Art, Life, Imitation

Friends Forever and Always

"We'll be friends forever, right Elphie?" Glinda asked excitedly as she gave her new friend a makeover.

"Sure Glinda. Whatever you say," Elphaba mumbled back. She hadn't meant to sound disinterested, but she had no idea how else to reply. Friendship, as a whole, was still so new to her, let alone eternal friendship.

"I mean it, Elphie!" Glinda egged Elphaba on, wanting a response a little more intelligent than "Whatever you say, Glinda!" Because she knew Elphaba was just being snide. "Do you think we'll be friends forever and always?"

It was a question asked with a playful tone, but as the full weight of the question sank into Glinda's mind, she felt something akin to a chill run down her spine, but it wasn't unpleasant, just... powerful.

And from the way Elphaba suddenly tensed up, Glinda could guess that she felt the same inexplicable, unexplainable chill.

"I don't know Glinda," Elphaba finally said, invested in the conversation at long last. "Forever is a long time..."

It wasn't necessarily the intellectual reply Glinda was hoping for, but... Guess that's on me for not being more careful what I wished for!

Glinda never asked such questions ever again, at least until the day she and Elphaba visited the Emerald City together.

"Friends forever and always!" Glinda threw out her hand as Elphaba threw herself out a window, broomstick grasped firmly between her legs.

"Friends forever and always!" Elphaba shouted back as she rose higher and higher over the Emerald City Palace.

The chill that ran down their spines the first time they said those words came again, but this time, they relished in the unexplained, unexplainable sensation. They wanted to believe that they really had forged a truly unbreakable bond, because the way things were looking at the present, that bond was dangerously close to fraying away entirely. Already, it was being stretched all the way across Oz as Elphaba flew further and further away from Glinda. Their promise was indeed not in vain, the pair managing to meet one last time before Elphaba's death.

"We'll be friends forever, right Elphie?" Glinda asked tearfully as she and Elphaba shared one last embrace.

"Of course," Elphaba promised, gently hooking a finger under Glinda's chin. "We'll be friends—"

"Forever and always." They spoke in unison, the familiar chill running down their spines one last time. It would be eons before they felt it again.

ooo

"We'll be friends forever, right Elsa?" Four-year-old Anna asked as she and Elsa worked busily on their latest snowman creation: Olaf.

"Of course! I'll wuv you forever!" Seven-year-old Elsa grabbed Olaf's stick arms and waved them, pretending to embrace Anna.

Anna giggled in delight, but even though she grasped Olaf's little stick hands in her own, her eyes locked with her older sister's. "But I mean, like, we'll be best friends forever and always won't we?" she asked.

The moment Anna said those words, she felt a strange shiver ripple and slither down her back. There was something eerily familiar about the feeling, but Anna could not remember any time in her four-year life in which she'd ever felt a chill, a tingle, like that. From the stunned look on Elsa's face, her hands slowly slipping from the backs of Olaf's arms, that she was feeling the chill too, but she didn't know what it was either.

"Of course, Anna," she finally said, just to fill the silence. She was speaking in her normal, Elsa voice again, but Anna almost had to do a doubletake because there was a deeper quality to Elsa's voice, just for that one moment, that made her sound like someone years beyond her age. But because it only happened that one time, Anna couldn't really be sure whether Elsa's voice had changed, or if she was just hearing things. Anna would not speak those words again for about 14 years.