She could hardly recall how it all developed. She just remembered them getting closer. Little things like walking to class or grabbing lunch together—so long as the girls weren't seen around, Galinda thought ashamedly. Elphaba at first didn't really "get it," the walking to class together bit. She walked in that rigid yet somehow antsy way of hers, lurched forward, a machine at work. It was like once she got moving her body would threaten to walk two different places at once, to split apart and to never converge again. Always busy. Bursting. Galinda had to tell her to "slow down" once, that this was hardly how one did it.

"Elphie, when two people walk to class together they usually try to match strides." They had stopped, Elphaba looking at her quizzically. The taller girl then busied herself looking around for the campus' clock tower, not wanting to be late. "They usually talk, Elphie. That's the whole point."

"I know that," said Elphaba, her focus landing back on Galinda, like a hawk. "I'm mostly just confused. Why the sudden change? Am I now part of some charity project," she joked, though she was giving Galinda a sort of slanted look.

"Oh does everything really need a reason, Miss Elphaba? I just want to walk with my friend, is that too much?" she huffed, then tugged Elphie along.

"Oh, so now we're 'friends?' How novel." Though she had to bite down on a worming smile. Elphaba had listened and during their next trip she had matched Galinda stride for stride, and they had talked, and laughed, even.

In the dorm they would stay up late at night discussing whatever it was Elphie was reading, 'til one night:

"Can you, read to me?"

Elphaba blinked.

"Read, to you?"

"Yes that would be what I asked." Though she was embarrassed. The moonlight shafted in and missed each of their beds completely so that they couldn't see one another in the pitch black. Elphaba had a candle going, yet it was small and squat and didn't go very far. Elphaba then began reading.

"Wait," Galinda had said suddenly. "Come out where I can see you. Otherwise I'll just fall asleep." Her voice sounded logical, business.

Some rustling, then, Elphaba had gotten up and walked over. The moon was hitting her now. She looked to Galinda like a soft jade, strangely silver. A being breaking through the soft sprays of a waterfall.

And it had come out so naturally, Galinda had hardly even noticed herself uttering it, it came out like a breath.

"Oh Elphie you're beautiful."

They stroked and read and went everywhere together. Elphaba made her feel smart, and she wondered, hoped, that she'd made her feel something too, whatever it may be. She did not want to think of something as selfish as making her roomie feel "whole," or "loved." She was beyond that. It was their second year at Shiz, a few weeks after the Caprice in the Pines incident. Embarrassed by her past behavior, her, "devotion" to Pfannee and Shenshen, she'd decided on that very trip back from the lake that she'd shed her shame, that the girls weren't worth it. At the start of the new school year she allowed herself to be seen out in public with Elphaba that much more often, sat next to her at the pubs, at picnics with the guys. She was to no longer be a secret.

Well, that was a lie. They were still a secret. But a good one—a juicy one. The others didn't know. They didn't know, that night Elphaba sang in the bar, that Glinda had already heard her sing. It'd been in the dorms. Elphaba was curled up over an assignment, not knowing what she was doing, that she was singing a melody of hers under her breath. She was deep in concentration. Glinda perked up at the sound, smiled.

"I didn't know you sang." Her voice was sweet. Elphaba snapped up, schooled her face into that of nonchalance, but Glinda knew better, thought it funny whenever Elphaba tried to do so.

"Not surprising, since I never told you."

"Yes, well, that's true," said Glinda, admittedly. "But that's beside the point. It was lovely." She caught Elphie blushing. She never got tired of that.

And they didn't know how sometimes, when Glinda caught Elphaba in a good mood, that she'd read to Glinda in the afternoon, sometimes nestled up in the same bed. Elphaba would read in a droning kind of way; Glinda understood that she wasn't very good at it, like she'd forget she was reading for two and not just for herself. But she'd take the opportunity to run patterns on Elphie's shoulder and to rake her fingers through her dark hair, coiling and uncoiling it like a ribbon, reveling in their closeness.

They didn't know how once they were back in the dorms, the day Dr. Dillamond died, that Elphaba almost, almost cried, but didn't. It wasn't just because the tears would burn her skin that she held them back, just beneath the surface. It was something larger, a personal battle of hers.

Glinda could feel the anger and sadness radiating off of her, the way she jittered and fretted in the room, raked her hands through her hair. Glinda hadn't known what to do, how to comfort her.

"Elphaba..." she had started, and Elphaba hadn't heard her. She had slowed her movements down to a crawl, but there was a gleam to her eye, as if they were glass. She had sat down at her desk, placed her head in her hands, and shook, but did not weep. She stayed like that for a very long time.

Finally she spoke, as if to herself, until she'd remembered Glinda in the room and had made her voice louder halfway through.

"I won't let them win. Glinda, I won't let them win."

"What do you mean, Elphie?"

Silence.

And they hadn't known, when Ama Clutch had died, how Elphaba had comforted her. How quick she was to do so. How absolute.

Glinda cried and Elphaba had taken over, hugging her and rocking her. She cried for Ama Clutch, and, she realized, for Dr. Dillamond. She was crying for them both.

She was surprised at how right it felt. They were standing, in the middle of their room, an odd place to be hugging and rocking. But it worked. Her crying softened and she felt all of a sudden sleepy.

"Hush, hush my pretty," she'd heard Elphie say.