Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Wicked or The Wizard of Oz, be it book or musical in the cases of both, nor am I making any money off of this harmless story.
Notes: So, this is where I, who am not generally one for holiday fics, write a holiday fic. In defense, I couldn't help it - this is written in defiance of finals and in celebration of finally getting into the holiday spirit. Can I get an "Amen!" :-) This may also lend to the fact that this is shameless pure fluff and is angst free. Whaddya know, huh? I'm not sure if this actually fits in with the timeline, but am too lazy and not quite obsessed enough to look it up. Pretend that it does. Characterization is probably off, since I'm not used to fluffy Elphaba and Glinda. I also would like to apologize for the bad attempt at verse writing, as I am neither a poet nor a lyricist. On the whole, I don't like this one as much as I like my others, but I hope you do.
In any case, please leave a note and tell me what you thought!
Ta, lovelies; and happy holidays to every one of you. Enjoy. :-)
A dance to our lady, a song for our Queen
Maker of all things lovely and seen
A song and a dance for the lady on high
Her spirit is with us, her coming draws nigh
Being atheistic, Elphaba had never really cared one way or another about Lurlinemas. A feast day for a fairy queen, a feast day for a woman who lived behind a waterfall: each of them were just as silly and frivolous and made just as little difference as the other. Of course, there were also those who insisted on their subjectively impartial opinions that every holiday should be treated equally, and thus celebrated equally by everyone across Oz.
Needless to say, these 'subjectively impartial' opinions were just slightly oxymoronic. Or simply moronic, as this idea was so ridiculous as to be laughable, what with politics and religion the way they were, had always been, and would always be. Especially what with the reign of the Wizard; Lurlinemas was all but banned along with Lurlinism.
Though she was always eager to debate the aspects of atheism, Elphaba's philosophy was slightly different: let those who wanted their religious beliefs have them. Who did it really affect, their forever damned immortal souls? The Lurlinemas songs were pleasant enough to hear; against any of her religious dissociation, she had always connected them with this time of year. One of her earliest memories was of her mother, pregnant with Nessa, humming such tunes to her while bustling around the small workplace that had been designated a kitchen. Sitting on a bench, Elphaba had stared back at her mother in all her green, dissatisfied curiosity. Her father had never been around at these times, of course. Looking back, she supposed it was one of the few sentimentally secular things her mother had allowed herself.
Of course, there would also be those subjectively moronic people who would ruin such songs with rather crude verses of their own. Only that morning, walking across campus alone as Glinda had dashed off somewhere, some boys from Briscoe Hall had leered at her, singing in rather awful falsettos:
A prayer for our lady, the much confused Queen
Of which one failed creation stayed ugly and green
It was nothing she'd not heard before, and it only prompted her to roll her eyes and bow her head against the cold gusts of wind driving against her. The boys looked somewhat disappointed as she passed them, and she thought them completely hopeless for expecting retaliation after these one and a half years. If nothing else was consistent, she most certainly was.
And she pretended not to hear Glinda's disbelieving snort in her head. The girl was nowhere near around.
Elphaba was, on the whole, unreasonably thankful to reach her room. It was at least away from the most of the overwhelming cold. She had come to the conclusion that one could not escape the cold entirely in northern Gillikin, and especially not in the dormitories at Shiz University. For a few minutes she simply stood in the room, pleased at the decrease in cold and wind.
"Stroke the fire then, you silly thing, look at you. You're shivering."
And there was Glinda, bustling around behind her, closing the door against the rush of cold she had thought to have so cleverly escaped. She tutted at Elphaba and threw a blanket at her before she hurried to begin the non-existent fire, for it had been reduced to only a few protesting embers while the two had been out. Elphaba caught it gratefully, looking amusedly at her roomie, whose curls were bouncing all around her. But she sank down into a chair and drew the folds of the blanket tightly around her, basking in the heat and light of the new fire.
"So, you must tell me to where you oh so mysteriously disappeared."
"Oh, Elphie, I was gone no more than a half hour longer than you."
"I can only imagine what the newspapers might begin to say about such a scandal: 'Blonde belle of Shiz University disappears whilst Lurlinemas shopping'."
Glinda huffed as she curled up with a blanket of her own. "Why ask if you already know the answer?"
"It is beyond my ability to comprehend why one, even you, must spend three weekends in a row shopping for a purely commercialistic holiday." Elphaba frowned, the folds of the blanket and the flames of the fire shifting enough to reveal that Glinda had not one, but two blankets. "Or why you should be so greedy as to horde all the blankets for your own use."
Glinda yawned. "Strip down your bed then, it doesn't matter to me."
Elphaba was already too warm and comfortable. The firelight brought forward multiple hues in fabrics, in the shoddy upholstry, in the woodwork, in Glinda's hair; it glinted off metallic and shiny surfaces and the tinsel hanging on the tree. For once, she uncharacteristically even found herself not minding the damn tree in the corner of the room or the way its scent tickled at her nose, as she was slowly hypnotized by the silence and the flickering of the lights surrounding her.
The tree. Some would call it sacrilegious, some would call it festive, and those who fit into neither category would call it a waste of space. Elphaba was inclined to be one of the latter, merely because in being atheistic she'd neither opposed nor advocated such things during this season. She supposed it should make little difference to her, in theory, but the damn thing's presence right in front of her slightly annoyed her for indefinable reasons.
Glinda hadn't begun by presenting the tree itself; no, the dear girl had grown too smart for that, and too smart for her, Elphaba feared. She'd begun by presenting the notion of Lurlinemas, moving onto more detailed things like the trees, knowing perfectly well what she was doing in drawing her roomie into long debates over the practice of Lurlinemas and the celebration of Lurlinism in relation to her own atheism.
Moreover, and in hindsight more worrying, Elphaba hadn't suspected a thing. Either her roomie knew her too well, or she was much too eager to debate the philosophies of religion.
Either way, she was now stuck in her present situation, its sweet and tickling scent wafting around the room, being prickled by its pokiness whenever she brushed by, reduced to staring murderously at it from her perch on her bed over the top of her book. She'd stared at it when Glinda had first presented it to her.
"A tree," Elphaba had said, somewhat disbelieving.
"A tree," Glinda had cheerfully confirmed, draping tinsel she'd managed to scrounge up somewhere over its branches. "And a tiny thing at that, perfectly harmless, which means you can stop looking at it as if it's about to attack you."
"What if I were allergic to pine needles?"
Glinda had looked up curiously. "Are you? The only allergy that I know you to have is that mysterious water allergy."
Elphaba had sighed. "No, I am not. Allergic to pine needles, that is. But I might have been."
"If you were allergic, I would remove the tree from the room, tinsel and all. However, I know you to be not, if only because of a lack of reaction to the vast pine forests surrounding Shiz."
And that had been that. There was a Lurlinemas tree in the room, and Elphaba gradually acclimated to its presence.
The end of the next week, Elphaba had been gravely disappointed to find that apparently that had not been that. And thus, Lurlinemas shopping had begun.
She awoke slowly to find she had drifted off in front of the fire. Nanny had come in, which might have been what woke her, and was gently trying to wake Glinda, who appeared to have slept as long as Elphaba herself had. Elphaba had always been a lighter sleeper than Glinda, who had by now convinced Elphaba that she could sleep through an earthquake. A glance at the window told her it was dark and had begun to snow.
Nanny's tsking at them brought her gaze back to her. "After dark, and you two not in your beds and the lights still on." She unsuccessfully tried to wake Glinda again. "Come help me with her, Nanny can't do it all on her own."
Elphaba stood up and walked over to them, blanket still holding its precious warmth tightly against her. "We are university students now; lights-out doesn't apply so much any more out of necessity." She cleared off the bags Glinda had discarded on her bed earlier and unceremoniously dropped them by her closet, resisting an unmerited urge to see what the devil it was she kept going out for.
"Only when studying for those horrid tests, and those are over, thank Lurline," Nanny grudgingly agreed. "Now the both of you need to catch up on all that sleep you lost – don't think Nanny didn't see the lights on under the door into the wee hours of the morning."
Elphaba didn't reply, and took over the task of reviving Glinda. "Glinda, sweet one," she tapped her shoulder. "It's time for bed, wake up."
Nanny was looking at her oddly, so she asked "What?"
"Nothing, my sweet. Nothing at all." But she gently ran a hand over the top of her head the way she had done when Elphaba was still very young, before even Nessa had been born.
Eventually Glinda was woken sufficiently to climb into her bed and fall promptly back into sleep. Elphaba was almost amused at the ease with which she fell asleep; could fall asleep at will, or did it stem from exhaustion? A mollified Nanny returned to her and Nessa's room after making sure that all was calm and right in the adjoining room. Elphaba stayed awake, unable to sleep, the scent of pine trees drifting over her.
Lurlinemas shopping had been a new experience for Elphaba. First of all, growing up as part of a unionist family (or at least a family headed by a unionist, which supposed was as good as the former), Lurlinism was regarded as paganism and was strictly forbidden by her father. She'd seen and heard Nanny and occasionally her mother rebel against this rule, but it was more a rebellion against Frex's at times overbearing faith in the Unnamed God. When one was surrounded by the Unnamed God day in and day out, Elphaba supposed one needed a break from him once and a while. Surely he'd understand. So she'd silently observed her mother and Nanny belt out old Lurlinemas songs, which tended to be secular – perhaps the lack of religious Lurlinist songs stemmed from a sense of guilt even in their rebellion? – while doing the laundry, Frex being away and far out of hearing to save the souls of the Quadlings. Elphaba had never breathed a word.
Secondly, growing up in the wastelands of the Quadlings' homes, she'd hardly been able to dash into the nearest shop and gape over the staggering array of products she might buy as sentimental gifts for her family. Furthermore, neither she nor the rest of her family had any money to buy any one of the hypothetical products. Nor were there trees to decorate in the swamps, let alone pine trees and tinsel – only muck, muck, and more muck, and maybe a bush.
This did not stop Glinda from dragging Elphaba off campus and down to Shiz, amidst the bustling, industrial city life. She seemed to know the city very well for as little time as they'd been able to get off campus, and consequently knew exactly where she wanted to go. Elphaba was barely able to keep up with her, and thought she must look fairly ridiculous: the tall awkward green girl trying to match the shorter strides of the petite blonde on a mission,perpetually four paces ahead of her.
"Oh, Elphaba, isn't it so exciting?" she exclaimed when Elphaba had finally caught up with her. "The hustle and bustle, the bells, the decorations…" She curled her fingers around Elphaba's arm.
"Wonderful," Elphaba had deadpanned. "I can barely hold on to my mittens."
She'd found that Glinda actually did not have as much money as Elphaba had originally thought. Due to circumstances in her family she seemed unwilling to talk about and a lack of a way to earn her own money, she was able to buy only a few presents. In any case, Elphaba had no money at all, and so bought nothing.
Though semester exams were looming, the next weekend Glinda took her sister out. Surprisingly, she'd managed to obtain Nanny's permission to take her out alone without Nanny's supervision. Elphaba, in fact, had been the one to intervene, bringing up that first of all, it would be good for shy and introverted Nessa to get out, and second, that the lower class girls had gone unchaperoned into the city several times without incident. It had been rather harder to convince Nessa to look on the excursion as merely shopping, rather than looking at it as a tribute to paganism. Nevertheless, both goals had been achieved, and at the end of the day, Glinda had returned with a reluctantly beaming Nessa.
It had been satisfying to see this one obstacle successfully hurdled; if Nessa could consent to the purely commercialistic aspects of Lurlinemas, could Frex? It seemed that this particular holiday had become entirely segregated from the actual doctrines, sketchy as they were, of Lurlinism. It almost made her want to go home and begin a theological debate with her father, who she knew secretly enjoyed them as much as she did; but she knew she'd much rather be among her friends, here, at Shiz University, cold and damp as it was. It was a good deal better than the hot, mucky, and damp swamps.
She woke again in what she assumed was the middle of the night, having fallen earlier into a restless sleep, but kept her eyes closed. She could feel the warmth of the miraculously still-blazing fire; smell the mixture of Glinda's perfumes, the pine needles, and the faint scent of something burning; hear movement and rustling on the other side of the room, a soft whisper of a spell.
Elphaba opened her eyes warily. "Glinda?"
She looked up, her blue eyes meeting Elphaba's clouded dark ones. "Go back to sleep, Elphie, it's still early hours yet."
"Why are you trying to burn the place down?" For she saw that Glinda had lit tiny candles among the branches of the tree, which now gave off an ethereal glow; though she would admit it was pretty, Elphaba knew trouble when she saw it.
"Shhh, I've put a spell on them so the tree won't burn. Go back to sleep."
Elphaba wasn't entirely reassured, knowing how adept Glinda was at sorcery, but was too tired to argue. "I hope I'm still here in the morning," she muttered before she turned over.
Behold the first rays of the Faerie Queen's morning
Lurlina's warm touch on a vast winter sky
They steal now through even the hardest hearts, warming
Aft' melting cold walls then shall ever there lie
Elphaba was quite pleased to find that she was not burned to death or even on fire when next she woke up. It would really be quite ironic if such a disaster occurred, for it wasn't as if she could use water to put herself out. Finding that Glinda had taken her own advice and was now curled up under her covers, she rose out of bed and went to the window. The first rays of sunlight were beginning to permeate the vast expanse of darkness, marking the beginning of Lurlinemas Day.
It was still dark in the room, as the fire had ultimately succumbed to its fate and dwindled out earlier. According to the unspoken pact she and her roomie had, the first of them out of bed was the first to start the fire in the morning and brave the shock of cold air and floor. Though this morning, this chore fell to Elphaba (as it did all but a few mornings), she was reluctant to do it this particular morning, despite the freezing air and fresh blanket of snow outside.
She decided she was slowly beginning to become accustomed to northern winters: cold weather, Lurlinemas and all.
She absently noted a muffled curse behind her, accompanied by the sound of a match being struck. Elphaba could not help smiling slightly. Sure enough, a disgruntled Glinda soon stood next to her at the window.
"You could have started the fire," her roomie grumbled.
"Yes, I could have," Elphaba agreed, not meanly. "It would have detracted attention from your pretty tree. I'm impressed, by the by, at the way your sorcery skills have advanced. I was glad to find myself not become some abnormally large lump of charred meat."
That did succeed in making Glinda smile a bit and swat her roomie playfully. "Oh, you. You do say the most garish things." She seized Elphaba's hand and led her to the tree, which Elphaba was now able to see had beautifully wrapped gifts underneath the branches. "Later we'll have Nanny and Nessa over for a little family celebration," she said, "but you can at least open yours now."
Elphaba raised an eyebrow, a little unsure of how she would open non-existent presents, since she was sure she had none from her family, but was somewhat reluctant to dissuade her overeager roomie. It seemed that Glinda had found what she was searching for under the tree, and held it out to Elphaba. "From me," she explained. "Nessa helped me pick them out."
Elphaba eyes suddenly flickered up in apprehension. "Glinda," she began slowly, "you know I don't have anything - "
She nodded seriously. "I know."
So Elphaba carefully extracted two delicate scarves from among the copious amounts of tissue paper. They were smooth and pleasing to the touch and to the eye, and Elphaba was more than a little sure that they were made of some expensive sheer silk.
"Glinda," she tried softly again.
Gentle fingers were already undoing her long braid, and a brush slowly working through her smooth hair. One of the scarves was wound around her head and under her hair, and tied behind her ear. The long ends trailed over her right shoulder, the icy blue contrasting beautifully with her dark hair and green skin. They silently went to the window, finding their reflections in the still early morning dark, much as they had once at night earlier that year. Almost gypsy like, exotic, they thought, looking at Elphaba's reflection.
Nanny and Nessa were indeed admitted to their celebrations about midday. Hot chocolate had been procured from somewhere, the rest of the gifts had been opened, and Glinda's suggestion that they meet up with the boys had been unanimously beaten down with much laughter. To a girl to whom in the past Lurlinemas had always been a stiff, uncomfortable day, it was wonderful. Not that she would admit it aloud; but she supposed there was nothing against lightening up her usual dry demeanor. She didn't feel dry. She was saturated, soaked in content and happiness down to the very pores of her skin, slightly softening her sharp and sarcastic features.
She sat later near the end of the day relaxed and comfortable with a book in her lap, scarf still hugging her head. Glinda walked in, a hint of a smile and excitement on her face, as there often was. Elphaba glanced over at her.
"I've resolved my differences with the tree."
Glinda laughed out loud, and Elphaba was pleased to hear it.
"Happy Lurlinemas, Elphie."
Before the good Queen left us in coming twilight
She wished us to stand tall and shine through the night