"Pearlfruit," Fiyero said. "Do you have any idea how long it's been?" He began to slice it into little pieces.
"I'm happy for you," Elphaba told him.
One of the Sisters was making her way up the hill to where they were. "Begging your pardons, sir, maam, but now that the gentleman is up and moving around-"
"You were wondering when we would be on our way," Fiyero finished for her.
"Essentially, yes."
"You can tell your Superior Maunt that they will be leaving at sunup and that I will be accompaning them," Mother Yackle announced. Up until now her presence had gone unnoticed.
Elphaba began to protest this but Yackle cut her off. "The two of you are in dire need of direction. Without me you'd go walking off a cliff. And you," she cried, whirling around on Fiyero, "Don't think for one instant that this will go the way you wanted it to."
He shook his head and laughed. "What could go wrong?"
She gave him a cold glare. "They're right about you. You are a blithering idiot." She glanced at Elphaba and made a 'hmph' sound before heading down the hill with the Sister.
A donkey and a small cart were awarded to them upon their departure. Candle, apparently, had invited herself along as well.
After some bickering between Fiyero and Elphaba, in which she demanded that he ride in the cart, while he argued that he was well enough that he could walk. During this Yackle called them both fools, Liir looked sour and resentful, and Candle maintained her silence.
Eventually, he submitted to her will. Candle sat across from him in the cart, with her domingon by her side. Yackle rode the donkey while Liir and Elphaba walked, the former continually giving voice to his displeasure.
"You're a Quadling," Fiyero asked, taking note of Candle's ruddy complexion.
She nodded in earnest.
He eyed her shrewdly. "It's not that you can't speak, it's that you won't. Why, I wonder." But he said no more on it.
"Something has changed within me, something is not the same/I'm through with playing by the rules of someone elses game," he began in his pleasing baritone, after a long while of riding in silence. "Too late for second guessing, too late to go back to sleep/Its time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap." Elphaba stopped walking and waited for him to draw level so she could walk beside him.
Nor raced down a path that she had tread many times before. She threw a glance back over her shoulder. Her pursuer was far enough behind her, so she ducked into an alleyway.
She leaned back against a wall and removed a small but very sharp knife from her boot.
I'm through accepting limits because someone says they're so/Somethings I cannot change but til I try I'll never know.
"What are you doing?"
She bit back a scream.
A young man, hardly older than she, held his intoxicated friend upright while the other emptied the contents of his stomach.
At this point her would be assailant ran past without stopping. Nor visibly relaxed.
"Ah, I think I got it. Some men are pricks that only think of one thing," he said.
She decided not to tell him that the reason why her antagonist had been after her was because he caught her picking his pocket.
"Hey, you're one of those Tavern girls," he blurted. "From the Giddy Pixie."
She straightened herself, looking haughty. "I serve tables. Not entertainment."
"Alright," he said, holding up his hands. "No offense intended. I'm Trism, by the way. Trism bon Cavalish."
"I'm unimpressed," she told him coolly. She began to walk away.
"Hey," he called after her. "You look like a girl who needs a place to stay the night." Okay, now he had her attention.
Too long I've been afraid of losing love I guess I've lost/Well, if that's love it comes at much too high a cost.
The odd band of travelers set up night camp. By now, a merry little fire was consuming a cluster of twigs. Fiyero sat closest to it, with Elphaba close by. Yackle observed this and gave them another 'hmph'.
After a few minutes, Elphaba stood up and stole into the trees. It was nice to be with company but mostly she had been a solitary soul. So now she was glad for the privacy. She turned her face upward to the sky.
"So if you care to find me, look to the western sky, as someone told me lately 'Everyone deserves the chance to fly'/And if I'm flying solo atleast I'm flying free/To those who'd ground take a message back for me," she sang to the full moon. She couldn't leave of course, though she may want to. Fiyero would never forgive her.
Nor brushed her hair out and turned down her oil lamp. Gazing at her reflection in the mirror, she sang softly to herself.
"Tell them how I am defying gravity/I'm flying high, defying gravity and soon I'll match them all in renown..."
Elphaba returned to the camp. Fiyero was there waiting for her. He tossed a few more twigs into the fire. She went across to him and sat down in front of him and leaned back into his arms.
"Dreams the way we planned them," he began.
"If we work in tandem," she echoed.
"There's no fight we cannot win/Just you and I defying gravity/ With you and I defying gravity," they sang together.
"They'll never bring us down," he finished.