Angular by Chudley Cannon

Disclaimer: "Wicked" is owned by Gregory Maguire and not me.

Author's notes: Bookverse. Elphaba/Glinda in a series of POVs. The two in this section are Boq followed by Nessarose.

I am, I know, still delaying the next chapter of "The Week of Ill Repute", but this was already written for the most part and I figured it'd be nice to point out that I hadn't died or anything. So there you are, I'm not dead, and neither is The Week of Ill Repute.

Part I

1. No Strangers in Unrequited Love: Boq

Preposterously, she turned me into a gibbering, drooling, ridiculous fool. I was a clever sort, I was sure of it, and I'd gotten into Shiz as testament to such brilliance. I was a farmer, but a smart farmer, one that could cite water levels and irrigation techniques in my sleep. I had lots of thoughts, profound ones, I felt. But they all went to shit the moment I saw her, and then my thoughts dissolved into "blonde beautiful smells good" territory.

So very often I found speaking to her quite daunting, as if I had just learned the art of stringing words together to create sentences and the skill of it was still sketchy at best. "Lovely day, Miss Galinda," I said to her as we passed in the triangular park outside of Crage Hall. She was with Elphie and her Ama and they stopped to converse. It was so absurd, the way I felt as though I was being knocked over every time I made eye contact with her, but it wasn't my fault; her eyes were unfairly pretty, so light and large, the lashes so thick and long. She guarded herself from the sun with a lovely white and pink-edged parasol.

Elphie, and I wondered if perhaps this was in conjunction with her irregular skin color, threw caution to the wind as far as the sun went and was an uncovered, long stick of green, ambling along beside Miss Galinda, hands shoved into the hip pockets of her gray frock. She was whistling in an unladylike manner and the juxtaposition of the two girls made me smile. "Hiya Elphie," I said and she stopped whistling for a moment to utter, "Hello there," before the whistle started up again.

"Master Boq, you look well," said Miss Galinda politely, an out-and-out lie I was sure for my hair was a ridiculous mess. She was only a few inches taller than me, I noted. I smiled.

"Thank you, as do you. And Elphie—"

"Oh, I look the same as always," snickered Elphie. "I'm no joiner of the well-lookers as of now, merely an onlooker of the riotous affairs of young love." She mimed a swoon and I laughed nervously.

"Really, Miss Elphaba," said Miss Galinda, her eyes flashing. "Do you strive to make every conceivable situation uncomfortable?"

"Only for specified parties," said Elphie defensively. "I'll wander away, let courting run its course." She did so.

Miss Galinda let out a breath, rolling her eyes. "Really, she's a menace," she muttered, seemingly forgetting propriety. "Always scheming to ruin my life, it would seem." She looked at me as if just noticing my presence and then blushed.

"Oh, that isn't so, Miss Galinda," I said. I looked at Elphie and then revealed in confidence, "She really thinks a great deal of you. She told me so."

Miss Galinda flicked her eyes toward me, her lashes lowered, suddenly looking contemplative. I was rather startled and stepped back as a demonstration of just how. I had never seen her in thought! My heart began beating very quickly, as though it were galloping excitedly toward a heart attack or something, just as it always did when there was a new piece of information about Miss Galinda presented before me, waiting to be filed away. I swallowed.

"A great deal?" she asked, her expression so enigmatic and beautiful I felt as though death would be the only alternative to kissing her at that very moment. "What brings this on?"

"Yes!" I cried rather loudly when I did not die. I glanced over at Elphie, who had wandered far out of earshot and was currently engaging in what appeared to be a staring contest with one of the park trees. Strange girl! A friend, I considered, and I didn't like betraying a friend's trust, but this was different. Miss Galinda wanted information, the sort she could only get from me, and Elphie had to know that I would oblige her on this.

I cleared my throat. "She's quite fond of you, Miss Galinda." And who could blame her?

"She told you this?" Miss Galinda twirled her parasol with gratuitous flourish. How had I never seen her so deep in thought? The way her eyes were no longer just beautiful and clear, but intense and meditative as well? Queerest phenomenon, the way they had looked so blank and shallow before, a lovely basin of callous capriciousness. So Elphie was right about her, about the fact that she did think. Entrancing.

"Yes," I said eagerly, urged on by my self-interested desire to have Miss Galinda think highly of me. I blurted, "In fact, she did say that she loved you."

I remembered it clearly, back in the beginning of my friendship with Elphie. I had found her coarse and was angry with her for she claimed to love Miss Galinda, yet criticized her. I had been annoyed with her at the time and had even voiced it to Elphie, but in speaking with her more and more about Miss Galinda, it became remarkably clear to me that she was hard on her because she loved her and expected more out of her. I could only sit back and marvel at the fondness that Elphie obviously had for the roomie that she didn't even get along with; Elphie, who was so careless and seemingly unfeeling most of the time, regarding her roomie with equal parts contempt and love.

So lost in thought was I about my divulgence that I forgot to study Miss Galinda's expression and, when I looked at her, she was blinking rapidly, those now thoughtful eyes so clouded over that it seemed as though she was having an absurdly copious overflowing of thoughts. I was, to say the least, fascinated.

But she seemed to come to herself suddenly, and shook her head. The eyes were back, the blank sky-colored eyes that I had first looked into the day I had met Miss Galinda of the Arduennas of the Uplands. They were lovely, too. And inside, I was a bit relieved to have the old her back because it was familiar and the glimpse of the thinking Miss Galinda I had gotten had been too surreal – beautiful, but surreal.

"We mustn't gossip so, Master Boq," she murmured and I nodded sagely. "I do hope the rest of your day passes contentedly."

"The same to you," I said, bowing a bit. I started to walk off and then turned back, waving to Elphie and shouting, "Good-bye to you, too!"

Elphie offered a half-wave in return, but her eyes were on Miss Galinda, whose reflexive stare in Elphie's direction seemed to be unnerving the both of us.

-------

Avaric clamped a hand on my shoulder as he passed me in the corridor. I was examining myself in the looking glass, looking for any imperfections that I might notice later on and lament over whether or not Glinda (as she now called herself) had noticed them.

"Come on, we're meeting the girls at the canal and I'm eager to drink this wine."

"Yes, you always are."

"Boq, you look as dashing as you're going to, sorry to say." He grinned as though to soften the blow. "Come. What if Glinda dislikes lateness?"

It was Avaric, Glinda, Elphie, Nessarose and I, all atop a tattered picnic blanket underneath a tree by the Suicide Canal, pouring wine and laughing. Nanny was off not too far, sitting underneath another tree should Nessarose need her, but Elphie was helping Nessa with her drink, lifting the wine glass to her sister's lips.

Avaric, who was always the first to get drunk, was relating with exaggerated detail an incident in Nikidik's class involving Fiyero and himself to the girls (or Nessa and Glinda at any rate, as Elphie had been there) with loud, boisterous sound effects and obnoxious hand gestures. "… says you need a pinprick of human blood—of all things—so I say loudly, 'What's that about a prick, professor?' and Fiyero says…"

I glanced at Nessa who was looked appropriately scandalized, but could not seem to help the amusement that quirked the corner of her lips. Then, as I was wont to do, my eyes strayed toward Glinda. She was different and it was sometimes painful, sometimes good. She sat at the edge of the blanket and listened to Avaric with a small smile. Her eyes were as they had been that one day when I had glimpsed her in thought for the first time. They were always like that now, and it gave her an ethereal, intense sort of beauty that was far more overwhelming than the fresh-faced prettiness that she had once exuded. She did not preen and she did not sit about in coquettish ways; rather, she diverted attention from herself as often as possible, preferring to sit and listen instead of attempting to turn the conversation around to her.

She was beautiful for it. I loved her for it.

I did not think I was in love with her for it, though, and that was a strange, empty feeling.

"… so Nikidik says something about would you kindly shut up and let me start the lecture here and so Fiyero, old boy, has the rather brilliant idea of staging a coughing fit…"

Her expression changed, then, as I watched her and I noticed her eyes were no longer on Avaric. They had flicked to Elphie, who was sitting beside her, knees drawn up to her chest, feet bare on the picnic blanket. She had an elbow resting on her knee and her chin resting on her hand and was the very picture of casual ennui, rolling her eyes every so often to silently protest Avaric's incorrect characterization of Fiyero (and she was right about that, for Fiyero had less input in Avaric's pranks than Avaric made it seem). And Glinda was watching her with a pensive, unreadable expression. I tuned out Avaric and watched Glinda watch Elphie. A strange state of affairs, this, a boy watching a girl watching a girl.

It was the oddest thing how, as I watched her, I suddenly felt embarrassed—voyeuristic, even—as though I was sitting outside a window, watching two people make love. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and it made my palms feel moist, the grip I had on my wine glass slipping a bit. I was, I realized as my throat felt like it was closing, because I was very nearly watching Glinda make love to Elphie with her eyes.

And it was all-too-familiar suddenly, like she was watching Elphie in the same way I used to watch her and sometimes still did. Her eyes swept over every inch of Elphie – the green feet, the long, bony torso, the slender fingers on which a sharply defined face rested. The long cascade of black hair, as though she were examining every strand of hair individually. She was memorizing the details, just as I had done with her; she was undressing and touching her with her eyes. I shouldn't have watched, it wasn't my place, but I found it impossible to tear my eyes away. She was in love with Elphaba.

It was so abrasively obvious that I wondered why I had never seen it before.

As is customary when being watched, Elphie suddenly looked up and noticed Glinda looking at her. Glinda looked stricken, startled, and she flicked her eyes away quickly, blushing profusely. In doing so, she noticed me watching her and seemed to blush harder. Elphie looked Glinda over for a moment or two and then shrugged, turning her attention back to Avaric. And Glinda looked at me, her eyes pleading. She smiled at me, small and tentative. I smiled back and fell out of love with her. I smiled back and decided to keep her secret.

After all, I was no stranger to unrequited love.

2. Two Afternoons of Reflex: Nessarose

I felt removed often enough, and it was painstakingly stark when I looked in on Elphie and Glinda's room and compared it to the one I shared with Nanny. It was not the size that bothered me, it was the fact that Elphie and Glinda were best friends and their room was a lovely dedication to that. They could not be more different, it seemed, as one side of the room could be catalogued as "frilly" and the other as "bare". There were stacks and stacks of hatboxes on one side and stacks and stacks of musty books on the other. There was a closet filled with bright colored clothes on one side and a closet with a few drab pieces on the other.

I could envision, in the period before I came to Shiz when Glinda and Elphie didn't get along, this division in room personality creating an invisible line of sorts that would literally divide the room in half, thus dividing the two occupants of the room. And while the difference still remained, there were evidences to their friendship everywhere. Those bright colored clothes had representatives strewn across Elphie's bed, as if Glinda had attempted to get Elphie into them. Some of those boring, musty books were on the floor near Glinda's bed or on her nightstand because she had tried reading them. Most of all it was while they were both in the room together that no division existed, as they were usually both on one or the other's bed together, talking or studying.

My room with Nanny was nice enough, but it was a room I shared with Nanny. I had no Glinda to my Elphaba. I had no Crope to my Tibbett. I didn't even have an Avaric to my Boq. I was just Nessarose, who had the Unnamed God and a Nanny that served as arms.

This afternoon, Glinda and I sat on her bed, studying for our Ozian history exam, the only class we had together. Elphie was, as Glinda informed me, at a lecture and would be for a few hours. We were alone and Nanny was next door. I had convinced her that Glinda was just as good at taking care of me as she or Elphaba, but she still managed to wander in every so often on the pretense of looking for something, when I knew she was really checking up on me.

Glinda sighed, opening up a heavy textbook. "For a location I am sure I enjoy thoroughly, I find Ozian history to be frightfully dull," she said with a pained expression.

"As do I, loath as I am to admit it," I replied. "If it wasn't a requirement, I—"

"—wouldn't be taking it. Nor I."

I sighed wearily. "The course seems to gloss over the enormous impact of the unionist religion as the very foundation of Ozian history, more than I like."

"Well, that's in the interest of diplomacy," said Glinda. "They'd have to go into Lurlinism as it's derived, as well – and pleasure faithists, for that matter. You can't teach a course in a selectively predisposed fashion; you'd have to cover all aspects."

"Well, I would teach the course correctly," I decided, "and make a point of the importance of unionism. Funny how we're expected to learn about this land as though it wasn't something the Unnamed God placed under our feet!"

Glinda chewed her lip, looking down at the textbook. She was a difficult one to read, I felt, because she was so inconclusive on important matters. At least Elphie (and this was all I could grant her) was resolute in her atheism, even if it was a disgusting display that she concocted for sheer shock value. Glinda seemed to waver on every subject, agreeing with Elphie on instances and having other opinions in other instances. Her family was perhaps properly unionist and she herself did not seem to doubt the existence of the Unnamed God. It seemed, actually, that she doubted the Unnamed God's affiliation with her, as though existence didn't necessarily translate into personal relationship. She often seemed as though she did not feel her morals were extensive enough for the Unnamed God to take notice, and I often wanted to tell her that this was not so, that the Unnamed God would take notice if she made an effort to free herself of base motivations.

"I think that takes the focus off of geography," she remarked. "Which our professor obviously favors."

"I find that boring, too," I said. "Gillikin up north, Munchkinland in the east, all that—that's all I need know. All right, I'll read the terms and you define them, is that all right?"

"Yes, all right." She propped the book up in my lap so that I could read it. She sat back on the bed, head against the pillows. I read the terms out loud and she defined them, ever impressing me with her quickness and cleverness. To hear her speak, she was envious of Elphie's brains, but she was smart herself. Perhaps more imaginative where Elphaba was logical, but still bright all the same. She had perfect cheekbones and a keen mind and it was lost on me how she could sometimes seem so unhappy.

For she did. She was sprawled out on her bed and I would read the term and she would murmur a perfunctory answer as concisely as she could. Her eyes were on the ceiling in what I thought was concentration but actually appeared a bit more like distraction. It was as though the answers to the questions were not on the forefront of her mind, as though they were secondary thoughts to a much larger picture. One that very obviously did not make her happy.

It was a situation like that which I found so curious, as Elphaba had told me of what Glinda had been like when she met her – shallow and seemingly incapable of carrying one train of thought in her head, never mind juggling several as she seemed to be doing now.

"There's a section here on the Thursk Desert," I said, my eyes moving down to the next term, "but I don't see why he would ask us about it, seeing as we haven't really covered the Vinkus yet—"

"Nessa," she said abruptly, "did Elphaba ever have any beaus while you were growing up?" She sat up and looked at me. It was as though the last hour had not existed, that she had been someone else answering the questions while she had been carrying on some sort of nonexistent, fabricated debate over whether or not Elphaba had had any beaus growing up.

I said, "Huh?" thinking there wasn't really much else to say, but I did add, "Aren't we studying?" for good measure.

"Yes, we can get back to that," she said dismissively. "I was just wondering, I…" She blushed furiously. "Well, I her roomie and best friend, knowing nothing about her! You know how she is about opening up, Nessa, she's so sarcastic, she never tells me anything about her past."

Why should she? I knew Elphaba. I knew that she felt unloved at times, and I knew that she felt very much the same about her childhood as I did about Ozian history—that there were discrepancies here and there depending on viewpoint.

Glinda's eyes were wide and she looked so earnest, though, so after a moment, I said, "She had two or three, I suppose. She wasn't much for them, you see, all books and studying with her, but yes – there were two or three." And none for me. It was the funny irony of Thropp felicitousness that Quadling boys our age should prefer a girl with green skin to a girl with no arms.

Glinda frowned. "Well, which is it? Two or three?"

"Why, I don't know!" I cried. "She very rarely brought them around; Father rarely approved. They weren't the sort of boys you'd think of, being Quadlings."

"Oh." Glinda sat up, folding her legs underneath her dress. "Did she tell you of her first kiss, at least?"

"No," I said thoughtfully. Elphie and I were not those types of sisters. I loved her dearly and she loved me just as much, but we did not gossip and trade stories of boys and longing. It was not in our relationship. I sometimes felt as though she only loved me in the unconditional, reluctant way she loved Father, perhaps with less resentment. "This was never something we discussed."

"Oh."

"But then—" I started and then stopped. Oh, why not? It was true. "If you asked her enough, her sarcastic outer walls may wear thin and you may wrestle a story or two out of her. She's more inclined to tell you than I."

Glinda glumly placed her chin in her hand. "I wish she was less of a mystery, then I could think of her less." She looked at me and smiled sheepishly, her cheeks pink. "Um, don't you?"

I thought about it. "I've known her my entire life," I said. "I think I've done about as much thinking about her as I am able."

When I looked at her, she appeared to be watching me enviously. I didn't know why. I looked back down at the book.

The door opened and I made a face, trying my best to be patient but wondering what new excuse Nanny had made up so she could come check on me. It wasn't Nanny, though, it was Elphie, who tossed her shawl onto a chair and dumped a stack of books onto her desk. "What are you two ninnies doing sitting in the dark?" she asked, and I noticed that evening had fell and we had not bothered to light the lamp. I glanced at Glinda to see if she was as surprised as I was to find the afternoon gone, but her eyes had lit up as soon as Elphie had entered the room and she was already off the bed in greeting.

Elphaba went and lit the lamp and then the fireplace, hmphing about who on earth could possibly study in the dark. "You're later than usual," said Glinda anxiously. "You're usually back before this."

"Yes," said Elphie off-handedly, collapsing on her bed. "I had to pick up books. Dear Boq, bestill my heart, has gotten me some philosophy books from the Briscoe Hall library."

"What need have you of philosophy books," asked Glinda with a fond smile, "when you are quite obviously a philosopher yourself?"

"Perhaps I am merely studying up on a basis on which to refute," said Elphie dryly. "Conversation inevitably fell to you, Glinda, as it does with Boq."

"I was under the impression that his infatuation had passed," I offered, finding it difficult to apply patience and serenity to my mind in regards to the exclusion that sometimes set in when conversing with the two of them.

"An impression that I shared," said Elphie, nodding, "and can now back up with facts. The conversation went: 'How is Glinda doing, Elphie?' and I replied, 'Just as well as always. She seems to be in fluctuating serene moods lately, if you're eager to make a move on her.'

"'No,' he says, 'it's come to me suddenly that I'm not in love with her anymore. She's in love with someone else, and that suits me.'" She sat up in her bed a little, fixing Glinda with a hard stare. The Gillikin girl blushed and appeared to squirm, joining me on her bed and looking down at our textbook with interest. "Naturally," went on Elphaba, "I was shocked. 'No, Boq—I must have heard you wrong. Surely if Glinda were in love with someone, I would be the first reluctant recipient of the news, for she tells me everything.'" She added, "Sometimes more than I'd like for her to tell me."

I looked at Glinda. She appeared as though she were wishing the windows were open so that she might jump out, or perhaps wishing that the bed would just suddenly engulf her and she would disappear. Why, she was in love! "I didn't know you were in love, Glinda," I said. Despite myself, I found the idea of it interesting, almost falling off the bed in my eagerness. She put out a quick hand to steady me.

"Nor I," said Elphie casually, seeming amused with Glinda's embarrassment. "You'd think I would. So, who is it?"

Glinda shook her head in a flurry of blonde curls. The blush was gone, as were all traces of her embarrassment. "Oh, really, how childish," she said coolly. "What's this, I'll tell you my crushes if you tell me yours? Let's be better than that."

"Ah, but you know I can't be any better than I already am," said Elphie, "for I've stunted my betterment growth. Come on, tell us before Nessie falls off the bed and hurts herself. If it's Avaric, though, I think I shall use the Suicide Canal for what I always assumed its purpose was and throw myself into it."

"It isn't Avaric."

"Who, then?" I asked. Crope and Tibbett were handsome boys, but they were overly so, and Glinda was at least smart enough to recognize the futility in an infatuation with either of them. I briefly considered Fiyero, but her smartness would smooth that over as well—what good would it be to fall in love with a married man?

Glinda rolled her eyes. "Let's have Pfannee and Shenshen over and make it a real childhood gossip fest. Really, girls."

"Well—" I began, but Elphie cut me off.

"All right, she doesn't have to tell us." Her surrender may have been equal parts offense over being compared to Pfannee and Shenshen, and that it wasn't in Elphie's nature to be pushy on these sorts of matters, although she could be pushy as sin over matters that she cared about.

We descended into a short, awkward silence as Glinda looked over her book and Elphie lay back on her bed, ankles crossed and feet propped up on the headboard.

"That's fortune, though, isn't it?" I asked finally. "That Boq isn't in love with you anymore?"

Glinda shrugged and nodded slightly. "I suppose. It's been that way for awhile."

Elphie said idly, "Nessa, I've never seen you so excited about gossip. Don't you know that evil very often lurks within gossiping words? Tsk."

I ignored her, for she was only trying to goad me and it was beneath me to oblige her on such a thing. I studied my book, the conversation forgotten until ten or so minutes later when I glanced at Glinda to ask her a question and saw that her face was bright red and that she was still on the same page.

She looked up, startled. "What?"

"I had an architecture question—are you all right?"

"That's not an architecture question," quipped Elphie, who was lying lazily on her bed and not doing anything except wasting space and breathing air. She rolled over onto her side, propping her head up on her palm. "Yes, though—are you all right?"

"I'm perfectly fine," said Glinda, turning redder. "What was your question?"

"Tell me, Glinda," I said abruptly. "How is it that Boq knows who you're in love with and Elphie and I don't? Why would you tell him?"

"I didn't tell him," mumbled Glinda. "He must have figured it out, that's all."

"So then, if we figure it out, we can know?"

"Oh, who cares?" cried Elphie, throwing an arm over her eyes and scowling. "She said she won't tell, Nessa, and for the record, if you figure it out you will know, even if you don't know that you know, which is—I'm sure—the comprehension that Boq is operating under."

It just seemed to me that I didn't usually care for this sort of thing but when Glinda was making a big deal and getting all red over it, then it must have been someone we knew, and it was always nice to have information on that sort of thing.

"Yes, who cares?" said Glinda decisively.

Well, really. If they didn't care, then I didn't care.

-------

"I don't understand," I said quietly. "Why wouldn't she come back? What could possibly be more important than finishing school and staying with her friends?" And family?

Glinda shrugged dully. I sat at the foot of her bed and she was curled up near the headboard. We'd forgotten the lamp again. Not again. That had been a long time ago, long before they'd taken off for nearly a month's time and left us all to worry until we were sick, before Glinda had returned without Elphie.

"I don't know her," said Glinda laconically. Her voice was so hollow that I swore it echoed. "She's too much."

"What do you mean?" Glinda hadn't done a lot of speaking since she'd come back, at least not about Elphaba. Now it was four days later, late at night. We were supposed to be studying. She'd fallen so behind and I was to help her.

"I mean, that—" She sounded like she was choking. "She's more expansive than I can understand. She's older than I'll ever be. Does that make sense? I would never think of leaving school for some great Cause. I'm too young."

"Elphie has always been older than her age." She flinched when I said her name.

"Yes."

"What did she say to you?"

"She couldn't come back," said Glinda simply. "She didn't know where she was going, but she couldn't return. Nessa—I don't like Madame Morrible, either. I don't want to be a part of her school. But I am! I have to be! Of course I'm staying; what good could I do elsewhere?"

"Didn't you say that to El—to her?"

"I didn't get a chance. She just left me."

Oh, really! She'd left me, too. I frowned and bit my lips, trying not to get angry with her. I thought for something comforting to say and then supposed I had it. "Glinda—"

"Nessa," she countered desperately, "you think she'll come back, don't you? I do. I think she'll realize she can't do any good and she'll come back."

It was difficult to respond.

"I think she will," repeated Glinda. "Imagine, Elphaba leaving school. She likes school more than she likes people. You think she'll come back, don't you?"

"I couldn't say," I murmured because I wholly believed she wouldn't.

"What'll I do if she doesn't?"

It was a question steeped more in fickle desperation than anything, I felt. I shook my head. "You'll do what you've always meant to do; I don't see exactly why you should change your plans just because—"

"Yes," said Glinda quickly, a shadow falling over her eyes. "Why should I change anything just because..." I watched the slow movement of her head as she lowered it, wetting her lips. "Because."

I had prayer and I had the slightest bit of tranquil forgiveness that I could perhaps pass on to her, but something told me that it wouldn't do her any good. It wasn't doing me any good—it hadn't when they were gone and it hadn't when Glinda had returned without Elphaba. So I tried to think of what I might say. So much of life, I was suddenly realizing, was attempting to decipher the right bits to say to people. If only you could force emotion. It was unnatural, of course, but if only you could force people into feeling what you wanted them to feel.

"Glinda," I said carefully. "I know that you loved her—"

"How could you possibly know that?"

I had never heard her voice so harsh.

I looked up, surprised; her trembling lower lip was startling, the flush across her cheeks was startling. I was unsure of what to say, again. "I—Because I love her as well and so I understand what that looks like," I said after a moment of deliberation.

But she was still flushing and her lips were still quivering and her eyes darted a bit, they strayed to the bare, empty bed across the room and it was suddenly rather clear to me that she and I had two entirely different methods of love in mind.

It did not matter, for the moment, that the idea of it made me sick in the stomach; more than that, I was trying to remember the importance of compassion. "Well," I said quietly, "perhaps I don't understand."

Glinda sniffled. I averted my eyes and shifted away from her a bit.

I did not understand them, Elphaba and Glinda, at all.