A/N: The second part of the prologue. Of three. I know, random that there's so much prologue, but it just works that way. After that things get more exciting. :)

Liir paused at the gates of the mauntery, his unnamed child squirming in the basket in his arms. He looked up at the clear, listless blue of the sky, birds chirping mildly on the parapet and the sun warm upon his shoulders.

Despite the beauty of the day and the unfamiliar calm that had settled over Liir (from having made a decision right for once), he felt distantly afraid. Nervous, maybe. Each of his arrivals and departures at the Cloister of Saint Glinda had been cloaked in fear, uncertainty, and he thought again of Elphaba, setting out into the unknown, only the broom and an overweight, undereducated child on her heels.

He looked down at the broom, feeling that he wouldn't carry it with him any longer. That by returning it to the mauntery he'd be returning it to her, acknowledging her death and inviting for himself a life of his own, one away from her, one in which he lived without needing her, without needing her memory or her flight.

The baby squirmed again in the heat, her nakedness wrapped in Candle's thin blanket, and Liir raised the handle of the broom obediently to rap it against the mauntery door. A few of the birds that had been singing so merrily only moments before took off into the sky, skimming away.

The door flew open suddenly and a disheveled maunt nearly tripped into him before she caught herself against the door, which slammed into the stone. A few more birds took flight.

She straightened with difficulty, obviously disoriented and half-asleep, gazing intently at the birds that were soaring off towards the clouds.

Liir quickly decided, with more than his usual amount of rationality in regards to momentary decisions, to take advantage of the drowsiness of the woman before him. He clutched the basket protectively to his chest and strode past her with an air of dignity, striding down the hall to make-believe meetings of the utmost importance.

When he was certain that the maunt must already have returned to her nap in the watchtower, Liir glanced over his shoulder into the now-empty courtyard. He let out a breath that he hadn't realized that he'd been holding in against the thumping of his heart. The faint lullabies of a domingon played in the still air around him.

He stood in the middle of the hallway, the weary child in a fitful half-sleep in his arms, sunlight glancing off the windows into the dusty air and domingon song trailing across the floor. "She thought the baby was dead," he whispered to himself, gripping the basket tighter, as though afraid he might have been wrong all along. "She thought it wouldn't make it." She reads the present. He dismissed the thought and clenched his stomach against the nauseous feeling that was forming there.

The quiet sound of footsteps joined the haunting song and the silence as someone came around the corner ahead of him. Liir became aware quite quickly of his idleness, of the fact that he was standing in the middle of the hallway with no time to flee. (So much for his brilliance of a few moments before.)

He resigned any attempt to escape and instead waited, watching the woman approach. The sunlight reflected blue off of her dress and onto her face as she passed through a bar of light from the window, and he could make out a familiar little nose, long eyelashes, soft blue-reflected lips that he knew he'd seen before. "Lady Glinda?" he questioned aloud.

She looked up toward him, seeing him for the first time in the in-between gloom of the courtyard and the hall. A smile slid quickly over her face like a mask.

"Liir!" she beamed, appraising him with a sweeping motion of the eye. "How good it is to see you again!"

He almost wanted to question her statement. Wanted to say "No." Wanted to drop the baby in the middle of the hallway, to disappear, to run. To fly. No response of any real sense seemed like it would do.

"Liir?"

He looked down at her feet, white shoes that reflected her dress. Everything blue.

"Liir, are you alright?"

He nodded his head faintly. His throat itched.

She furrowed her brow at the boy (Was he a boy still, this son of the girl with whom she'd grown up?), who was continuing his staring match with her toes. "Er, what is it that you've got there, Liir?"

He glanced down at the basket, then up at Glinda's face. "Lady Glinda, I…" He paused. No words came. He lowered the basket in his arms instead, neglecting the broom that fell from the crook of his arm to the floor.

Glinda's eyes shot to the sudden clattering of the handle on stone. Elphaba's broom. It was a moment before she looked up again, back to Liir, and then down, down to the child in his arms. She stared, transfixed.

Both were silent. A bird was shouting desperate calls out the window. "Elphie," Glinda breathed, trailing a shaking finger along the green child's soft cheek.

"Oh, Liir," she whispered. "Oh…" She let out a ragged sigh. "Dear."

- - - - -

There was a tentative knock at the door that jerked her from her thoughts. What with the incessant screeching of the mating birds and the incompetence of what seemed to be the entire staff, she wondered that she ever accomplished anything at all.

"I've told you repeatedly," she spoke, agitated, "not to disrupt me during meditation." She closed her eyes again.

"Superior maunt, there… are some guests here that you're going to want to see."

Annoyed, but curious nonetheless, she called for them to be shown in. The door immediately opened and Glinda entered, followed closely by Liir. She was remotely surprised to see Liir again, but remained thoroughly nonplussed as to why his arrival had resulted in the interruption of her afternoon routine. "Welcome," she said, straining very little to be at all welcoming. "Take a seat."

Glinda ignored the suggestion and instead came closer to the maunt. "Liir has something for you to see," she announced. She turned on her heels as though expecting Liir just behind her, but he was still lingering in the doorway. She cast a glare upon him, perhaps a bit more comical than threatening, but he obliged her, approaching for the maunt to better see the bundle in his arms.

"Sweet Oz," the maunt breathed, staring enraptured at the tiny infant that could be no more than a week old, soft green nose and cheeks and cool gray eyes.

She tore her gaze from the child and looked to the maunt that was still standing at the edge of the room, grasping the door handle as if only her presence would hold it in place. "Go fetch Candle," she told her.