Glinda pulled out the collapsible wand, a new one that had replaced the one she had lost on the lake, and started mumbling the words of the spell.
"What are you doing?"
Scared to death, Glinda turned around to face Fiyero who had approached her so silently she hadn't even noticed him.
"You are not doing what I think you're doing, are you?"
"Well, I- uhm, what did you think I was doing?", Glinda asked innocently and tried to slip the wand under the table.
"You were doing magic again! Do you want to kill us all?"
"Hey!"
"Come on, judging from the last two spells gone wrong it's not so far-fetched that your magicking is rather life threatening, am I right?"
"Maybe", Glinda snapped, but she knew that her last two attempts at sorcery had indeed ended quite dreadfully.
"All right, fine, I won't do magic for Elphie's present, but I had such a good idea!"
"Which was?"
"A journey to the Otherworld."
Fiyero tried to say something but he was so baffled the words couldn't come out.
After a while he had caught himself again and he said, "I'm glad I interfered at the point I did."
"But it was the perfect present!"
Glinda was in a huff.
"How had you even planned to accomplish this?"
"There is a spell for it in this book here."
She pointed to the spell book on the table in front of her.
"Glinda, look how far in the back this spell is, I bet it's a really hard one!"
"Could be."
"And you probably don't even know how to pronounce all of it right, do you?"
"Could be?"
"So why in Oz did you decide to try it?"
Fiyero really couldn't get behind Glinda's antics sometimes.
"I just wanted to give Elphie the best present ever! Not something as simple as a book."
"Glinda, I might not know a lot about all this Lurlinemas nonsense but I have learned something about gift-giving.
The best presents aren't the pompous or 'perfect' ones, you have to find something that comes from your heart, something that is just right for the person you're giving it to. And a book, for example, is just right for Elphaba, because she can never ever have enough of them. But of of course it doesn't have to be a book, just try to think of something that tells you she'd like it."
Glinda looked at her boyfriend bewilderedly, she wasn't used to him holding such monologues or saying something with so much meaning to it.
"This is great advice", was all she could say.
"I have to admit, this was Elphaba's advice."
"Well, that explains it, doesn't it?"
Laughing, Glinda shut the spellbook and put the wand in her pocket.
Her friends were right, she probably would only have caused the next catastrophe with her meager sorcery skills.
Now she only had to find out, what her heart told her was the right present for Elphaba.