A/N: Sorry I haven't written in a while. Ok, I think this chapter kind of sucks, but whatever, soon there'll be some action. As soon as I figure out what I'm doing. And everyone, no, Cass is not Nor.
Disclaimer: If I only owned this book…
After dancing for three hours straight, Elphaba and Fiyero were taking a break. Supposedly. Fiyero collapsed into a chair.
"Come on, let's go find out who that girl was," said Elphaba.
"What girl?" Fiyero moaned.
"The one that was talking to Liir. The redheaded one, in the grey dress. Let's go ask Glinda who she is." Elphaba paused. "Let's talk to Liir first, actually."
"Why?"
"Because, dear Yero my hero, unless he's inherited both your endearing obliviousness and my social pathology, he'll have asked the girl her name."
"Oh." Fiyero thought a moment. "Hey!"
"Get off of it, I said it was endearing."
"Fine."
"Let's go," Elphaba urged. Impatiently, she pulled Fiyero from the chair by his collar and began pulling him across the dance floor.
"Ow! Do you ever stop moving?" he groaned.
…
Liir and Cass had danced for a short while, but as Liir appeared to have two left feet and Cass herself wasn't winning any awards in the gracefulness category, the pair had found an unoccupied nook containing some chairs and sat down to talk.
"So, Liir, what was it you were saying about your parents? You never finished," said Cass.
"Well, I was raised in a mauntery orphanage," began Liir. "At least, until I was seven. But when I was very small, they sometimes sent one of the maunts in to care for me. She was rather young, but she was also, well- green."
"Green?" asked Cass.
"Green as sin," affirmed Liir. "And she'd sing to me, even though she was under a vow of silence." Liir was surprised by the words bubbling from his mouth like water in over boulders in a stream. He had never remembered that brief vestige of maternal feeling on Elphaba's part before, but now that he did, he also recalled her voice. It was beautiful, clear and bell-like as it soared over the high notes, rich and full as it plumbed the depths of the scale. He was struck by a sudden longing to hear it again. The memory of it stirred something deep within him. He shook his head, as if to clear it. "But then, when I was seven, she was leaving the mauntery- Sister Saint Aelphaba, she was called. And, well, they sent me with her."
"Where?" Cass queried, deep into Liir's story despite herself.
"On a wagon train, through the Kells and Kumbricia's Pass, to Kiamo Ko in the Vinkus," Liir said. Cass gasped.
"Weren't you frightened?" she asked. "With all those Winkie savages?"
Fiyero and Elphaba entered the alcove, unseen by Liir and Cass, just in time to hear the last bit of the conversation. Elphaba quirked an eyebrow over her scarf, and Fiyero grinned. He crept forward, as though he were hunting in the Grasslands once more, until he was just behind Cass. He didn't move a muscle for a long moment, and then he said, very quietly:
"Boo."
Turning, Cass saw his diamond-patterned face and screamed a piercing note that nearly burst the eardrums of the other three. Elphaba fell, laughing, against the door frame, and Fiyero fell to the floor. Liir was torn between slapping Fiyero, for humiliating Cass, and slapping Cass, for being so ignorant. He did neither, and instead sat turning red.
He and Cass sat, embarrassed, as the other two tried in vain to control themselves.
As soon as they could again speak, Elphaba, typically, did so.
"So, Liir, who is your friend?" she asked, too casually. She inwardly grimaced at herself. She knew she sounded awful, and she hated it, but she'd never been able to master a parlor manner.
"Oh," said Liir. "This is Cassia…" he trailed off, waiting for her to supply her last name.
"Dawzir," she said. "Cassia Dawzir."
A/N: Hmm….something about the look of that name seems awfully familiar…