Unable to sleep, Elphaba stayed up with her lamp on her nightstand on and her biology textbook open on her pillow. A storm raged outside, lightning flashing across the sky and thunder rumbling a few seconds later. Galinda was sprawled out on her bed, snoring softly, half covered by her pink sheets and blankets.

"This is not helping!" Elphaba growled, slamming the textbook shut. Galinda started in her sleep, but turned over without waking up and continued to snore. "Lucky, she can actually go to sleep."

After sitting on her bed for a few minutes, staring at the rain pattering on the doors leading out to the balcony, she got out of bed, changed back into the clothes she had been wearing earlier that day, and put on her rain cloak. If she couldn't sleep, she was going to go to the library. She remembered to write a quick note to Galinda, just in case she woke up, and then grabbed her satchel, heading out the door.

Pulling her hood up over her head and down in front of her face, Elphaba grasped her cloak close to herself and ventured out into the rain. Half walking, half running, she made it to the library in less than ten minutes and was shaking out her cloak in the small cloak room before entering the library itself.

The only person she could see that was there was the man standing behind the counter, nodding off as he sat there with a large book laying open in front of him. Elphaba decided not to wake him just in case it was too close to closing hours for him to let her him, so she quietly snuck off into the depths of the maze of bookshelves.

Twenty minutes later, she had an armload of books and was quite satisfied with what she had found. Since the images from her dream that morning combined with Yackle's prophecy and the images from the crystal ball had bothered her so much, she had decided to take matters into her own hands and read up on fate, prophecy, and the art of fortune-telling.

Waking up the man, who jumped almost two feet into the air when he saw Elphaba, she checked out the books and, after tightly wrapping her cloak around herself and making sure the books wouldn't be ruined, she headed back to her room. Thankfully, when she got back, Galinda was still asleep and there were no signs that she had woken up while she had been out.

Cracking open one of the books, Elphaba started on a long night of research.

She woke up on top of a particularly musty tome late that night. Lightning flashed across the sky outside, illuminating everything in the room. Galinda was oblivious to the storm, snoring softly in her bed.

Elphaba stared down at the book, slamming it shut in exasperation. Nothing she had read had given her any useful information at all. All those signs Yackle had given her, and the signs she could remember from her dream, obviously didn't want to be deciphered at the moment.

Sitting on her bed, she thought about the signs she could remember. Galinda was in her future, Yackle had said. But that was obvious. They were roommates. And a boy with blue diamonds…Fiyero. Or maybe some other student from the Vinkus? How many boys had blue diamond tattoos? She would have to remember to ask him.

A broomstick and winged monkeys, this one was a bit more difficult. Never before had she heard of monkeys with wings, and she had no idea why Yackle was talking about a broom. She most certainly did not plan on becoming a janitor later on in her life. But she had a feeling the broom held a deeper meaning, or did something beyond sweeping dust from the corners of a room.

Marriage and children were the next part, and Elphaba knew for certain that neither one of those things would happen. No one would want a relationship with her, the artichoke, the green bean. Boys laughed at her and threw spitballs at her, and that's as far as the affection went. And children…they ran away screaming for their mothers.

The last two were a bit more obvious, if not confusing. Nessa was the wheelchair bound girl, as Yackle had said, and she had jeweled shoes, but they weren't red. They were silver. Perhaps Yackle had gotten her colors mixed up.

And then there was the image in the crystal ball that had also haunted her in her dream. The pendulum swinging back and forth. Elphaba knew that it symbolized time was passing, but for what? Was it trying to tell her that she had a certain amount of time to do something, and if so, what did she have to do?

Slowly, her eyelids began to droop, and her head nodded forward. She just couldn't stay awake. Galinda turned over in her bed, and Elphaba began to dream, once again, of winged monkeys, ruby slippers, and a pendulum, with time slipping away too fast.

I'm sorry this chapter is so short. I really am trying to update as much as possible, but it's getting really hard. I've had a lot of work to do recently, and I've been deprived of a lot of sleep, so I've been dozing off in the middle of the day, which is NOT good. Thank you to all of my readers and reviewers, and please continue to review. I am open to ALL suggestions, comments, ideas, and positive criticism. Thank you again!

ReallyObsessiveWriter

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