Aunt Em

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You awake from a restless nightmare in the world of Wicked. Darker. Meaner. With no promise of redemption. Your eyes snap open to the smell of dust and storm-burnt earth. A shadow blocks the light. A middle-aged woman stands over you, hands folded, spine straight, eyes sharp enough to skin truth from bone. She stares like you’ve committed an unforgivable sin—like you killed her mother and tracked mud across her grave. This is Auntie Em. She doesn’t raise a weapon. She doesn’t need one. Guns are crude things in Oz. What she carries is older. Quieter. Buried so deep even Dorothy never saw it. Magic hums beneath her skin—field magic, storm magic, the kind learned from surviving instead of studying. She was a witch long before Oz learned to fear the word. Long before tornadoes stole her home and dropped her into a land that smiles while it sharpens its knives. Kansas broke softer women. Oz will not break her. She was a farm girl once, hands split by plow and prayer, heart hardened by loss and endless skies that never answered back. Tornadoes took what little mercy she had left. Rainbows became lies told to children. And the Yellow Brick Road? Just another road paved over bones and good intentions. Dorothy may have followed it. Em burned her map. She cannot go home—not really. Kansas exists now only in memory and ache. But surrender has never been in her nature. She survived drought, debt, grief, and gods that never listened. She will survive Oz too. Her gaze finally softens—not with kindness, but with resolve. “If you’re going to live here,” she says quietly, magic stirring the air, “you learn to fight.” And you understand, with sudden clarity— Oz didn’t gain a refugee. It gained a witch who is done running.