"Madame, you just have to reconsider your decision!"
"I have to admit, I have expected better of you, Miss Thropp. I hadn't thought that you would let them make you their puppet. Sucking up to me through my best student, nice strategy, I have to admit."
Startled, Elphaba looked at the headmistress.
"No, I- I just..."
She stopped.
Now why exactly did she feel the need to convince the teacher of letting all those people who hated her so much have their fun?
"I just think that it would get up the students' enthusiasm for the next year. If they don't get the ball, they will already come back disgruntled and unmotivated."
Elphaba silently pleaded that Madame Morrible would believe her explanation.
She observed her raise her eyebrows into a critical stance and tried not to move a muscle of her face.
"You think that they would be more motivated?!"
The headmistress broke into roaring laughter.
"Believe me, Miss Elphaba, besides you and maybe two or three other outstanding young people I have never in my whole career come across a motivated student.
Not even after a good Lurlinemas Celebration."
She grew serious again.
"The prohibition stands, no one at this University will celebrate Lurlinemas this year, I give you my word for it.
Now, if you please leave, I have got plenty of more important things to do than discussing minuscule social events that get fussed over too much anyways.
You might want to think about why exactly you care so much about this particular social event. You're usually the last one complaining over a cancelled ball. Have a nice day, Miss Thropp."
Madame Morrible more or less pushed Elphaba out the door and locked it once the green girl was outside.
Elphaba thought about what Madame Morrible had said at the end of their conversation.
Like the first time she had talked to the Headmistress about the ball, Madame Morrible had expressed her wonderment about Elphaba's concern with the event.
What was it that she found so utterly important about this ball?
Maybe the most important reason was the fact that Glinda had looked forward to it so much.
But that wasn't the sole reason.
This time, the party would include her, she would have Glinda's assistance with dressing up, this time she had this magnificent dress and she had friends to attend the ball with.
Elphaba came to the conclusion that she might have cared about all the seemingly superficial things all along, even more than she thought she had.
Only, that she had suppressed this feeling because she had known that she would be the laughing stock of every party or sit alone in the corner with no one to talk to.
But since she had come to Shiz, since that fateful night at the Ozdust Ballroom and the strange incident with the lion cub, a lot had changed.
She was still the same, mostly, reserved, passionate about her interests, admittedly a bookworm and still convinced that inner values counted more than looks, but somehow, ever so slightly, she had started to belong.