Soulmates

Color

For all of her life, Elphaba had been told that she was different from everyone else. They said that her skin color was wrong. It was green. In the grand spectrum of skin tones, Elphaba's skin had no proper fit. But Elphaba could never quite confirm this because she could only see in grayscale. She would not be able to see in colors to be able to confirm these words until she found her Soulmate, but from what everyone was saying, she likely wouldn't ever find one because nobody would want a Soulmate that looked like her. All the normal folks, they said, had skin color that was brown or white or black or some color in between, but no one had anything quite so unnatural as green. To Elphaba, however, it did not look "green", it just looked grayish, like pretty much everyone else. But she wasn't foolish enough to think that this whole "green skin" thing was only a prank. She knew that the people must've been telling her the truth that she was different, and it was a truth she did not like to face.

"I suppose I will spend my life alone," Elphaba decided one day with a heavy sigh. The closest thing she had to a consolation was the realization that if she never found a Soulmate, she would never see color, and if she never saw color, she would never be forced to see just how different from everyone else she really looked. As a girl who could only see in black, white and gray, "green" was literally unfathomable to her, but from what she was hearing, green was bad, and she would've been fine if she never ever had to see the horrible color that corrupted her skin.

But, against all expectations, Elphaba did manage to meet her Soulmate, though the Soulmate was nothing like what she'd imagined. She had just enrolled into Shiz University and managed to get accepted in. In the middle of move-in day, Elphaba had been lugging her bags off the train and past the station into the campus. Along the way, some bratty girl, seated daintily on top of her luggage rolled past. Elphaba didn't see her at first, so busy trying to carry her own bags all by hand, but she could hear the girl's whiny, mean-spirited complaining.

"No! No! Don't go too fast or you'll mess up my hair!"

"Ok, come on now, don't be stupid, don't go this slow, or we'll never even make it to campus!"

"Woah! Hey! Careful! There's a bump!"

"Watch out for that mud puddle!"

"And do be careful! Some of my things are very valuable and highly breakable!"

"And hey! Didn't I just tell you? Don't jostle my luggage!"

"Gah! And don't jostle me either!"

Annoyed and amazed that one girl could be so impossible to please, Elphaba had finally looked up just to catch a glimpse of this snobby, snotty little brat. The moment she did, her world exploded into color. Once she realized what this meant, she half considered turning right around and throwing herself onto the train tracks. But she didn't. Though, half an hour later, when her Soulmate finally got a glimpse of her as well, she began to regret her decision to keep moving forward.

"Oh! Sweet Oz, NO!" she wailed when she got sight of Elphaba for the first time. And it was made even worse by the fact that the two were in the process of being roomed together. Life really did hate Elphaba, didn't it?

"Gee. Way to make me feel good about myself," Elphaba shot back, but Galinda was too busy freaking out to hear her.

From then on, Elphaba realized two things. One, her skin really was green. She had never doubted it but, when in grayscale, it hadn't looked too different from some of the other people Elphaba knew. Now that she could see color, though, she finally realized what they all meant when they said she had green skin. Two, the hatred Elphaba felt for her Soulmate was mutual. For the whole first part of first semester, it was nothing but a bunch of bad vibes all around. But then, life ended up changing once again, against all odds and expectations...