Who: Luthien and Elphaba What: Talking about the Jungle temple Where: Their home When: Early Oct Rating: Medium for talk of child endangerment Status: Complete
Elphaba had brought the children home from getting checked out at the hospital, given them some dinner and settled them in bed. For a time she’d flitted between their two rooms, watching them breathing, ears alert to every sound they made for fear they would show any distress or stop breathing. Hearing the front door opening, she turned and made her way to greet her wife.
While Luthien wanted to check on the children, she knew they were safe, and Elphaba was the one that needed her more right now. She slipped her arms around Elphaba, pulling her close and offering what comfort she could. “Are you alright?”
“Hi,” Elphaba sighed as she sank into the warm embrace her wife offered. “It was awful, just...I’ve never felt that kind of fear before,” she told Luthien, tucking her face against her wife’s neck as she spoke.
“I can scarcely imagine.” Even now, she could feel Elphaba’s distress like a beacon. A terrible, dark beacon. She kissed the top of her head and lifted her easily into her arms. “Tell me what happened. All of it.”
Elphaba sighed and relaxed as Luthien picked her up. “I don’t know what happened. I was here with the children, watching them both playing in the middle of the living room and then suddenly we were ripped away and into one of my Dreams, my nightmare,” she lamented as she felt Luthien moving.
Cradling her wife, Luthien carried her over to the couch and sat down with her. “Do you think they were really there, or they were an illusion?”
“I...I don’t know,” Elphaba admitted as they settled on the couch together. “Dior hasn’t said much since I came back and Mae...Mae has been quiet too and a bit clingy. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with them and they were both in good health physically but... until we can get Dior to talk I guess we won’t know. All I know is that I appeared in this...place from my Dreams and I just knew that Mae had been left in that well by those horrible children,” her voice started breaking, choking up as she talked to Luthien. “And I knew that she was...she was drowning,” she wiped her face, not having realised she was crying.
Luthien listened patiently, setting her own feelings aside and brushing her fingers at Elphaba’s tears. She tried to absorb what she was saying, to discover what she could do to help her. “And then what?”
“I just ran, as fast as I could, for the well, wrenched the cover off and pulled her out, but she...she wasn’t breathing,” Elphaba tried to catch her breath and carry on. “The rest is hazy, I remember...I remember taking her to Nanny who helped me revive her I think,” she rested her head on Luthien’s shoulder. “That’s where things differ from my Dreams though...in my Dreams, I...my magic...lashed out and the boy who trapped Liir in the well died, but this time...this time was different. He survived...and then we were back here...as if we’d never gone anywhere, except Mae was crying,” she took a deep breath. “So then I took them to the hospital to get them checked out.”
Silently, Luthien mulled over what had happened. It sounded almost like a second chance, or a test. Possibly both, but certainly something out of any number of stories she’d heard. Or even participated in herself. “You passed, whatever happened was a test, and you passed.”
Elphaba sniffed and wiped her face again as she listened. “A test? A test for what?” she asked, confused.
“To prove to yourself you can be a worthy mother,” Luthien suggested. “Bad things will happen. They are children. They will fall and scrape their knees, there may be broken bones. There may be illness. And we will be there through it all for them.”
Elphaba considered her point for a little while before resetting herself against Luthien and snuggling in a bit more. “Well it could have done it in other ways, like a scraped knee or something,” she groused, although secretly pleased at Luthien’s assessment of what had happened.
“A child scrapes his knee and he gets back up again.” Having raised Dior once already Luthien was now familiar with how much damage a child could take just by being a child.
“I know, they're resilient little things really,” Elphaba snuggled into Luthien’s warmth a bit more. “I think it'll take awhile to get that image out of my head though. To get the feeling of lifting her still body out of the well,” she told her wife.
Just from hearing her describe it, gave Luthien the heebies. She could visualize that far too well, and she stroked Elphaba’s back lightly. “Then we will need new memories, to deal with that old one.”
Elphaba smiled at Luthien’s words. “I like the sound of that, any suggestions?” she replied, burrowing deeper into Luthien’s warmth.
“For starters, I am going to give you a full body massage. And then we are going to turn on netflix and find a movie for us to all watch as a family.” It was simple, mundane. And it was the kind of thing Luthien sometimes lived for.