to have Dorothy choose whether to finish what she started for the Wizard or join Elphaba's rag-tag team of renegades? That choice changed to something a bit different since it's obvious to me that she's already chosen her side. You'll find out at the end what the new question is that she must answer. *winks* =)

Love and hugs for all of my pretties!

-Maggie the Nevermore Raven

PS: Get ready for like THE most epic spell in the history of the entire damn universe, people. To quote Dewey Finn from School of Rock: "It will blow your mind right out your ass!"

PSS: If Brr seems a little younger than he is in WoO, it's because I was sort of unconciously writing him as more of teenager when I did the rough draft, and when I was reading over it, I realized this and thought about fixing it, but then I decided I kind of liked it, so I figured I'd stick with it and see how it worked out and if you guys like it, I'll keep him that way in the sequal that I've started on.

"Oh my sweet Oz, how shockamating! I never ever would have guessed!" was Glinda's reaction to learning Fiyero's true fate. She then proceeded to smack him, at which he just laughed. "Doesn't hurt a bit," he told her. "I'm nothing but straw and burlap, Glin, I can't feel crap!"

Dorothy and Elphaba snickered at the look on Glinda's face, only to begin "coughing" upon recieving the blonde's patented death glare.

A bit later that evening, Dorothy and Glinda, who had both gotten very little sleep that night compared to thier normal amount, both fell asleep while the quartet was waiting for the impending threat to arrive. Elphaba and Fiyero thought it was best not to wake them, figuring they would both need all the sleep they could possibly get for what was coming. The couple together (at a safe distance from the fire, for Fiyero's sake), elated to finally be together again after what felt to them like an eternity spent apart.

"Yenah," Elphaba whispered, resting her head agains Fiyero's chest. "Yenah, Ka geyeno vavah sival cerena."
"Vashava?"

She leaned closer and whispered into his ear, "Ka...Kava denego, Yeneah."

Elphaba lay her head on his shoulder, giving him time to process her words and absorb what she'd told him. Finally, he spoke. "Rava?"
"Rava."

She looked up, relieved to see him smiling. "How...How long? Do you know?" he asked. She smiled, too, but hers was more seductive. "Ravash teva dala nevo teva shavnae rekan ganav naeano," she said playfully, touching her forehead to his.

Her smile faded slowly. "I promise, Fiyero," she whispered, "that I will do everything I know how that is within my power to make you yourself again." He shook his head. "You don't have to do that, Fae. You've got so much on your plate, and I don't want to give you more burdens than you can handle."

"I'm not asking your permission, Fiyero," she said. "I am telling you what I fully intend to do, not because I feel obligated, but because I love you and I want to do it for you." He smiled. "I know. Once you make up your mind to do something, you won't stop until you get it done, but can you really blame me for trying? All the stress you're under right now...It can't be good for your health, or the-"

BANG!

Elphaba gasped, and Fiyero instinctively pulled her close to him. Dorothy and Glinda sat up, both of them instantly wide awake. "What was that?" Dorothy asked. Fiyero slowly released Elphaba. "Dunno," he said standing up. "But I'm gonna go find out." He pulled his dagger from his boot.

Elphaba grabbed his wrist. "No, not by yourself, I won't let you. If it's Boq..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "I just got you back, Fiyero, I'm not going to lose you again. Not like this."

BANG!
BANG!
CRASH!

"That sounded like a door being broken down," Dorothy said. Elphaba's eyes suddenly became vancant and distsant. "It is him..."

For a moment, a deathly silence fell over the group. Then Elphaba stood up. "Glin," the green girl said, taking both of her friends hands and holding them tightly in her own. "I know you've never been all that fond of him, but please, try to talk some sense into Boq. You're the only one who has any chance of getting through to the boy we knew in college and making him see just how out of hand this has gotten."

Glinda looked uncertain. "Please?" Elphaba said. "For me?"

The smaller woman deflated. "You and those words," she said, "are such a deadly, lethal combination." She sighed. "Fine. I'll see what I can do. But I can't promise anything."
"I know."
"You owe me big time for this, missy."
"I know, Glin."

The blonde sighed again. "Well," she said, "here goes something."

Glinda made her way down the stairs in the ballroom that, back in the castle's glory days, had once allowed a princess to make a grand entrance to a party on the arm of her prince.

However, that had been ages ago, and all the splendor was gone, leaving behind just a large, gloomy room. Layers of dust now covered the once-gleaming marble steps and ornately carved spindles on the oak banister, which had once been smooth and polished and beautiful.

Years' worth of grime and filth coated the stained glass windows, preventing the early morning rays of sunlight from shining through and displaying the beautiful images depicted by the multi-colored panes of glass and giving the illusion of being inside a giant kallidescope as they once had.

It saddened Glinda to see the room this way, abandonded and empty, merely a hollow shell of what it once was, and deprived of the glorious magnificence that she knew it must have once held. Even the velvet tapestries suspended on the walls high above were so heavy with dust and dirt that they sagged and their rich, bright colors had faded to near grayness, giving everything an overall very depressing feel to it.

She shook her sadly, making a mental note to later slap Elphaba for not doing something to better mantain things. Or Fiyero (once he could feel things again, of course) for not making his parents hire a caretaker of some sort, if it turned out that Elphaba had found it that way when she first got there.

Glinda froze halfway down the stairs, positive that she had heard something. She tilted her head to one side and listened intently. After what felt like ages of standing as still as a statue, the noise came again. Closer, this time, and...Ah-ha.

She zeroed in on her target and everything around her seemed to vanish suddenly as her mind went into overdrive. "Boq," she whispered. "Boq," she said again, louder this time. "Boq!"

Now, she all but flew down the rest of the stairs, all the while saying his name. "BoqBoqBoqBoqBoq!" she cried, running to catch up with him and the Lion. "Great, now I sound like a hen," she thought. "Or would that be Hen?..."

"Glinda! What are you doing here, did the Witch kidnap you like she kidnapped Dorothy?"
"Wha-Did she kid-No! No, I was most certainly not kidnapped by anyone, thank you very much!"
"Then what-"

Glinda cut him off, grabbing his shoulders. "Boq, listen to me! I don't know what in Lurline's name has gotten into you, but you have got to stop this madness, now!" Boq looked at her as if questioning her sanity a bit. "I...I'm afraid I don't follow," he said uncertainly.

Glinda's head flopped down momentarily, then she looked up with her eyes closed, a smile (a rather forced looking one at that, but still) on her face. "Let me put it this way," she said, a calmness in her voice that sounded somewhat forced. "If you do not stop trying to murder Elphaba with that thing of yours, I will personally see to it that you ARE TURNED INTO A GIANT PILE OF SCRAP METAL, CAPICHE?"

"Glinda!" a voice said from the stairs. Glinda turned around and groaned. "ELPHIE, I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO STAY WITH DEEDEE AND FIFI SO THAT YOU WOULD BE-"
"Glinda, volume!"
"Damn it, Fiyero, not you too!"

Boq's eyes got wide. "No way in hell is that Fiyero!" he yelled. "News flash, Oil-for-Brains!" Fiyero yelled, spreading his arms out. "It's me!"
"Fiyero, what the hell happened to you?"

"Same as you, I'd reckon," Fiyero said. "I was dying, so Elphaba did some of her voodoo magicky jazz and saved my sorry ass!"
"That is not our Elphaba anymore, Fiyero!" Boq shouted furiously. "She's changed too much to be the same girl we knew in college!"

"I've changed, too!" Glinda said, joining the others on the stairs. "Does that mean I'm not the same girl you used to know back then?"
"No, but-"

"What about me?" Fiyero demanded. "I've changed just as much as Glinda has! Am I not still the same guy from Shiz?"
"Fiyero, you're as much of an idiot as you've ever been! You were a brainless jack ass then, you're a brainless jack ass now, and except for the fact that now you literally have no brain, you're exactly the same, you empty-headed baboon face!"

"Then who's to say that it doesn't also apply to Elphie?" Dorothy shouted, leaning over the railing on the second floor above everybody else. Boq pointed an accusing finger at the fifteen-year-old girl. "Stay out of this, you little brat! It's none of your business!"

"It BECAME her business the moment her house was picked up by that Oz foresaken tornado, Boq, and you have absolutely no right to speak to her that way!" Elphaba yelled. "Great, so now you're on each other's side, is that it? You're ganging up on us, right? Fantastic! Brr, let's do what we came to do and get the hell outta here!"

Elphaba's mind began developing an idea almost instantly. She looked at the Lion. "Brr," she said. "Is that your name?"
"Y-Yes...Please don't hurt me!"

"I promise I'm not going to, Brr. Most people don't know your real name, do they? Everybody calls you something that you never asked to be called." Brr nodded hesitantly. "I know how that feels. To most people, I'm just the Wicked Witch of the West. But that doesn't make it my name. No matter what, my name will always be Elphaba, and nothing can ever change that, just like nothing can change your name. You aren't just the Cowardly Lion, you'll always be Brr, but nobody knows that, and it sucks, doesn't it?"
"It sucks rocks."

"It does, it sucks rocks! Completely, yes, and I know how that feels, believe me. And being made fun of is even worse, isn't it? Trust me, I know how that feels, too. I've had to put up with it every day of my life, even in my own house growing up."

Boq, who had somehow managed to stay silent until then, now interjected. "If you turn him against me, I swear, I'll-"

"You'll do nothing, and if you do, it'll be over my dead body! Now can it, you oversized tin can!" Fiyero yelled at him.

Elphaba kept going as if neither of them had spoken. "Brr, believe me, you don't know the meaning of what it is to be mocked until you've walked a mile in my shoes. I'll be honest with you, I've always had a connection with Animals, probably because most are outsiders, like me, and we understand each other. But I've never been able to relate to any the way I can relate to you, not before now. And to tell the truth, we really do need all the help we can get over here."

The large Cat looked at Boq, then Elphaba and her small rag-tag team. "She understands me," he said quietly. "You're just starting to scare me. Sorry." He made his way across the room and ran up the stairs to stand next to Dorothy. "You made the right choice," she said. "Trust me."

"Dorothy," Boq said, visibly struggling not to blow a smoke stack and go totally ballistic. "Do I need to remind you that you may be giving up your only chance of getting home?" Dorothy scowled at him"I've chosen my side!" she yelled. "At this point I don't care about getting home anymore, I just want Elphaba to get the justice that she and her sister both deserve, and I'll do anything I can to help make sure that she does!"

Glinda turned to Elphaba and asked somewhat retorhically, "Elphie, whattaya say we try out that spell that Morrible told us never to use unless it's an emergancy?" Elphaba pretended to think about it for a moment. "Well," she said, "this certainly does seem to fit emergancy standards." She shrugged. "Sure, let's give it a shot."

The girls went to the center of the room and stood at arm's length from each other, then joined hands. They looked at the ground and closed their eyes, starting to chant at a whisper, two voices becoming one, growing in volume each time they went back to the beginning, until finally, their voices reached full strength.

"Eleka nahmen tatey av reh av reh eleka ditum. Eleka nahmen tatey av reh av reh eleka ditum. Eleka namen tatey av reh av reh eleka ditum..."

After several repeats, their hair was swirling wildly around them. Their heads flew back suddenly, faces towards the ceiling high above them. Then, without any warning of any kind, their eyes snapped open, glowing an eerie purple.

Fiyero, Dorothy, and Brr stared at them in awe. "Fae..." the scarecrow whispered.

As if she could hear him, Elphaba spoke in a voice that echoed with that of Nessarose's and another that Fiyero didn't recognize, but assumed must have been her mother's. She said only two words: "Stand back."

That was the only warning any of them got.

An invisible force knocked Fiyero and the others back as a giant flash of blinding purple light filled the entire room, forcing them to shield their eyes and look away. The only clues provided as to what could have possibly been happening were the ungodly sounds of metal scraping against the floor, then against itself. There was an unearthly moan, followed by a bloodcurling scream of agony that made the hairs on the back of Dorothy's neck stand on end. Then a completely unidentifiable noise that was surely not of that, or any other, earth filled the air.

The utter silence that followed was completely deafening.

Fiyero was the first one who dared to slowly open his eyes and turn around.

Everything seemed more or less intact, as far as he could tell. Dorothy and Brr, who had come down the stairs when the girls began the spell, were huddled together on the ground, faces to the floor, ears covered, and Dorothy's head hidden beneath Brr's mane. Elphaba and Glinda were collapsed in a heap on the floor together, clearly drained almost entirely of near all their energy, but neither one appeared physically harmed.

The only one missing was Boq.

"No physical evidence of him..." Fiyero muttered under his breath. And it was true. Not even a scorch mark remained to suggest he had been blasted by lightning, perhaps, or any scrape marks to indicate, as the unearthly sounds had, that he had been dragged across the floor at one point. Even his axe was gone.

Elphaba moaned softly and Fiyero's attention was immediately drawn back over to her. "Fae!" He got up and rushed to her side. "Elphaba, love, can you hear me? It's Fiyero, say something." Dorothy and Brr approached from behind. "Are they alright?" she asked. "Try to wake up Glinda," he told her. Dorothy nodded. "On it," she said.

"Fae, it's me. Wake up, are you okay, love?" Elphaba stirred and her eyes fluttered open. "Fiyero..." she whispered.

The look on her face confused him. It was as if he were a stranger she had never before laid eyes upon until that very moment, and suddenly her world was filled with illumination, her meaning suddenly clear, and her life suddenly given reason.

Her eyes filled with tears and she smiled.

"I promised you, Fiyero," she said as she sat up. "Didn't I promise you?"
"What-"

"Tell me something, Yero. Can you feel this?" She leaned in and kissed him deeply. He was shocked and elated to feel her soft lips mold themselves perfectly to his own.

When she pulled back to look at him, there was a steady stream of overjoyed tears flowing smoothly down her face, leaving behind wet trails that glistened in the early morning light coming in from outside that was dimmed by the dust on the windows, making her look to him more like a goddess than ever.

"H-How...?" Elphaba shook her head. "We may never know for sure," she said, "but I honestly don't care all that much. I'm just grateful to have you back!" Too overwhelmed with emotion to speak, Fiyero just grabbed her and pulled her in for another kiss.

This time, neither of them held anything back. It was deep and passionate, and they poured everything into it; all of their pain and heartache and countless other emotions that they both suffered from during three weeks of seperation that felt like an eternity, all their love and passion for each other, their hearts and souls, all into just one kiss.

They could have stayed that way for hours, lost in each other for the entire day if Dorothy and Brr hadn't started to make gagging sounds. "Just wait," Elphaba said, looking pointedly at Dorothy. "One day you'll meet someone who would die for you and you'll fall just as hopelessly in love. It's only a matter of time."

"Ew," the younger girl said flatly. "Sha...Wha...Wha hapened?" Glinda asked as she came to and sat up. "You guys went all laser light show and Tin Face pulled a Houdini," Dorothy said told her. The others looked at her in confusion. "I guess you don't have laser light shows or Harry Houdini in Oz, huh? Nevermind then."
"Boq is just...gone," Fiyero said. "No scorch marks, nothing. Even his axe is gone. It's like...he never even existed."

Glinda stared at him, jaw on the floor. "Huuuuuuh..." she said. Unable to resist making a crack, he grinned and said, "Come on, say it with me now; huuuu-maaaa-"

She smacked him.

"Now that one I felt," he said. "Good, because that was just to be sure that you could. Now I need to do the real one."

"Wait, whattaya mean re-"

Smack.

"...OOOOW-UH! Glinda, that one really hurt! Sweet Oz, I think you just disloacated my jaw! Dammit, woman!"
"It should hurt, I put twice as much force in just to make it as painful as possible."

Elphaba rolled her eyes and sighed. "Please don't make me play mother here, you two," she said. "So...what are we supposed to do now?" Brr asked. They all looked around at each other for a moment before Elphaba spoke. "Well," she said as they stood up. "First, I believe one of us has a very important decision to make."

She turned to Dorothy. "Who?" the girl asked. "Me?"

"Dorothy, I want you to listen closely to what I'm about to tell you and think very, very carefully before you give me an answer, do you understand?"

"Yes ma'am."

"You came here totally unaware that any of us even existed, and completely ignorant of the hardships that we have all faced over the course of the past three years. Now, I believe it's safe to say that our problems and yours have become one and the same, would you agree with that?"

"Yes."

"Then you now have a choice. Keep in mind, however, that the path you choose could be completely life altering, not only for you, but for everybody you have ever come in contact with outside of Oz."

Dorothy took a deep breath and let it out. "What are the paths I can take?" she asked.

"You only have two. The first option is to return home to life as you knew it prior to all of this. You will pass the whole thing off as a mere dream, tornado and all."
"Even you?"

"...Even us."

"And...my second option?"

"Your second option...is to remain here with us. Everyone in your world will completely forget you. There will be no pictures of you, no written accounts, records, or documents with you name in them. There won't even be any birth certificate. It will be as if you were never born. Choose very, very carefully. Think about this, try to consider the consequences that each choice holds."

"How much time has passed since I got here?" Dorothy asked. "I can't say," Elphaba told her after a brief pause. "It could be only seconds, it could be years. Either way, however, should you choose to return, I'll make sure you get put back after the tornado has ended, that way it will seem as if you simply hit your head on something during the commotion and it knocked you out, which would be where the whole dream aspect I mentioned before comes in."

Dorothy nodded, chewing the corner of her lower lip anxiously, debating things in her head. She stared down at her feet, scrutinizing every little detail about the Ruby Slippers, studying the patterns of light hitting them, trying hard to memorize them from every angle for reasons that even she did not know.

"This is what it all comes down to, Dorothy. Everything you've been through during your time here should greatly influence the decision you are about to make. Right here, right now...This is your moment of judgement. Which path will you choose?"

FINI

AN: So, which path will she choose? I can't say...yet. The answer will be revealed in the sequal. Now, who found the answer to Elphaba's mystery sickness? Elphaba has known what it was all along, and she has only told one person so far. She told that person in this chapter. Who, you ask? Let's just say that only two people can speak the Language of Old. The answers to all of your questions are about to be revealed. Read on, my pretties.

Vinkun Translations:

Yenah, Ka geyeno vavah sival cerena: "Yero, I have to tell you something." Much like Fallah, Yenah will be used often in the future, so do not forget that it translates to "Yero." Yenah, again, has that "ae" sound at the beginning. "Yae-nuh," with a slight "a" sound to the "uh" part at the end, just like in Fallah. The two are very similar in that prospect, which I did on purpose. Ka, or "I." Here, we see the "ka" by itself for the first time, which means that not only does it use that pronoun as its base, meaning it must always be capitalized, but also, since we see it without any additional letters tacked onto the end of it as we do with things such as Kav, "I'll," this tells us that it is simply the pronoun "I" being used in its most basic form. Geyeno, "have to," pronounced "gae-en-oh." The "en" is pronounced as it is in "ten." And, once again, we have the "ae" pronounciation that we see in Fae. Vavah, "tell," is "vah-vah." Very simple, one of the least difficult to pronounce in perhaps the entire language. Sival, "you," is "see-vah," again, very simple. A very good example of where to find this word inside of a longer one would be the phrase Avash sivalia, which is, if memory serves, the very first thing in the entire Arjiki language that I ever created, and it means "I love you." Finally, cerena, "something." The "C" is a soft "C," so we say it as like an "S," and the entire word is "suh-ren-ah," and once again, the "uh" at the beginning has a slight "a" sound to it. The root words are, of course, cer, "some," and rena, "thing." We usually refrain from using a double "r" in the middle, although this is not required and a double "r" can, if preferred, be used, which make it appear as cerrena.

Rava: Very simple, one word only; "Really." Pronounced "rah-vuh," again, one of the simplest pronounciations thus far.

Vashava: "Yes?"

Ravash teva dala nevo teva shavnae rekan ganav naeano: "Ask the night in the forest three weeks ago." Now, if you look closely, you'll notice that, for the first time (that I can remember, anyway), I have given each word in English its own seperate Arjiki equivilant without combining any into a single word. I won't get into the specifics, as it is a tad long compared to most other sentences due in part to the lack of word combinations, so I will simply translate what each word means and give the pronounciations. Ravash, ask, "rah-vah-sh." Teva is a commonly used word and absolutely must be remembered, it means the, and is pronounced "tae-vah." Dala, night, "dah-la." Nevo, in, "nae-voh." (think "oh" as in "oh my gosh," but with the letter V in front of it) Then again, we see teva, the, after that, we have shavnae, forest, "sh-ahv-nae." Rekan, three, "rae-kahn." Ganav, week, or, depending on the context, weeks, plural, which is what we have here, "gah-nahv." And finally, naeano, ago, "nae-ah-no."

Now, are you ready for the answer to the question that I know has been burning within, slowly gnawing and eating away at you from the inside out? Good.

Close your eyes.

Count to ten.

Take a deep breath.

Here it is.

Ladies and gentleman, Maggie the Mad Majesty of Muchness, the Black Cat, the Ravendesk, the Nevermore Raven, the Lenore Raven, Lenore, the Nevermore Raven of Lenore, the Lenore Raven of Nevermore, the Raven, Lady Ligeia herself, along with Lady Glinda Arduenna of Frottica of the Pertha Hills of the Upper Uplands of Gillikin, Crown Prince Fiyero Tiigelaar of the Arjiki clan, ruling tribe of the powerful Vinkus, and Elphaba Thropp, Grand Queen of Oz and the Emerald Nation's most powerful sorceress, soon to take on her newest title, Crown Princess of the Arjikis and wife of Prince Fiyero, is deeply honored and proud to present...

...the Final Translation...

...the Final Answer...

...the One..

...the Only...

...the name of Our Grand Queen Elphaba's long-contemplated and long-researched...

...Mystery. Sickness.

Two words only, ladies and gentleman.

Two. Words. Only.

You read it once without realizing what it was, and completely ignorant of what it meant, of its great signifigance.

Ignorance, I now commandeth thee...

...be goneth! Return from whence thou hast come!

Because here it is, at long, long last:

Kava denego.

"I'm pregnant."