Glinda suffers a long two months in grief, pain, and guilt. Bad enough that her mind feels fogged, that sometimes she fears she can't remember Elphaba, that her face in Glinda's memory is sometimes replaced by that of a wicked hag snarling and menacing, that she sometimes hears Morrible's voice in her head in place of her best friend's - but the dreams begin almost as soon as the Wizard has left Oz, and those are much worse.
She blames herself for not paying more attention in sorcery class, because she knows that she learned about dreams. Dreams are never what they seem to be, dreams must be analyzed and taken apart and looked at from every angle. It might have spared her the two months of pain - but then, it was Morrible who told them those things, and Glinda has had enough of Morrible in her head.
Every night it's the same, for two long months. She's back in that bleak tower room, only this time there is no curtain for her to hide behind, no veil of secrecy to shroud her from the truth, and every night she watches Elphaba die. The central image of the dream is burned onto her mind; she sees it in her waking hours as well as in her sleep. The water strikes Elphaba's skin like acid, dripping and bubbling and smoke rises from all over her body, filling the room with a thick acrid fog - but always through the fog she can still see Elphaba, standing seemingly motionless while the smoke dissolves her. In the dreams her screams are soundless, but that matters little - Glinda heard those for herself, and she's not likely to forget.
When the dreams begin to grow stranger, Glinda knows something must be done. Now, night after night, she and Elphaba are alone in the room and there is no one else to witness her death, no one to watch her slowly burning away into fog but Glinda. She wakes wanting to scream, but her throat is choked with the smoke from her dreams and the Emerald City sky is black and filthy outside her window. She takes her bubble and flees to the clean mountains of Gillikin, searching for a sky free of smoke and a mind uncluttered by the machinations of the only truly wicked witch she has ever known. In the mountains she hopes to remember Elphaba again, because more and more she fears that her memories are being changed, perverted, twisted.
But in the mountains the dreams grow stranger still, and she wakes that first night gulping and choking because this time Elphaba isn't wearing the heavy black dress that usually conceals the worst of the damage from the dream-Glinda's horrified eyes - she's naked, and the smoke rises from every inch of her skin, and Glinda wakes heaving and gasping and wondering, irrationally, why the water melted Elphaba's dress as well as herself.
And the dream continues to change every night, to twist itself into something strange and familiar at the same time. She stands watching the smoke rise from Elphaba's body, her skin so gloriously green against the white-and-blue walls, and never mind that the walls in the real tower room were grey stone and not nearly so clean either - the melting burning fog fills the room with a soapy smell, a clean smell finally, and Glinda's so grateful to have the smoke out of her nose that she doesn't question it, just stands there and breathes in the steam . . .
Steam.
Dreams are never what they seem, and this isn't a dream, it never was. It's a memory. Glinda wakes finally able to cry out, but it's not fear that makes her scream - it's frustration, release, remembering. This was never a nightmare - it's been a gift all along.
It's nineteen-year-old Glinda in the dream-memory, walking into the bath in her dormitory room back at Shiz without knocking and catching sight, for the one quick moment before she turns away and sputters an apology, of Elphaba just risen into the cool air from a bath so warm that steam, clean white steam is rising from her skin and surrounding her in a thin fog like a magical aura. Glinda stands for an extra breath with her head turned away from her roommate, breathing in the soapy smell and the warm steam that moistens her skin almost as much as Elphaba's . . . as Elphaba's.
Not a dream, but a gift, because out here she has finally found clear air and out here she finally remembers, remembers that image of Elphaba that has haunted her dreams before, but in a pleasanter although more confusing way, the image that the witch's mind spells had chased from her memory. And she cries, wrenching sobs of anguished joy, because she finally knows that her Elphaba did not melt in any bucket of water.
The sky is free of filth when she walks outside, and the moonlight offers healing. She has no best friend here to share her secret with, so, like an excited child, she whispers it delightedly into her cupped hands.
Elphaba lives.