Elphaba Thropp could not be summed up in one simple conversation. As it turned out, she couldn't even be summed up in a single day.
She and Peric stayed there for hours, telling stories and asking each other questions. When Peric flew off that night, long after the sun had set, he was only more intrigued by Elphaba, and vice versa. As a result, the two found themselves spending more and more time together every day.
Elphaba told him about her childhood: taking care of Nessa, travelling across Munchkinland and Quadling Country as her father gave sermons, learning how to lose herself in stories and research, finding her passion in history and the life sciences. She talked about Shiz, and how excited she was to further her studies. Much to her surprise, she found herself telling Peric more private details, too. How relieved she was to not be her sister's caretaker anymore, how personal the issue of Animal rights was, how naïve she had been when she thought life at Shiz would be easy, and how strange it was to find a friend in her roommate.
She did her best to avoid speaking of Glinda, but the blonde seemed to keep popping up in her stories. Peric seemed to notice her hesitation, and he didn't ask many questions about Glinda.
Mostly, though, Elphaba found herself talking about the research. She recalled, with a bittersweet edge to her voice, sitting in the life science room before her first class, waiting for the scientist she most adored to walk in.
"Dillamond?" Peric asked, flapping his wings a bit. "You had a class with Dr. Dillamond?"
"For a while," Elphaba said. "But then…"
Peric clicked his beak as she told him about Dillamond's last day at Shiz. Elphaba studied the Bird, noting the puff of his chest and ruffle of his feathers. His eyes had darkened, glinting beadily, obviously agitated. She decided to trust him. Ducking back into her room, she grabbed the journal that she kept under her mattress.
"Elphaba Thropp," Peric said after she had thumbed through the journal and explained the basis of Dillamond's theories to him, "You are a mystery that never ends."
The green girl had been quite pleased.
Elphaba learned a lot more about Peric, too. He was homeless and companionless, and had been since he was young.
"It's not that uncommon," he told her, picking at a feather on his left wing. "Especially among Birds. Most of my kind doesn't want anything to do with Ozian society, so they keep to themselves, somewhere out of reach. Those of us who haven't quite given up wander on our own."
And that's what he did, flying aimlessly through Oz. Sometimes he stayed low, sneaking around and gathering information. Sometimes he was loud and destructive, picking fights and ruining plans wherever he could. He had more than a few battle scars, as Elphaba had seen, and he displayed them proudly, recounting tales of freed Animals and angry, corrupt business owners.
Most of the time, though, he tended to just…be. He wandered and watched, learning what he could about people and places and events and corruption and revolution.
Elphaba enjoyed his stories about the far corners of Oz. Peric had travelled everywhere, from Quadling Country to Gillikin, the Vinkus to Munchkinland, and everywhere in between.
"I think I prefer Munchkinland, though," he mused. "It's more a part of Oz than the Vinkus or Quadling Country, yet it's far enough from the Wizard's reach to be safe. Well, safer than Gillikin or the Emerald City."
There he is again, Elphaba thought to herself. The Wizard. Even just his name was starting to make her uneasy.
Somewhere amid all the long conversations, endless questions, and late night stories, living at the Colwen Grounds became easier. Nessa continued to press Elphaba for an answer. Her father would glare disapprovingly or corner her when no one else was around. The Eminent Thropp frowned and turned a cold shoulder whenever he saw her. She missed Glinda constantly, and she was running out of options with Dillamond's research. Yet, somehow, all of that faded to the background when Peric was perched outside her window.
"Munchkinland is odd to me," Peric said to her one day. Elphaba was sprawled out on the floor near the windowsill, surrounded by a mess of books and papers that she couldn't quite bring herself to focus on. She rolled to her side and looked up at him.
"Oh?"
He lifted a foot and scratched at the stone of the window absentmindedly. "Yes. Think about it—a stand-alone government in the middle of another country? Especially when that other country is becoming more corrupt by the day?"
Elphaba smirked. Peric spoke passionately and freely, unafraid of any consequence his words would bring. It was one of the reasons she enjoyed his company.
"I suppose it's a strange concept, especially in the Oz we live in today. But we're not an entirely stand-alone government. We still have to answer to the Wizard."
"Do you really, though?" he asked, tilting his head. "You're far enough away, and the Wizard has many things he cares about more than the Munchkins. My guess is that a lot could happen here at the Colwen Grounds without the Wizard knowing about it."
Elphaba gestured to the papers strewn around her. "Illegal research, for example?"
Peric grinned. "Well, yes. But more than that."
The green girl thought about it. "I suppose so. But I don't think there's ever been a reason to lie to the Wizard. At least, not about anything important. As far as I can remember, Munchkinland has been sort of indifferent to the rest of Oz, and the feeling is mutual."
The Bird was silent for a moment. It was only after Elphaba had turned back to her papers that he spoke again. "What's even odder, though, is why you want no part of it all."
Elphaba's fingers tightened around her pen. She had been hesitant to tell Peric about the arguments with her family for exactly this reason. She didn't want to talk about it, not even with a third party. But it was hard to keep things from someone who spent most of his free time lurking around the castle. Peric knew most of what was going on in the Colwen Grounds, sometimes even before she did.
"Politics," she said after a while, "Are not what I want to do with my life."
There was a hint of warning in her tone. Peric didn't bring it up the rest of the day.
Peric was curious. He was constantly trying to learn more about everything—it's just what he did. He was interested and persistent and passionate and stubborn, and if he knew when to stop asking questions, he didn't show it. He pressed Elphaba for answers. Sometimes it was about simple things, like pieces of Dillamond's research. Sometimes it was more personal, like the latest argument with Nessa or her father. Often, there were no answers, just discussions that never quite ended. But always he kept her talking, even after she'd put up her walls and shut him out. It was both infuriating and healthy for the green girl.
Somewhere along the way, Elphaba wondered how they'd gotten to be so close so quickly. True, she'd always gotten along well with Animals, but never along the lines of friendship. It was new and strange and sometimes after he left for the night she would stare up at her ceiling and marvel at it all. She knew this would never have happened if it weren't for Glinda. The blonde was the first to bring down her walls, and Elphaba supposed that just made it easier for others to do the same.
Of course, thinking all of this led to thinking of her roommate. It was around that time that Elphaba would roll over, pull the blanket up to her chin, and try to get some sleep.
As the days rolled into weeks, Peric became her buffer. He would perch on her windowsill, or her dresser, or the headboard of her bed, and watch as she paced back and forth, either muttering to herself or ranting loudly. He listened to her ravings about her father, her worries over the Eminency position, her ramblings about Dillamond's research and, on rare occasions, her stories about Glinda.
Elphaba would move restlessly about the room, her nose buried in Dillamond's journal, reading notes out loud and bouncing ideas off the Bird. Once in a while he would offer a couple words of advice, but most often he simply had to sit there as she worked through the research out loud. It was an odd sort of teamwork, but both sides were content.
Of course, Peric wasn't always around. He took daytrips away from the grounds, flying off to hunt or stretch his wings for a day or, as he would sometimes say, "Check something out."
"I had actually planned on spending Lurlinemas around the Emerald City," he told her one day. "Security's always a bit more relaxed during the holiday."
"What were you going to do there?" Elphaba asked, looking up at him.
He ducked his head and picked at a feather near his shoulder, a movement Elphaba had come to recognize as a nervous habit. "I'm not sure," he said finally, and they both knew he wasn't being entirely truthful. "But whatever it is, this is far more important."
Peric was gone the day she officially hit her breaking point.
The desk in the corner of her room was a mess. She was losing track of which notes were where, and she didn't have enough room to keep things well organized. There were books she needed that she hadn't thought to bring with her over break. Her hand was cramping from relentlessly writing and crossing out long pages of notes. Her arms ached from wheeling Nessa around all day—a task she was still stuck with, despite their arguments that grew more and more bitter each day. She had skipped both lunch and dinner to avoid her father, and her head was starting to throb from the lack of food.
None of this was the problem, though. She could live with all of this. She could fix all of this. What she could not fix was the fact that she was stuck.
She had recreated Dillamond's experimental procedures to the best of her ability, but there was still so much she couldn't do without being in a lab. She had gone through and taken notes on his entire journal, but there was still so much that went way over her head. She had marked her books until it was impossible to flip through them without finding some sort of pen mark or bent corner, but it wasn't enough. None of it was enough.
She made a noise that was something between a groan and a snarl and stood up from her desk. She paced the room furiously, kicking aside anything that was in her path. Here she was, finally staring down the dead end she had known was coming. She had been waiting for this since she first cracked open the notebook. There was too much here. She couldn't understand it all. She didn't have enough experience, enough resources, enough time.
Because she couldn't help but feel that there was a time limit here. She was running against a clock, and right now she was sure she was losing. She just didn't know what she was losing to.
She wished Peric was here. Having someone to talk to helped her work through things, and more importantly, it calmed her down. Right now, all she was doing was getting more worked up.
Her body was exhausted, but her mind was brimming with energy. Thoughts flew through her head, too fast to fully understand. She put a hand to her temple, trying to rub away her growing headache. If there was a solution to this, she couldn't see it. All she could see was the mess on her desk, a perfect image of everything she couldn't do.
I need Dr. Dillamond, she thought desperately, her throat tightening.
Tears pricked at her eyes, something that took the green girl completely by surprise. She brushed them away angrily, collapsing back into the chair at her desk. With a tiny, whimper-like sigh, she buried her head in her arms. She could feel the press of pens and books against her arms and forehead, but she didn't care.
She was stuck. She had no idea what to do. And in that moment, for the first time in her life, Elphaba Thropp wanted to just give up.