Summary: A prequel of sorts to Six Hours on a Train. "Elphaba stayed in her room for a day. Galinda came and went with a dinner. On occasion she would stay for a few minutes." p. 123
A Day at Caprice-in-the-Pines
"Well, really," Galinda huffed, depositing her tray with a clatter on the polished surface of an ornately wrought antique Ozma XIX coffee table.
Elphaba, naked toes buried in an ocean of exotic-looking carpet, turned a page and picked her nose with what Galinda interpreted to be a very calculated affectation of nonchalance. Galinda stomped her foot, causing a dollop of split-pea-and-oxgrass soup to slop over the rim of the porcelain tureen.
Her body folded strangely on the rug at the foot of a majestically carved reproduction of a pre-Unification Gillikinese tribal throne, Elphaba looked up. Her eyes fixed on the thick trail of mossy green soup leisurely tracking its way down the side of the bowl. Shifting her gaze from her verdant lunch to Galinda's impatiently narrowed eyes, Elphaba raised a meaningful eyebrow.
"Oh for goodness' sake," Galinda blurted out with a wail of irritation, "it's only soup!"
Her curls vibrating with indignation, Galinda marched towards the door, gesticulating madly.
"And why you can't sit on a perfectly lovely chair like a perfectly normal person is beyond even my sensibilities."
Elphaba waited for the door to slam, the corners of her mouth quirking when the door merely shut with a gentle snik. Hearing the receding patter of Galinda's satin slippers, Elphaba raised herself to perch on the edge of the throne, like a perfectly normal person, a gentle smile gracing her face.
Her visits seemed to coincide perfectly with Elphaba's page turns, as though she knew exactly how to locate and exploit that split second where Elphaba's concentration had to break and her guard be let down in order to progress. Elphaba wasn't sure whether she ought to be infuriated or grateful. Such was the effect of Galinda, she supposed: that perplexing duality of character that Elphaba wasn't sure she ought to waste -to spend- time deciphering (however much the prospect appealed to her).
As Galinda leaned over her shoulder to peer myopically at Elphaba's reading, an errant curl insinuated its golden presence between Elphaba's lips. It smelled of crabapples and tasted of hair, and only then did it occur to Elphaba to wonder, as tinkling summer echoes of splashing water and frolicking classmates breezed through imported Arjiki cotton curtains, why Galinda and her hair were there at all.
A full minute elapsed before Galinda hurried off to change into proper late-afternoon wear, leaving Elphaba's mind spinning with waves of abstract confusion. A minute of her life had been spent in an absurdly expensive chair sampling the hair of a socialite while reading about The Prevalence of Mental Disorders Amongst the Higher Classes. Never had her life been as exceptionally ridiculous, or as alarmingly comfortable. Her head felt airy and disconnected, drunk with befuddlement.
Her hand absently started turning pages.
When Galinda returned, her dress -teal with double ruffles down the back- requiring doing up, something in Elphaba's chest twinged at the return to habit. Her hand had been poised for a page turn. Instead it found itself groping about for smooth laces that felt so very foreign, until she realized that the foreignness had been the skin of Galinda's back and the laces were, in fact, clasps.
Galinda only just remembered to wipe her mouth before entering Elphaba's lair. Elphaba turned her page, her eyes flickering only briefly from the text, face involved in creating a look of utmost concentration. Galinda tossed her hair.
"Well, Miss Elphaba, you look like you've enjoyed a most eventful evening."
Elphaba let out a sneering chortle, a slightly pained sound, as if laughter were something sharp that had caught in her throat. Galinda suddenly felt a thousand kinds of irony, and realized for the briefest of moments how utterly far Madame Morrible's quells had been from attaining it.
With an inelegant jerk, Elphaba's head snapped up from her book, skewering Galinda with an unreadable stare.
Galinda felt herself blushing.
Stumbling away from the swing and Boq's wet lips and eerily dilated pupils, Galinda had wondered whether her lips were swollen and well-kissed; bruised, like in the stories she of course never read. Now, pinned like an insect under the weight of Elphaba's scrutiny, she fervently prayed to the heavens that Boq had truly been as unskilled at the art of passion as he had seemed to be to Galinda. Or failing that, hopefully Elphaba, having no doubt neglected that particular subset of literature, would be oblivious to the signs of a Thoroughly Ravished Maiden. Galinda trembled with nervous expectancy.
Elphaba lifted her chin, and their eyes locked. The room, completely still, thrummed with an electric, anticipatory silence. The air was pleasantly cool, and an evening breeze wafted though the window, rustling the drapes. Galinda heard Pfannee laugh, a far off sound carried by the wind.
Perhaps, had Galinda been in less of a state, she might have noticed that Elphaba's seat was just that much closer to the window than it had previously been, or that Elphaba's skin tone had become just that much closer to 'forest' than 'apple'.
Elphaba opened her mouth to speak, and Galinda bolted from the room.
Preoccupied with fleeing, Galinda thought nothing of Elphaba's guilty blush. Had she, perhaps she would have understood the startled look on Elphaba's face as she returned to her text, realizing that upside-down and backwards wasn't the best way to read any book, even one as frivolous and un-Elphaba as "Astrology and the Famous: Written in the Stars".
The door having already closed behind her, Galinda was oblivious as Elphaba flung the hastily grabbed book to the floor and threw a pained look out the window, where Boq was still sitting on the porch swing, a lovestruck grin on his face.
Abulia, she read, just as Galinda slipped into the room. Elphaba blinked, wary of coincidence. Shuffling her weight from foot to foot, Galinda looked apologetically at the regally poised Elphaba, whose steady gaze and slow blink said simply, You first.
Galinda said, "I'm not really inter-"
"Don't bother," Elphaba interrupted. Galinda wrung her hands.
"Boq and I were ju-"
"Whatever it is, it's bound to change," said Elphaba, matter-of-factly. Bitterly.
"Why Miss Elphaba, you aren't jeal-"
"You just sort of float. You enter when you choose, you leave when you choose, you flit about like some tinseled moth, living in your own little bubble..." Elphaba floundered, aware that she was gibbering. Regaining her composure, she jabbed a long finger at her book of mental disorders and read in her most scholarly voice.
"'Abulia: abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions.'" She looked up at Galinda -who was hovering between the chair and the door- with her most pointed stare. "Makes you wonder, doesn't it, though," Elphaba mused, thumbing through the pages. "I do hope it's not catching."
A very familiar outrage blossoming in her chest, Galinda stopped her uneasy fidgeting and tilted her head. Now that she honestly looked, Galinda noticed the empty, lonely bowl of old soup, dwarfed by the now-cold tureen. She noticed the way Elphaba ducked her head and cradled her own book in her lap, Pfannee's silly Astrologer's Digest (Celebrity Edition) lying dejectedly on the floor. She saw how small Elphaba was in that massive throne, green toes gripping the edge of the cushion with a white-knuckled intensity that Galinda didn't quite understand. Her impending indignant sputter died down to a long-suffering sigh.
A cackle erupted from the floor below them, shattering the moment with a painfully appropriate burst of reality. Galinda felt... enlightened.
"You can't even decide who your friends are," said Elphaba.
Galinda giggled.
Ever sensitive to ridicule, Elphaba's face darkened instantly into a venemous glare as she drew in a sharp breath. But before she could let it out in her usual torrent of verbose fury, a tiny finger pressed itself against her pursed lips, a warm hand closing itself over her own.
Suddenly beside her, Galinda lowered herself until their eyes were level.
"Oh you silly thing," she whispered, "I'm here, aren't I?"