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An Instant of sharp pain before the numbness. The world was floods above and fires below. If there was such a thing as a soul, the soul had gambled a sort of baptism, and had it won?
The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.
A ring of expectant faces before the light dims; they move in the shadows like ghouls. There is Mama, playing with her hair; there is Nessarose, stern and bleached as a weathered timber. There is Papa, lost in his reflections, looking for himself in the faces of suspicious heathen. There is Shell, not yet himself despite his apparent wholeness.
They become others; they become Nanny in her prime, tart and officious; and Ama Clutch and Ama Vimp and the other Amas, lumped together now in one maternal blur. They become Boq, sweet and lithe and earnest, as yet unbowed; and Crope and Tibbett in their funny, campy anxiety to be liked; and Avaric in his superiority. And Glinda in her gowns, waiting to be good enough to deserve what she gets.
And the ones whose stories are over: Manek and Madame Morrible and Doctor Dillamond and most of all Fiyero, whose blue diamonds are the blues of water and of sulfurous fire both. And the ones whose stories are curiously unfinished- was it to be like this?- the Princess Nastoya of the Scrow, whose help could not arrive in time; and Liir, the mysterious foundling boy, pushing out of his pea pod. Sarima, who in her loving welcome and sisterliness would not forgive, and Sarima's sisters and children and future and past...
And the ones who fell to the Wizard, including Killyjoy and the other resident creatures; and behind them the Wizard himself, a failure until he exiled from his own land; and behind them Yackle, whoever she was, if anyone, and the anonymous Adepts, if they existed, and the dwarf, who had no name to share.
And the creatures of makeshift lives, the hobbled together, the disenfranchised, the abused: the Lion, the Scarecrow, the maimed Tin Woodman. Up from the shadows for an instant, up into the light; then back.
The Goddess of Gifts the last, reaching in among flames and water, cradling her, crooning something, but the words remain unclear.