Fire

When asked Elphaba Thropp always claimed she had no use for such archaic and divisive (her words) belief systems as those extolled and practiced by her father and sister. She would dismiss the teachings of each deity Oz had to offer in swift, articulate turn.

The Unnamed God too unyielding.

The Cult of Kumbricia too abstract.

The Pleasure Faith too convenient. 

She had no desire, so the green girl said, to ponder the possibilities of whether she had a soul, and if she did which trumped up selfish undeserving god she had to thank for it. There simply wasn’t time to debate whether a person would move from this life to the next with the power of prayer and a healthy donation in the weekly collection plate. Or even a desire to question if there was a next life to move to in the first place (last place?) the green girl just didn’t care.

In short then one could say, and often the pious amongst the student body actually did say, that Elphaba Thropp, daughter of a preacher, sister to a religious zealot, had very little, if indeed any kind of faith at all.

So finding herself in the position of suddenly needing faith in something, not just something in fact, but someone living and breathing and sat across the room from her gently crying still, placed Elphaba in the curious situation of being stuck probably for the first time in her life for precisely what words to express herself with.

It was all very well for her father to be struck with inspiration by the Unnamed God when he was dragging her around the swamps of Quadling Country holding court. (Albeit a confused and inept one, the Quadlings having little use nor comprehension for the kind of piety Frex had to offer). It was quite another matter however, for Elphaba to do the same with her new found faith in the golden haired girl she shared a room with.

How does one go about taking a leap of faith anyway? Elphaba sighed to herself in frustration. Doubting she had the skills to follow through with this.

The night was tick-tocking on and the tension in their room permeated like a thick fog over the hinterlands in winter. Neither girl speaking, each lost in thoughts of the other. At least one girl trying desperately to think of a way to break the silence and the other girl wishing her tears would just stop falling already.

Elphaba grew increasingly ill-tempered with herself for her lack of articulation. Each time she thought of what it meant to place her faith in the Gillikin girl, to trust her instincts which were just screaming out inside her to break the silence with an out of character apology and an even more out of character confession of affection. Well each time Elphaba contemplated what all this meant her words were stripped away from her, as if she knew none to begin with. Her mouth dried arid and her heart began to beat fast in her chest at the very idea that she could feel the affection she was feeling towards Galinda, let alone say it out loud.

If she’d had more experience in matters of this kind, and by that it needs to be qualified as any experience at all in matters of this kind, then perhaps Elphaba would recognise the physical reactions one’s body went through when they wanted to express their love for another. Not that this was, is, could be love you understand (the green girl hadn’t figured that far ahead yet) but it was something. And something to a naïve, socially awkward, conspicuously coloured 19-year-old girl was a very big thing indeed.

The heart palpitations, the dry throat and ragged breathing were all perfectly normal of course. But this was little comfort to the green girl who didn’t have the faintest acquaintance with normal, hadn’t in fact been in the same vicinity of normal her whole life.

Pulling fidgety hands through her ebony hair, dislodging thick strands from their captive braid and allowing them freedom to frame her face smoothing the sharpness somewhat, Elphaba thought again how exactly one went about taking a leap of faith. Recognising in part the reason for some of her reticence was because she wasn’t at all sure Galinda would be there to catch her when she did. For the blonde wasn’t showing any signs of moving from the plush window seat she occupied with her back still turned to the green girl. There was no indication that she’d be offering Elphaba a get-out-clause from awkward situations the way she had that night on the dance floor. So maybe Galinda really didn’t care so much for her after all.

But if that were the case, Elphaba wondered, why did Galinda cry so?

It was a question the blonde herself was trying to reach a conclusion to. Just as Elphaba wrestled with herself over things that weren’t making a whole lot of sense between the two of them that night, so Galinda sat pondering the sudden ache she felt at the green girl’s admonishing words.

She’d surely fallen foul of a friend’s naïvely vicious tongue before. The Misses Shenshen and Pfannee may lack the wherewithal in the classroom to even turn up for the correct lesson, but they certainly came out tops in the bitchiness stakes, on this all of Shiz University were agreed. And when such barbed retorts and acerbic rejoinders were directed the blonde’s way, because really all three of them knew they were fair game for the other where cutting remarks were concerned, they were like water off a duck’s (Ducks?) back to the heiress. After all, she hadn’t grown up listening to her mother’s daily dose of caustic barbs without developing immunity to such behaviour.

Yet she didn’t feel immune to the markedly less biting word’s Elphaba spoke to her just now. Nor did she appear to be immune to the detached sharp tone in which she said them.

The blonde swallowed a deep sob, more out of regret for the action in the first place than wanting to hide the fact she was crying still. For surely the green girl wasn’t so unfeeling she could not see Galinda’s distress? The thought that Elphaba could very well see her distraught manner and was still unaffected by it only brought Galinda more misery, and once again she asked herself why had Elphaba’s actions towards her upset her so much?

She hadn’t been as cruel as Pfannee could be or deliberately obtuse like Shenshen. Galinda thought on reflection that actually Elphaba had been very…well Elphaba like when she acted the way she did. And usually Galinda could counter such spiky behaviour from her roommate with her own endearingly perky, forthright (some called it pushy) personality until at least a small smile would break out on that stern green visage.

But not tonight it seemed.

Maybe it was the mounting storm that had darkened their moods so much? Maybe the lesson with Morrible had taken more of its toll on the heiress than she had first thought? Given that lately under Elphaba’s influence she had actually begun to care a little about her studies and found herself concentrating on the fish-like woman at the front of the class. What would come naturally to her – brightness and frivolity to counterpoint darkness and seriousness – just couldn’t be drummed up right now, all thanks to Morrible and the blonde’s new found work ethic.

But Galinda suspected these weren’t the reasons for the sudden awkwardness, the newly formed ache in her heart or the few tears that still continued to mar her flawless skin. She suspected it ran deeper than just the surface of things. Because she’d discovered over time that things with Elphaba generally did.

She didn’t want to admit it, had positively discounted the theory on numerous occasions, finding clearer focus in re-arranging her shoe closet or testing herself on how many shades of pink she owned in her wardrobe. But now faced with no such distractions a clarity of thought came to the blonde she could only wish for in Doctor Dillamond’s science class. Possessing it now however left her churning inside, as if the storm that raged outside had moved into her body, a tumult of hitherto hidden emotions settling inside her as it did. A rush of fading memories added weight to the feelings which up till now she would have sworn were impossible for her to feel. But that sharpness of clarity, as sharp as the girl in question Galinda thought, made even the impossible solidify into truth.

The blonde recalled a pained expression in hazel brown eyes as they surveyed a room full of laughter and spite aimed at her. She remembered the steely look of determination replace the hurt, and the squaring of shoulders in a resolute act of defiance by the green girl who would not let the laughter drive her away. She felt again the awfulness of having ever suggested wearing such a silly hat to begin with, and how by deciding to fix her own mistakes for once the blonde found forgiveness in the eyes of the green girl when she joined her on the dance floor. Most importantly she remembered afterwards, the two of them alone together. The shared intimacy of silly secrets (what had she been saying about that vacuous Winkie prince?) The slow breaking of Elphaba’s will so that first smile appeared softening pointed features. The first innocent brush of body parts as Galinda leaned over and started to undo that austere braid.

She remembered the silky smoothness as it passed through her small hands. The stark but beautiful contrast of pale against green when she swept the ebony aside exposing a sinewy green shoulder, resting her hand for a moment upon it. She remembered the night being warm so could not explain the sudden shiver that had ran down her spine the moment she had touched the soft, emerald skin, but was rather relieved that as soon as she removed her hand the sensation left her.

Galinda remembered thinking a split second before saying it that she thought her roommate was beautiful. Surprised at herself for being able to feel such a thing for the social misfit, yet knowing it was the absolute truth when she looked again, placing a pink flower in the dark hair.

A small smile from the green girl was all it took, the blonde remembered now. She was staring up at Galinda, a little incredulous that she’d allowed her so close Galinda assumed, but she smiled nonetheless. At the closeness they shared or maybe in spite of it? It didn’t really matter because there it was. The blossom of feeling in Galinda’s heart. The secret that Elphaba had been keeping all this time which only the heiress had eyes to uncover.

Elphaba Thropp was beautiful.

Galinda had told her so.

And what the sheltered, privileged blonde girl from Gilikin thought was impossible became a kernel of truth the moment she did. It became the reason for her tears now, the reason why Elphaba’s offhand, rude, usual manner had upset her so much.

You see it wasn’t just that Elphaba was beautiful, it was that Galinda found her beautiful. And like most things we find beautiful in this world, we want to touch them, and hold them, and tell them (if it’s at all possible) that they are beautiful.

Galinda had been brave and done the telling part. In fact that had come so naturally, happened with so little thought and surprised the blonde so much that she’d said it in the first place, that it had knocked the two other things Galinda had wanted to do right out of her pretty blonde head.  

Until now.

Now she remembered.

She’d wanted to touch the green girl in a way Galinda had thought at the time wasn’t entirely the way two friends touched each other. She’d wanted to hold Elphaba in a way she knew to be different to the way she might hold Shenshen or Pfannee in an embrace. This kind of embrace would definitely linger longer Galinda remembered thinking at the time.

She could remember it all now. All those surprising, new, tingly sensations that had begun with a pink flower and a smile came flooding back, and the blonde marvelled at them having ever gone away in the first place.

How could one forget such feelings as this? She thought to herself as another fresh memory sparked within her. Elphaba fleeing their room that night after Galinda had called her beautiful.

She supposed amidst the concern she felt for Elphaba when she fled like that, along with the general excitement those first few weeks that had been life in Shiz generated, coupled with the growing need to focus on more than one thing at once now being a student actually mattered to her, it was quite easy for one to forget feelings that were new and confusing and rather welcome, but unsettling at the same time because they made so little sense. Galinda supposed then, given such extenuating circumstances as these, and also given that although far more emotionally mature that those silly boys Biq hung around she was, after all, only 19 years old and couldn’t be expected to process and comprehend every new sensation that came along, that it was all highly likely she would forget such monumentally important sensations as those she’d experienced with Elphaba Thropp the night of the Oz Dust dance.

All that mattered, the blonde concluded, was that she had remembered them now.

And having remembered them all now a fresh wave of tears broke free. It really was ridiculous, she considered rather angrily, how much she could cry in one sitting. Yet no matter how unwanted the tears were the cause of them made her breath hitch in her throat and the flow of them to not wane in the least. For up till her moment of insight and remembrance all Galinda had thought was in jeopardy between Elphaba and herself that night was their burgeoning friendship, but now she realised that it wasn’t just a simple thing as friendship that was at stake at all. It was a burgeoning something not easily defined at 19 that was at stake now. Something that was to do with how fast her heart would beat when she caught a glimpse of glistening emerald skin in the morning, when a threadbare nightdress was discarded for an equally lifeless looking dark dress and sinewy naked green flesh flashed quickly before her eyes. Something related to finding the tall green girl beautiful, a truth so rooted inside the blonde now she felt she had always known it.

Something that Galinda had lost without even realising she was in possession of it in the first place.

It’s not fair the blonde opined, beginning to pout in between her tears.

She wasn’t the kind of person who lost such auspicious things of this nature, not that she was exactly sure what nature this was to begin with, she only knew she wasn’t happy losing it.

So what are you going to do about it Cry Baby?

The manner her inner self asked that particularly pertinent question could have matched the best taunts from her so called friends Misses Shenshen and Pfannee, but there was only one person who ever called her by that name. And Galinda didn’t particularly like mommie dearest’s challenge to her now.

I’m going to fix this.

She thought in answer to her own question.

Just how she was going to fix this she had no idea, but at least the thought of doing so had stopped her tears from falling. And that had to be a good start, didn’t it?

She wiped the tears away as gently as she could. The saltwater left watery stains on her cheeks that she knew only proper grooming would alleviate. She also knew she didn’t have time for such an effort. She checked her reflection as best she could in the window glass, fearing the worse about her appearance and only being half wrong after she’d seen the damage.

Well I’ll just have to do this looking au naturale she thought. The ‘do what’ of that thought being conveniently overlooked.

So she took a deep breath and steeled herself for the wrath, or in the very least the mild annoyance she knew Elphaba would level at her when interrupted by the blonde.

And as she turned to finally face her roommate she told herself...

...I can do this.

Do what exactly Galinda had no idea.