Two updates in one day, aren't you all the lucky ones? ;) As promised, here is the last part of the beginning/intro stuff. I rather enjoy this chapter, I hope you do too. :)
Glinda didn't know what she had expected, but it wasn't this. She had pictured Candle in her mind's eye; a broken woman, moving with quiet docility, shrinking into the shadows behind eyes glazed with shame. So when Candle had entered smoothly, her domingon slung over her shoulder in comfortable grace, Glinda was surprised.
Candle sat wordlessly in a chair and scanned the room. Her eyes didn't linger on Liir and the tight bundle in his arms nor on Glinda's face in a confused glance. She didn't ask questions, she merely sat, apparently content to be in this moment the way fate had intended for her to be.
The Superior Maunt, her expression blank, spoke into the warm stillness of the room. "Candle, this is your child?"
Candle did not look in the direction the maunt had indicated, but neither did she play dumb. Her features were unreadable, as though carved from stone. "Yes," she answered in a small voice.
The Superior Maunt seemed slightly taken aback, as though the answer had been unexpected. "May I ask," she began, in a voice that quiet plainly reflected that she would ask with or without permission, "why you left your child?"
Candle knit her brow in concentration and she studied the hands folded in her lap. Though she appeared to have a clear understanding of the language, speaking it seemed to be difficult for her. After a moment, she spoke quietly. "Baby thought to be dead."
Liir spoke up then, unraveling himself from the silent obscurity of the corner in which he sat. "Candle! I found my child wrapped in this cloak. With a limp body and lifeless eyes. I don't know what-"
But what Liir didn't know, Glinda didn't find out. He had slipped, uninterrupted, into Qua'ati, his voice rising in intensity. Though she strained her ears to try and make sense of the language, she caught only an occasional similar word, among them "damned" and "daughter."
Candle rose from her chair, gazing coldly at Liir. Though her body language was that of someone who was quite angry, she did not yell. Her voice rang confidently throughout the room before she turned on her heel and marched through the door.
Glinda sat, stunned, Candle's voice reverberating around the unnaturally still room. Her last sentence had been clear for all of them to understand. "My child is dead."
The Superior Maunt was the first to break the silence. "What is it you plan to do, Liir?"
He sat still, gazing at the door through which Candle had just left. After a moment he glanced down at Lena, who was squirming uncomfortably on his lap. He opened his mouth to speak. "I-" his voice broke, and he swallowed. "I'm no father," he whispered.
He stood and crossed the room quietly. Raising his arms, he stared at Lena for a long moment before placing her in the maunt's arms. "You take her."
At the open door he paused, looking back at his daughter through tear-swollen eyes. "Goodbye Lena," he whispered. As the door closed faintly behind him, Glinda heard, "Goodbye Elphaba."
The uncomfortable silence of the room was broken only by Lena's soft cooing—an attempt to capture the attention of the maunt in whose lap she sat.
Glinda rose halfway from the chair. "I…" The maunt tore her eyes away from the window, through which Liir could be seen, retreating into the sunset. Her eyes were crinkled in exhaustion. "Take her."
Glinda unquestionably obeyed, raising the child from the maunt's lap and heading from the room. She walked quietly for a few minutes before she suddenly stopped. She had no recollection of making a decision on a destination, and didn't know where she was headed.
She slid over to a bench and sat down upon it, laying out Lena upon her lap. She was such a striking young girl. She realized, then, why the child reminded her so much of Elphaba. It wasn't just the soft green skin and dark, sleek hair, as she had originally thought. It was her eyes, which held no resemblance to Elphaba's, and yet seemed to express nothing but Elphaba within them. They held a quiet, unrestrained knowledge, the type Elphaba had always possessed in such quantity.
Lena cringed suddenly when a teardrop landed on her cheek. Glinda quickly wiped it away, gasping for air through the sobs that were now wracking her slight frame. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" she mumbled, wiping Lena's cheek with her thumb.
For Lena was like Elphaba in more ways than she knew. Her parents had left her to fend for herself in a cruel world—left her to learn for herself what love truly was. She apologized, not to Lena, but to Elphaba. For having to endure such a childhood as she had never known and could never fathom.
She pulled Lena to her chest, tears trickling sporadically down her cheeks. She made a silent vow to take care of Lena, to give her the love of a parent that Elphaba had never had. "I'm sorry," she whispered once more.
Lena's tiny fingers began to grab at her shoulder insistently. Suddenly, she realized that she had been crying into Lena's hair. She pulled the infant away from her chest, urgently, to find the child in tears. "Oh, baby, you're just hungry, aren't you?"
She rose from the bench and wiped Lena's tears away.
Perhaps Elphaba's death, instead of her own baptism, had been her sacrifice. The baptism for her granddaughter instead.