Chapter 15: Positive
It was so cold that morning, so Elphaba wore a large sweatshirt and sweatpants with a t-shirt underneath if it got warmer. While Fiyero was setting up her music, she started to get her pointe shoes ready. As she had guessed the night before, her routine was a ballet. After they were on her feet, she realized her pointe shoes were a bit uncomfortable, almost on the verge of being dead. She internally groaned. She'd just have to push through these 45 minutes.
"You ready?" Fiyero asked.
She tapped her feet on the floor a couple more times before answering. "Yep."
Apparently, she also had a prop. Fiyero produced a long piece of white cloth from his bag and placed it on her head, covering her face. Luckily, she could still see through it. "You're a bride. As you heard, the music has a sort of light tone in the beginning, then it gets faster and heavier, almost overwhelming. It's your wedding day but something has gone wrong," he stopped there.
She fixed the veil like cloth on her head. "What went wrong?"
"I'm actually going to leave that up to you. Now," he pulled her towards the center, "you'll start center stage, straight on your knees, facing the audience."
She was glad that as they kept choreographing, she got to take the veil off her head, it was giving her a headache. She really liked her dance, he'd mixed elements of classical ballet and acrobatics together, and she loved how it went together perfectly with the music. He was great at picking at the little things too, anything that could be the slightest bit better, he called her out on it.
He stopped her music halfway through the choreography she'd learned. "Do your arabesque for me again."
Elphaba whipped her left leg behind her, going on pointe on her right. "Am I doing it wrong?" she asked. She sighed heavily; that had hurt, her shoes were dead.
He stood up. "Not exactly," he whispered, though it seemed as though he'd said it more to himself than to her.
He walked to stand in front of her, pressing both his hands to the side of her neck, feeling her soft, smooth skin. Was he crazy or was her pulse as fast as his? He quickly dismissed that thought and focused on why he'd placed his hands on her in the first place. Oz, that made it sound awful.
"Elongate your neck more." He tilted her head back slightly and raised her chin. "And extend your arms just a little more." He moved behind her and raised her arms to their respective positions (right arm up, left arm to the side) and pushed her shoulders down.
His breath on her neck suddenly made Elphaba feel very warm. She was thankful that he wouldn't be able to see the goosebumps he gave her. She wondered if she caused him to get goosebumps too. Did he have some right now?
Fiyero cleared his throat and stood in front of her again. Elphaba fought the urge to smile. She made him nervous, she knew that much. Man, it was so hard to hold back the fact that she knew how he felt about her at times. But he wanted to, probably needed to, tell her himself. She so wished he wasn't afraid.
"Elphaba?"
"Hm?" had he said something?
"Can you do your arabesque again? Applying what I told you?"
"Oh," she chuckled awkwardly, "yeah, sorry," she did the arabesque again and smiled widely at seeing him grin at her. It made her forget the pain she was feeling in her toes.
"Perfect," he whispered. She looked down and fiddled with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. "Let's continue."
Once they got to the point where the music switches, a story came to her head. She's a bride, but her groom never arrived at the wedding. Why, she wasn't sure yet.
"From here," Fiyero mimicked the position she was in, a small lunge with the veil in her hands. "Do - actually no, I don't like that, that's too repetitive." he walked to the stereo, where his notebook was and crossed something out with his pencil.
"What is?" Elphaba stayed in her position.
"I was going to have you do more pirouettes, but you just did three of them in the last eight count. Um…from there, can you do an italian fouetté? I'll play the music, we'll see how it looks."
He played her song back a couple seconds and she joined in once the new part came in. While the fouetté fit with the music, it didn't make as smooth a transition into the floor choreography he'd wanted.
"No, go back again." He stopped the song. Fiyero tapped his foot, trying to quickly come up with something, but how could he get her to transition better while doing something that was…explosive, for lack of a better word, to mark the change in the music and whatever storyline she'd come up with? He turned to her. "What's something pretty you can do that also makes the transition smoother?"
"Um," Elphaba got back into the lunge and thought for a couple seconds, "I could do a penché arabesque turn," she offered.
"What is that, exactly?"
"Scoot back," she pushed him backwards with her arm and prepared for her turn. With a small relevé, not even going up to point, Elphaba turned on her right leg, bringing up her left to make a 180° angle with her upper body parallel to the ground. She pivoted slightly to finish the turn. "I'm sure it'll be easier and look better without the carpeted floor," she chuckled.
Fiyero laughed too and grabbed his notebook again. "I like that. Let's keep that," he wrote it down. Wow, she was truly amazing. "Alright, let's keep going then."
One of the things that had impressed him when he'd seen her at the auditions was that she seemed to have great memory. He'd taught the choreography fairly quickly yet she'd remembered everything perfectly when the time came to perform. They were able to get almost her whole routine done. Time was running out and Fiyero asked her to dance what they had so far. She was so beautiful to watch, it was hard to focus on searching for flaws when she executed everything amazingly. He smiled and clapped for her once she finished. Damn, he absolutely loved her.
"That's all the time we have for today. We're almost done, it shouldn't take too long to finish the dance by our next rehearsal," he rubbed her back. She was bent at the waist, catching her breath.
Elphaba nodded. "Ok, sounds good." She drank some water.
"By the way, we're going to have to paint your pointe shoes green."
Her eyebrow arched. "Why?"
"Your costume leaves your legs bare." Fiyero turned around, pretending to write in his notebook so she wouldn't see his small blush. "The pink pointe shoes against your emerald complexion will just break your lines."
"Oh, that makes sense." She wasn't going to voice out loud that it would be better to paint her pale to match the shoes. He hated hearing her talk that way.
"And get that thought out of your head."
She laughed and looked up at him. "I didn't say anything."
"No, but you were thinking about it."
"Who says I was thinking about what you're thinking about?" she challenged.
"I know you," he whispered and she exhaled heavily. He placed a small piece of hair that had broken free from her bun and placed it behind her ear, tempted to brush his knuckles on her cheek. "Get Hunter for me, will you?"
She nodded. "I'll see you," she gave him a quick hug and lingered for a quick second before going to the other room to keep working on the group dance.
"I figured out the narrative for my dance," Elphaba broke the silence.
It was almost time to go to sleep, and they were in his room. Elphaba was laying on the bed, icing her feet. After dancing on the dead pointe shoes, she was feeling the consequences now. Fiyero had been mad, demanding why she hadn't said anything before. Luckily, there was a dance story nearby, and they had gone out and bought her a couple pairs after practice.
He was lying on the bed with her, the opposite direction but his face was aligned with hers. He swallowed hard when her hand came up to his head, and she ran her fingers through his hair.
"Yeah?"
"Mhm. I'm a bride. My groom didn't arrive for the wedding. He was killed in a car crash. I get depressed and refuse the idea of marriage all together."
"That's a bit depressing, don't you think?" He turned to look at her.
She shrugged, keeping her hand in his hair and her gaze to the ceiling. "Maybe, but it's what I felt I was portraying towards the end of our rehearsal." She turned towards him, holding her breath slightly as to how close he actually was. Their noses were almost touching. "You want me to change it?"
He shook his head. "No, I like it. And I think you just gave me an idea on how to end your routine." He pictured her throwing away her veil.
"Can't wait." Elphaba let her eyes close and turned to Fiyero, leaning her forehead on his lips. He softly pressed a kiss there.
He hated this part. "I have to go, don't leave the ice on too long."
She nodded. "Ok."
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
He was going insane, right? He could've sworn…the way she'd said it. It didn't seem just the friendly way he'd heard it before. Thinking back on it, she's always said it the same way. She was always affectionate, but lately it seemed to be on a whole other level. More intimate. And hearing her say those three words now…she meant them the way he did. He was certain of it.
Oz, how had he not realized it before? He could have saved himself months of angst.
Smiling like what was probably the biggest idiot in the world, Fiyero pulled out his phone and texted a certain blonde.
'I'm almost positive she loves me.'
'What?' she replied after a couple seconds.
'Elphaba. I'm positive she feels the same way about me.'
'Of course she does!'
What exactly did she mean by that? 'What?'
'Would you get mad at me if I told you I found out that same night you told me how you felt about her?'
Oh he was going to sleep late tonight.
I got asked to describe the dance terminology in the AN that I don't describe in the chapter. I'm sorry to anyone who needed it before, I'll be doing it from now on and I'll go back and edit (it will probably be after the story is done and I honestly have no idea when that will be. I've been improvising since Ch. 4, haha). They won't be official definitions, those use even more terminology. I'll explain it in the way that got me through ballet class, lol.
Pirouette: turn.
Italian Fouetté: a développé (kick, angled forward yet kinda sideways), going up to pointe, then the same leg comes back down, brushing the floor, turning the body then facing the diagonal with your leg back in attitude (an angle of 90°, knee higher than the foot).
Line: It's the physical, symmetrical aspect of the dancer's body. Basically, and more specifically on the legs in this chapter, painting Elphaba's shoes emerald to match her skin tone will make her extensions longer, you could draw a line from the top of the leg to then end of the shoe instead of stopping at her ankle where a pink shoe would start. It makes it prettier and technique stands out more.
-Dead pointe shoes: the shank of the shoes (the very end) no longer support the foot of the dancer. This causes all the weight to literally be at the toes instead of distributing it evenly throughout the foot. It can be very dangerous and painful for dancers, it's a higher risk of stress fractures, bunions, and long term damage to the bones, ligaments, and tissues of the feet.
I hope that helped and I hope y'all liked the chapter! :)
PS. I will try to keep up the weekly updates. But a musical gets closer to date, I'm at rehearsal everyday as one of the main dancers and an understudy for the lead. I'll have to put musical first but I will still find time to write.
Also remember how I said that I improvise a lot and that that's why my English essays are trash? Guess who got a 40/60 in their last essay? I hate that class.