The Week of Ill Repute by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: Well, if only. But honestly, I don't own any of it.

Author's Notes: A plotless chapter that I felt was a necessary evil in order to get certain plot points established. Sorry it took so long - I had an evening-length play in my playwriting class due and I wanted to give it my full attention, writing-wise. I also had to re-read the entire City of Emeralds section of the book in order to not screw things up. Once again, thank you for the reviews.

Chapter 4: The Brief Reprieve in Common Sense

"Oh, isn't it lovely!" cried a woman from the front of the carriage as the Emerald City went and sprung up in front of them and most of the carriage seemed to murmur in agreement.

"Are they mad?" wondered Glinda, glaring out the window. What a ridiculous city! Situated on the edge of Gillikin, which was such a beautiful and rural place (and she did admit bias on this particular opinion), the Emerald City was ugly and outrageous, large and sprawling and out of place. Crope and Tibbett had spoken of it in their usual silly ways because most things were a joke with them. 'Oh, Glinda, it's just all green, you see?' Crope would say, and Tibbett might add, 'Hence the name. A city of emeralds, if you like.'

Oh, sure, it was all-over green. To herself, Glinda admitted with a blush that she rather liked green in extraordinary amounts. But still, as they passed through the northern gates, it became irritatingly clear that the Emerald City thought itself to be a lot cleverer than it really was, and Glinda was not amused. "How juvenile, how devoid of irony," she said, mostly to herself. "The pomp, the pretension!" She tried to dredge up some sort of appreciation for the architecture, but she supposed her love of architecture had turned her into some sort of snob, and why not? She had seen the best in the lovely estates in the Pertha Hills and this City of Emeralds just did not compare.

Elphaba, who was hardly listening because she never did, leaned across Glinda to peer out the window herself. "No Animals," she muttered, "not so you can see, anyway. Maybe they have all gone underground."

"Underground?" asked Glinda.

"In hiding," explained Elphaba. Oh, Glinda realized. Like Halivan's family. Elphaba pointed. "Look, the poor—I mean are they the poor? The hungry of Oz? From the failed farms? Or is it just the—the surplus? The expendable human selvage? Look at them, Glinda, this is a real question. The Quadlings, having nothing, looked—more—than these—"

She broke off, seemingly unable to articulate the absurdities of life, the ideas of wealth versus happiness and whether one was an off-shoot of the other or if they were separate entities. Why, on this social pecking order, did the Animals wind up last, despite the fact that there were many more educated and more capable and inclined for and to wealth than any poor person on the streets of the Emerald City? How did it work?

Glinda sat back, wishing to no longer look out the window. "I detest it already," she decided. "Far too full of itself, and not even in a charming way, either. How—"

"Look, a Quadling!" cried Elphaba, grabbing Glinda's wrist and Glinda looked quickly, almost missing a poor dirty woman with red hair. It was awful, looking at it all. Prostitution and pick-pockets and the poor and deformed. Glinda felt sick and drew the curtain on the window, wishing to shut it all out.

Looking down to find Elphaba still holding onto her wrist, Glinda slid her hand down and took hold of Elphie's hand tightly. She smiled at her and rested her head on Elphie's shoulder, pleased that she was not rebuffed. So it was all right for awhile. For awhile, it didn't matter that they hadn't talked about it, and it didn't matter that when Glinda had awoken, Elphaba had already dressed and packed and had been waiting for her downstairs. It didn't matter that she was currently wondering if she had just had a beautiful, terrible dream. For now, it was all right to just hold Elphie's hand and lean on her shoulder as they rode through the ugliest city in all of Oz.

They put a request in at the Palace, but apparently one could not just walk in and say, 'Yes, I wish to see the Wizard,' and the Wizard would be escorted to them. No, there were procedures and paperwork and all things that made Glinda yawn and feel confident that Elphie could take care of it. In short, it would take five days for all this paperwork to be processed.

"Well, I expected that," said Elphaba as they walked down the streets, forgoing carriage fare to find a suitable hotel on foot. "I didn't think the Wizard just lolled around, waiting for university students to come by and ask for him."

Glinda, who didn't really know what a Wizard did all day that would warrant this sort of wait, just nodded. The hotel in front of them, The Palace Hotel, was situated closely to the Palace and was just as ugly and ostentatious as the Palace itself was. She hoped the inside was nicer.

The Palace Hotel was a favorite for most travelers – indeed, as Glinda stood at the desk to get them a room, Elphaba noticed the unfortunately short not-Munchkin from their first carriage ordering a room as well. The urge to give him a good kick in the seat of his pants was nearly unbearable, but she resisted temptation. After all, she hadn't done the right thing like she had meant to; Halivan was no longer being forced to work, of course, but that was because he was dead, a far worse fate to say the least. It made her a little sick to think about, his family waiting and waiting for him to come home and never receiving him.

When Glinda returned to her, a key in hand, Elphaba said, "Glinda, I want to find Halivan's family."

Glinda appeared startled, looking down at the key in her hand in askance, as if it could provide answers to the random, unprovoked situation. "Oh... did he tell you where he lived?"

"No," said Elphaba decisively. "But we know that his family is in the Emerald City and we know that they're in hiding, obviously, being Animals. Don't you feel it's right of us to tell his family what happened to him?"

Glinda shrugged. "I mean, it's terrible, Elphie, but when he never comes back, don't you think they'll naturally assume—"

"It could be weeks before they even resign themselves to the assumption that he must be dead. It seems unbearable to me, weeks of wondering, and I maintain that Halivan's family has perhaps been through enough." Justifying herself was a waste of breath, anyway. Either Glinda was coming with her or not, but either way, she felt she had to deliver this message to Halivan's wife and family.

Glinda shook her head. "Elphie, we cannot just traipse about a city that we are unfamiliar with, looking for a family that we've never met. Not only is the idea, frankly, absurd, but we don't have that sort of money. We've enough for a week here and the fare for a return trip back to school – that's all."

And then, somehow, money just happened to fall in Elphaba's lap – or to be more accurate, she looked down and discovered a discarded wallet on the lobby floor of the Palace. She swooped down and picked it up, opening it. That solved the money problem. She examined the identification within and the monogram inscribed on the outside of the leather. It solved other things, too.

Glinda grabbed Elphaba's arm. "Elphie, no."

"Well, suppose we do have the money, Glinda?"

"Elphie, that's stealing."

"Hardly. I'd rather think of it as survival of the most capable. After all, he who lost it is clearly incapable, while she who finds it is clearly capable. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, dear. What are you talking about?"

Elphie held the wallet out toward Glinda, showing her the monogram belonging to a J. Varakoff. Glinda furrowed her brow in confusion. "Didn't he say he lived in the Emerald City? What use would he have of a hotel?"

"Dear thing, what use does any married man have of a hotel?"

Glinda, for her part, managed to only look mildly scandalized, her lips forming a perfect 'O'. "Oh, you don't know that for sure."

"First things first." And she took three-fourths of the money supply in the wallet, depositing it into one of her traveling cases. Glinda watched in horror and fascination as the green girl moved to the front desk and requested a pen and a piece of paper, on which she scrawled: "Sir: I've found your wallet. You will most likely find it missing the bulk of its money, as I have taken it. If your wife wonders upon the whereabouts of your money, I do hope you tell her that you lost it during a rendezvous at the Palace Hotel. Terribly sorry about all this. Signed, a Munchkinlander by birth and a Quadling by upbringing." She left it on the desk for their good friend Varakoff to find.

"Well, that isn't the best idea," said Glinda, peeking over her shoulder. "He'll know it's you."

"How do you propose he'll find me in a hotel this big? Furthermore, men who engage in affairs hardly ever have enough stones to hurl."

"Would it not be just a touch easier on your soul if you, instead, don't steal money from him?"

Elphaba frowned. "You ought to know better than to comment on the state of my soul, non-existent as it is."

Glinda did not believe for a minute that Elphie was soulless and she sometimes spent her time contemplating ways to convince Elphie that she did, indeed, possess a soul – but at times like this, it was rather fruitless. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps Elphie does have a soul, and it's just misguided. That would make sense. It didn't concur with Elphaba's passionate nature on certain subjects for her to be devoid of a soul, so instead her soul must have just been confused – because it honestly did make sense to the green girl that in order for her to put to ease the minds of a few Animals that she had never met, she would need to steal from an innocent man. This didn't strike her as wrong at all, realized Glinda. For Elphie, it was just a means to an end.

"I do hope that 'underground' doesn't really translate quite so literally," said Glinda as she and Elphie crossed the bustling streets. She lifted her skirts primly as she stepped up onto the curb. "I would not want to get lost in some underground tunnel."

Despite herself, Elphaba smiled fondly. "No. It just means out of sight. We'd be better off looking in the worst parts of the city, the most run-down of apartments." She stopped and looked around, trying to refer to a sense of direction that she was not sure she possessed. She then handed Glinda some money. "Here. Go get your hair done in one of those salons." She nodded to a building down the street. "This may take awhile."

"Oh, but I wouldn't dream of letting you go it alone," said Glinda. "Surely you'll want me to accompany you?"

Elphie shook her head, crossing her bony arms across her chest. "I really ought to go it alone. Don't fret. I'll be back before nightfall, even if I haven't found anything. Meet me in the lobby of the Palace Hotel."

Glinda did fret, however. "Elphie, I don't like this. Maybe I really should—"

"I can't have you flitting about, slowing me down and destroying my concentration," replied Elphie, harsher than she intended. Glinda appeared hurt and she softened, uncrossing her arms. "Please, just humor me, my sweet. Go and find a return to those lovely curls of yours, be beautiful. I will not be long."

Glinda shifted from foot to foot. "What if something should happen?"

"You underestimate my resourcefulness," replied Elphaba craftily. "Very well, let me think – if something should happen, then you shall know this because I won't return. And if the unforeseeable occurs (in this case, the unforeseeable being my not returning), then it is up to you to either see the Wizard alone, in which case I sincerely hope that you elect to plead the case of the Animals. Or you can return to Shiz, unscathed. Without me."

"Oh, Elphie, that's terrible!" huffed Glinda. "Why say such a thing? Now you've only frightened me!"

"You asked," said Elphaba, snickering. "There's reasoning behind my labeling it 'the unforeseeable' – it won't happen. I'm not entering a battlefield, my dear, I am merely scoping out the city, if you understand my meaning."

Glinda pouted, a clever tactic she had devised over many years in order to get what she wanted. She knew Elphie was immune to its influence, though, and really only used it as a formality. "Well, if you must," she said quietly. "Although, I don't like it, but praise the person whoever manages to change your mind on anything."

Elphaba formulated what was perhaps an actual, sincere smile. "I won't be long," she said, turning.

"Wait," said Glinda cautiously, and when Elphie turned back around, she launched herself into the green girl's arms, rising up on her toes to properly hug her. "Should this be the last time I see you..." she explained helplessly, closing her eyes tightly.

"It won't," replied Elphie simply. "I'd hate to leave behind a girl with such a flair for the dramatic." Glinda did not reply, only wrapped her arms tighter about Elphie's neck and sighed contentedly. "All right," she said, patting Glinda's back gently. "Unhand me and let me go at it."

With a sigh and a blush, Glinda did just that, stepping away and lowering herself to her regular height, hands clasped behind her back. Elphaba offered a short little wave and then she turned around and was off down the city streets, a thin and lanky stick of green weaving in and out of the crowds of people. Glinda watched her go until she seemed to disappear around a corner or was perhaps just simply engulfed by the sheer volume of the throng of people.

She really sincerely hoped that Elphie did make it back alive and with all her limbs intact because, honestly, she hated to think of only getting to kiss the girl that one night and, worse, having to wonder about the whys and wherefores of said kissing for the rest of her days.

Glinda sighed, loud and dramatic, and then spun on her heel and headed for the hair salon.

There was one thing Elphaba could never be accused of, and that was being stupid. She was always right, after all, about everything, and she had been right to send Glinda into the salon instead of letting her follow along. It was a relaxing day for the Gillikin girl, where her hair was properly washed and curled. She felt blissful all afternoon, lying back in her chair as she was tended to, listening to the inane chattering of the salon girls and wondering if she was perhaps experiencing a unique, non-subjective glimpse at what a conversation between she and Pfannee or Shenshen or Milla must have sounded like once upon a time.

"He was dreadful," one girl was saying above Glinda's head. "Not the least bit handsome, and so I said 'Well, why not suck it up, for he's quite rich?' but it wasn't worth it, not in the least."

"He wasn't even that rich," replied one girl languidly. She was not even working; rather she was stretched out on the chair beside Glinda, and had been in that position all afternoon. "I mean, by comparison, he wasn't very rich. You find richer men up north, to be sure, and that's where I hope to find my husband – north."

"Out of the city, then?"

"Of course out of the city. City men aren't impressive, unless they hold a Palace job or some such career."

"But they do hold a certain sophistication, wouldn't you agree? A gift from a city man is certainly a more impressive gift than any other sort. And – they're charming. Sort of polished, I would say."

"Oh, sure. But what's charming in the long run if it's charm without finance?"

The girl laughed. "Oh, well they give you that feeling, I suppose. That feeling that you just assume is love? City men, I would say, are the finest at that – you're probably not really in love, of course, but they really do make you feel like it. And you look it. This girl, for example," and she tapped Glinda's scalp gently, "has had a blissful smile on her face since she swept in here earlier, and I think we've both attributed it to love, haven't we?"

Glinda's eyes snapped open, surprised to suddenly be included in the conversation she was listening in on. "Oh, me?"

Both girls laughed. "'Oh, me?' she says!" cried the one in the chair. "You're right about her, I think. She's had that face all day. It probably is love."

"Love?" Glinda blinked, looking in the mirror in front of her. She looked back to her old self, the perfect blonde ringlets, the pale, flawless complexion with the faintest of blushes – and yes, she did have the remnants of a ridiculous smile, her eyes all (and she severely loathed being so cliché) sparkling and such. "Yes," she murmured quietly, studying her features. "Love. I suppose that's what this is."

As the evening slid into night, Glinda crossed the street and felt lovely as she headed to the Palace Hotel. She'd meet Elphie and Elphie would be okay and they would finish this week. It was starting to feel more and more like a vacation. If the waiting list to see the Wizard was really as long as it seemed, they were in for a few days of waiting and frankly, this made Glinda rather glad. It seemed only right that she should be able to relax for a week after her long week of suffering.

As she stepped into the hotel, there was a loud crack and a blinding flash of light, and she turned, looking out the glass doors from inside the hotel. It was pouring rather suddenly, thundering and lightning, too. Glinda marveled at her luck. A second later and she would have been caught in the downpour, her hair ruined once again. She patted her curls affectionately, looking around for Elphaba.

But Elphaba wasn't in the lobby, and she certainly couldn't be in their room because she, Glinda, still had the key. She bit her lip and looked out the window, pacing the large emerald lobby. In all her worrying about what could possibly become of Elphie in her afternoon away, she hadn't even considered what might happen if a rainstorm intervened. Now, she was worrying, though, and it was occurring to her that no, they had not managed to secure a replacement cloak for Elphie.

Glinda stood at the door, looking out into the suddenly very dark sky and the rain that fell in sheets and hit the pavement and bounced up, joining itself. Elphaba had taken her old cloak, she knew, but it did have that large hole in the shoulder. She didn't know what Elphie's thing with water was, but she just knew that it was thing and that it was painful. She couldn't, for the life of her, think of really what it was that happened when Elphaba came into contact with water, but she assumed it wasn't pretty. A grotesque picture entered her head of Elphie hobbling back to her with a missing shoulder, perhaps her arm becoming disconnected as a result and turning the green girl into a somewhat Nessarose-looking thing, at least on one side. She shuddered.

But what could she do? She didn't have the faintest idea of where Elphaba might be. So she waited. She sat down by the door and waited and when she was approached with, "Is there anything I can do for you, miss?" or such, she would respond curtly, "I am waiting for a friend, thank you," and she never took her eyes off the door, praying that Elphaba would soon stride through it, completely dry and shouting, 'I was lucky enough to find a large bubble that floated me over here and kept me safe from the rain!' or something like that.

The next best thing, though, was when the door opened and a hooded figure with an umbrella entered. She closed the umbrella and lowered her hood and her green face was paler than usual and her mouth was set in a grim, angry line, but she was fine, thank Lurline, and she was alive.

It was a blur of curly blonde hair and a muffled squeal and Elphaba felt tackled, pushed against the door she had just entered from. Glinda was crying, "Oh, you foosh grr!" which Elphaba translated into meaning, "Oh, you foolish girl!" with her head all buried against Elphaba's cloak. She stood stiff and annoyed, relieved to see her best friend of course, but annoyed nonetheless and eager to get out of her wet cloak.

"All right," she said. "Yes, I'm back, and help me remove this cloak. I just had the rain attacking me; not you, too."

Glinda pulled back, smiling, and helped Elphaba out of her cloak, folding up the wet material and carrying it under her arm. She faltered when Elphie grimaced a bit at the removal, but everything was all right, she was sure of that. Everything was all right.

"Oh, but where did you find this umbrella?" asked Glinda and they entered the lift to take them to the eleventh floor, where their room was.

"I bought it, as soon as the rain started. Lucky thing. It looked like rain, I thought, so I put my cloak on, and then as soon as it started, a vendor of sorts just rather appeared before me. If I wasn't in such dire need of it, I wouldn't have purchased it, for umbrella vendors that appear out of thin air do rather unnerve me."

Glinda grumbled. "This is precisely why I should have accompanied you."

Elphaba smiled tightly. "Oh, and you would have performed a spell to get rid of the rain? I had no idea your powers had advanced so far."

"Well, if I was with you, at least then I wouldn't have had to worry about whether you were alive or dead."

"How very kind," said Elphaba dryly, striding quickly in front of Glinda as they stepped off the lift. "But I assure you that you did not need to worry. I said I would not leave a dramatic girl such as yourself for very long, and I meant that."

They unlocked the door to their room and Elphaba narrowed her eyes, immediately noticing two things as wrong – first, it was far too green, which she was sure she had expected, but still – and second, there was, yet again, only one bed.

"I hope you don't mind," said Glinda as they set their things on top of the bed, which was full-sized one. "But it was cheaper this way and besides, there's a chaise over there for one of us to sleep on."

"You mean me," replied Elphaba and looked around the room. For "cheap," it was very pretty, if you ignored the excessive amounts of green. The furniture was very pretty and the room was rather spacious, although probably not as large as their room back at Shiz, it was certainly larger than the rooms they were used to sleeping in lately. There was the bed and chaise lounge, a nightstand, and a small table with two chairs. Most of all, it was very clean, as was the adjoining bathroom. "Turn around," she said, gesticulating that she wished to change out of her clothes.

"I mean whoever," said Glinda dismissively and turned around, studying the bedspread in front of her. Was this ridiculous? It was. If there was one thing Glinda disliked, it was situations of discomfort and she felt as though if things did not change or common sense did not intervene, she and Elphaba would be stuck in a perpetual state of discomfort, and this was no good. She turned with a sigh, prepared to confront Elphaba no matter what she was wearing, when something caught her eye that made her frown. "Elphaba."

The green girl clasped her left hand defensively over her right shoulder, scowling. "It's all right. Turn around; I'm not finished."

"Elphaba, what happened? It looks terrible."

"It isn't. Before I found the umbrella vendor, there was a short period of journey without umbrella, and the hole in my cloak made its presence rather maddening." She lifted her hand to reveal the ugly blisters adorning one emerald shoulder and Glinda flinched. Defensive, Elphaba put her hand back down. "Turn around, please." She stood in her underclothes and Glinda idly found the stark white on green contrast rather mesmerizing, but she dutifully turned around.

"You need to put something on that or else you may get sick," she offered quietly.

"Stupid girl. Of course I plan on putting something on it."

"Well... I'm going to take a bath," she said suddenly and decisively. "And you can tell me all about your day."

Elphaba watched her exit into the bathroom and listened as the water in the bath began to run. "How novel," she murmured. "Let me sort my thoughts."

"What?" called Glinda from the bathroom.

"Nothing," she called back. She rubbed oil on her shoulder to clean it, but there wasn't much else she could do besides wrapping her handkerchief around and tying it under her arm. She dressed in her nightgown and Glinda sounded as though she were splashing around in there. Elphaba rolled her eyes. I wouldn't put it past her, I think.

"Elphie! Tell me about your day!"

She paced toward the bathroom door and sat down on the floor next to it. "Well, as you might have guessed, I did not find Halivan's family today. Moreover, I don't even think that I came close to finding them, but I did get a glimpse of the southern parts of the Emerald City. Ghastly. You wouldn't have been able to handle it, I say."

"I what?"

"Never mind. Anyway, that's where the bulk of the starving and poor are, and they're the funniest little people. First I asked them if they knew anything about Animals, you know, where an Animal might go if he was going underground. They pretended as if they were ignorant on the entire subject! 'Animals?' they said. 'You mean like pets?' 'No,' I said, 'Animals. You know the type, of the talking and thinking variety.' So, an entire afternoon of that and it suddenly occurred to me, well, perhaps they thought I was with the law or something?"

"With the who?"

"With the law, Glinda, the law."

"Oh, hell, just come in here, Elphie. I can hardly a hear a word of it."

"No, I'll stay," said Elphaba, doing a wonderful job of keeping the fear out of her tone. "Here, I'll open the door more." She did so. "Nevertheless, I began to think that if the law is banning Animals from most establishments, well, then perhaps there were law enforcers always coming around and asking whether people know where the Animals are hiding. So, maybe these people are protecting the Animals, see?"

"It sounds like something you would do, if you lived here," called Glinda.

"Precisely. So I said to the next one, 'I'm not with the law or anything, of course, I've a friend who's an Animal and I'm wondering where to find him.' But they didn't truly go for that one, either."

"Well," replied Glinda, "if you were with the law, that would be a clever tactic, of claiming that you weren't with the law and that you had a friend who was an Animal. Will you come in here? I detest talking to someone without a face."

"I'll sit here. Hurry up your bath and you can talk to my face all you want. At any rate, I made no dent in the search for Halivan's family, but I did discover an inkling of what the average person thinks of the Wizard – or at least the poor, average person. They don't think very much of him, Glinda."

"Why should they? They're poor. I've found that poor people very rarely think highly of anyone with more money than them. I forgot a nightgown. Bring one in here, please?"

"Oh, fine," grumbled Elphie, getting to her feet and walking to the bed. She rifled through their things, grabbing the first nightgown she saw. She hung it on the inside of the slightly ajar bathroom door.

"No, in here. Some servant you'd be, with that sort of service."

Elphaba furrowed her brow and carried the nightgown into the bathroom. "I don't think I ever professed an interest in being a servant, so thank you." She placed the nightgown on the sink, across from the bath. She didn't look. She'd walked in on Glinda in the bath once at school, but there had been a superfluous amount of bubbles at the time, and this was different.

"Elphie, honestly," said Glinda forthrightly. "Are you frightened of me or something?"

"No, you fool. It's the water." This was really not a lie.

"Oh. What is your thing with water, anyway? I understand that it's a problem, but I don't know the thing..."

"I suppose the word for it is allergic," said Elphie with a shrug, studying the porcelain sink. "I just always have been."

"How do you stay clean, though? And you are, for you always smell so good—" She grimaced at her own words and Elphaba chuckled lightly, most likely out of an intense uncomfortable pressure that caused one to laugh as though it would alleviate the discomfort, which it never did.

"Nevertheless," she said, starting for the door.

"Wait, Elphie." She heard her stand up from the bath and the sound of the water draining, the scuffle of a towel which Elphaba hoped she was wrapping around herself. "Have you forgotten that you did kiss me, then?"

Oh, well there it was, not even out of the lips of someone a little more subtle. She supposed it must have looked comical from an unbiased third party, what with her standing agape staring at the door and Glinda (probably, although she had no way of knowing this) behind her with her hands on her hips; certainly to Elphaba herself, there was no comedy in it and she fought, fought hard to put into words what she did not want to say and what she was sure she should not be allowed to say.

She didn't want to talk about it for many reasons, the most enduring of which was that there wasn't a whole lot to say; that is, there wasn't a reason for it that she could articulate. The reasons, she rationalized, were two-fold – there was the reasoning for kissing her and there was the reason for wanting to kiss her. The latter was, obviously, that she had a certain fondness for Glinda that may or may not be translated into being "in love with Glinda" (loath as she was to admit it), but her reasons for initiating the Incident of Terrible Proportions last night, she decided, was entirely to distract herself. And that was all there was to it. She hadn't been thinking and she didn't like that Glinda was the only person or entity that could reduce her to non-thinking.

At any rate, she felt she had to answer for no other reason than it was rude not to, so she said very simply and very eloquently, "No, I have not forgotten."

"Well, thank heavens," replied Glinda casually. "I was beginning to think I had imagined it up."

"No, not nearly. I wonder, is dinner included in the hotel package or do we have to pay extra?" She exited the bathroom, breathing irregularly. She heard Glinda sigh, she dressed, she exited right behind her.

"It's included. We can have it downstairs or it can be brought up here. It's one of those tiktok machine servants; you tell it what you want and it brings it up. Rather unnerving if you want to know the truth. Elphie—"

"We'll eat downstairs, then," decided Elphie. "I don't know that I trust something too much like Morrible's Grommetik. Oh, we'd have to get dressed, then. Dear me-"

"Oh, really, Elphie – why be so ridiculous?" Startled, Elphaba turned and regarded her irate roomie who did indeed have her hands on her hips in that very not-comical way. She glared. "I mean, you seem to protest to talking about it, so I wonder if perhaps that implies that you didn't enjoy it, in which case..." She trailed off and appeared very flushed from the exertion of speaking so frankly. Elphaba frowned.

"That isn't the case."

"Well, what is the case?" She sunk down on the bed and closed her eyes momentarily. "Elphaba, I feel as though we've had a long week that's done nothing but engender fruitless introspection, and I confess to... to not liking it very much." She looked up, a very picture of reluctant intellect, at Elphaba.

Peculiar looking girl was she, the green skin notwithstanding; that was a tired topic. It was the hawk-like features, the sharp chin and nose, the dark, bottomless eyes. They were expressionless, maybe, dark and blank. Often she was mean, often she was compassionate, but her eyes never reflected it. The hair, long and lovely, and black to a startling degree. It was heavy, weighed down her pointed head so much that she seemed to perpetually be hanging it. There was a beauty, however, that came out of her intelligence, her passion, her ambiguous nature. She, Glinda, had fallen in love with mystery.

Elphaba was strangely silent as she sat next to Glinda on the bed. This was incorrect, for she rarely passed up a chance to speak and educate the world on her many opinions. So Glinda prompted her, she said, "Say something, Elphie."

So Elphie said, "Who are we, two university girls, to pretend to know what a week of unrelated-yet-interconnected events mean for the rest of life as we know it? Isn't that what religion is about, finding a why and how of life's method of living? Well, I don't believe in anything, Glinda, and neither do you. Does that make us inconsequential? Because we don't believe anything, does that mean that we are not believed either? And if that's true, well, then here's the real question – are our actions invisible? Do we cease existence? There are studies that ensure that everyone matters, as long as there is belief. Well, then, I ask you, smart, dear girl – do we really matter?"

Glinda did not understand her. She rarely did. Elphaba was a strange girl with thoughts bigger than she ought to be allowed. But she was real, she existed, Glinda was sure of it. So she wrapped her arms around Elphaba's neck, scooted closer on the bed. Their hips touched and she said, "But Elphaba, I love you."

Elphie nodded, her forehead furrowed in thought. She was no stranger to repression, to denial, and it seemed useless to her, suddenly, to want to trace the lineage of every action, every event, and for what? So that she could sit back with a self-satisfied smile and commend herself on being a thorough Thinker? What if it were simpler than that? "Then, some things do matter, I suppose," she said, and she leaned forward and bestowed a small, lovely kiss upon Glinda's lips.

It was funny, the things you didn't notice until you were up-close, like how she had never noticed how natural the green skin seemed, or how long Elphie's eyelashes really were, or the incongruous nature of Elphie's nose and how it did not get in the way, at all. "Oh!" said Glinda, feeling faint. She smiled. She pressed her lips again against lips that were willing, that she hoped would always be willing. That was perfect. Being in love with Elphaba was strange, like looking at the world with your head down, like staring at a large painting up close and not being able to step back and look at the whole thing. It was comforting. And scary as hell.

The Palace was still making a big to-do about their wanting to see the Wizard. Elphaba had said, annoyed, that they were students of Madame Morrible's the other day, and that had seemed to bump their waiting time up from "never" to "in five days or so." There were ridiculous forms that they had to come in and fill out every day, perhaps to make sure that they were serious about this visit and not just coming in on a whim. More likely, of course, was to ward off assassination attempts, which seemed sensible.

"Although," said Elphie as they sat on the floor of the Palace waiting room, filling out the form, "what conscious assassin would answer 'Nature of visit?' with 'To kill the Wonderful Wizard of Oz'?"

"Elphie, keep your voice down," hissed Glinda urgently, looking around the crowded waiting room. It was too full for Elphie to be heard, thankfully, but still. Elphie made a tsking sound and went back to her form. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her long, bony torso crooked into an awkward arc as she studied the paperwork diligently. There were not enough chairs for them to be able to sit. The waiting room was full to the brim with people, it seemed, from all walks of life. Glinda saw many of a familiar situation – a poor-looking woman with a gaggle of dirty children that she either, in some cases, could not control and could only watch helplessly as they ran around the room and tormented other people, or in other cases, she clutched them tightly to her body, staring out at the strangers with large, empty eyes. There were also many cases of what Glinda began to call the Young, Up and Coming Lad – men, not too much older than herself and probably fresh out of school, intense in their frank good looks and frank hopefulness. They paced the waiting room anxiously, hair on end. Another common sight was that of the Disgruntled Worker – dirty-looking men who had been waiting so long they had claimed most of the chairs. They sat with sour expressions, jiggling their legs in impatience.

Then there was them, of course. The blonde girl and the green girl, unusual in nature, but what Glinda considered the sanest of the bunch. Two girls who had woken up in the morning and had breakfast in the Palace Hotel, who were treating their foray into the Emerald City as a vacation more than a mission, now that they knew they would have to wait to see the Wizard. In her head, privately, Glinda was considering it a Romantic Excursion of sorts. This she would never admit to Elphie for fear of being laughed at, but that's what she thought of it all the same. Their trip to the Palace to check up on their status on the waiting list (around two-hundred somewhere and steadily rising as forms were processed and thrown out) had been more of an afterthought than anything, a reprieve to the languid afternoon of sitting around with no words passed between them, only kisses of a hurried, fevered nature, an idea that they would perhaps never get out of bed.

It was on Elphie's suggestion, upon hitting mid-afternoon that they really ought to visit the Palace and investigate how this whole getting-into-see-the-Wizard thing was coming along before evening fell. Glinda was reluctant, drunk on Elphie's kisses, lightheaded and content to spend the day snuggled in the clean, crisp emerald sheets of their bed. She had been bribed. There had been promises of shopping.

And now they had been sitting in the waiting room for hours and Glinda sighed, wondering when that promise would come to fruition. Noticing her restlessness, Elphie looked up from the form, her expression still puckered in thought. It faded away to an affectionate look and she said, "Suppose I meet you in one of those shops when I'm finished?"

"Oh," said Glinda, shifting a bit. "I don't mind waiting."

"You don't mind? You resemble a child who has not yet received Mother's promised ice-cream. Take the money and buy yourself a scarf or some such." She handed her money. It was odd, spending stolen money, but she didn't think on it too much. Elphie made it seem as if it was okay, and she was okay with that.

"Well, all right. But if you take too long, I'll—"

"You'll pout and be cold to me for a full ten minutes, I'd wager. I won't take too long."

She left the Palace, wishing not for the first time that Elphie knew her a little less.

The Palace square was an odd place – the stately, ostentatious disposition of the Palace itself juxtaposed with the lovely, virtually economical nature of the surrounding establishments. The Palace Hotel, for example, was a grand, ugly place that hardly dented one's pockets. The shops in the square, also, sold quality items of almost no cost. Was this life directly under the Wizard? No wonder he was so Wonderful. She had voiced her exhilarated amazement to Elphie and had received a cynical, radical response about a Radius Theory where any good ruler would keep the economy peaceable in areas of extreme rule, whilst keeping a rigid grip and careless economical eye on areas further away. "It makes him seem like a good ruler," she concluded, and that was all she would say on the matter. Elphaba was not overly impressed with the Wizard and Glinda only hoped that she curbed her apparent disdain for him at their meeting. It was her experience that one was more likely to get what they wanted out of reverence, false or otherwise.

At any rate, Elphaba's definition of "long" was different, Glinda supposed, than the traditional definition of it. She must have shopped for a full hour, flitting into boutique after boutique. She'd bought Elphie a new cloak and had been tempted to buy her a really nice one, but practicality intervened and said that she really ought to buy one that Elphie would wear, so it was a drab black one. Even the clerk seemed to think it was ugly, and Glinda made a big show of saying "It's for a friend of mine."

She also bought herself a new nightdress, recognizing the ridiculousness of only having packed three, and then, remembering what Elphaba had proposed, she bought a few scarves. It was certainly more than Elphaba had probably assumed she would buy, but she felt that when a girl made another girl wait for nearly an hour's time, the first girl had no right to be upset about the second girl's spending habits.

Evening, sooner or later, did fall and Glinda browsed around, moping. She stood at the back of the hat shop and listlessly tried on another hat. The full-length window beside her faced out into the back of the square, where the shops ended and an inappropriate little patch of grass was the division between commerce and faith, a stone circle on which a unionist chapel lolled about, a dark representation of diminished belief. It was dark. Glinda wondered if it was ever used, unable to drum up the name of the Saint it was named for. In opposition to her thoughts, a figure stepped out of the side of it, a dark figure that stalked across the circle, coming closer to the patch of grass. A moment later, another figure came out, too, and appeared to glance at the first before taking off in an opposite direction.

As the first figure came closer, its thin contours became clearer and Glinda noticed that it was Elphaba, her arms swinging at her sides as she stepped over the grass and moved to the side, presumably to walk through an alley and come into the square. Now what, Glinda wondered, her hat falling off her head, was Elphaba of all people doing in a unionist chapel? Is that what had taken her so long? And who had she been with?

Or perhaps she hadn't been with them at all; perhaps they had both been in there to pray. But Elphaba didn't pray, Glinda knew, and had almost an unspoken aversion to chapels in general. So why—

The bell above the door sounded an entrance and Elphaba strode into the shop, breathless, eyes darting about. Upon noticing Glinda, she joined her, saying, "I should have known you'd buy out the entire city; sorry for taking so long."

"Oh, well, it's... Where were you?"

"Let's pay for these things and have dinner, then, and I'll tell you all about the excruciatingly dull procedures of The Palace Process. This is pretty, by the way," she said, pointing to one of the scarves.

"Have you been at the Palace all this time?" asked Glinda as they winded their way through the crowded streets. It was dark, the warm glow of candlelight filtering out of the windows as they walked past, illuminating Elphie's features, giving her a look more effulgent than green. She put one arm around Glinda's shoulders.

"No, not this whole time. I have an idea of where we might look for Halivan's family, if you care to accompany me tomorrow."

"Oh, am I no longer being relegated to the stay-at-home-and-worry-while-the-hero-flits-off-on-adventure type? Do you really wish me to accompany you?"

Elphaba pretended to think for a moment. "On second thought, perhaps you had better stay. I don't know that I could endure all the terrible sarcasm. It's like having my own medicine used against me, to mix a few metaphors."

Had she been asked beforehand where the finest place to fall in love and enjoy a vacation was, Glinda could not see herself having said, "The Emerald City, of course," but, nonetheless, it is what happened. It was silly and a bit embarrassing, she realized, how trite it all was, but she could hardly bring herself to care. A long stretch away from school and duties, with no real immediate responsibilities except for a meeting with the Wizard that was days away – well, Glinda reasoned, it could be worse.

The sky was pitch-black that night and the city was loud, shouting. The poor suffered and froze, their anguish blackened the night. The comfortable rooms in the Palace Hotel were warm, but that was all that could be said. At night, there was no trace of anything emerald, and it all became black.