More days, more weeks and soon a month passed, and Elphaba, to the best of her recollection, had a friend for the first time. The summer months were fast approaching, and the pair in room 22 was content enough to remain at Shiz for the duration.

"But what will you do here, with no job to speak of?" Elphaba asked.

"I'm sure I'll think of something. Who knows? I may become so bored I might be forced to pick up some of your reading materials."

"I know you meant that as insult, but nothing would make me happier."

"I will be holidaying briefly up at Lake Chorge with the other Gillikin girls," Galinda said, packing away notebooks of parchments and ink into her bedazzled tote. "Two, perhaps three weeks. It really depends on how nettling Pfannee intends to be."

"Some people are just aggravating by nature."

"Ah," Galinda grinned. "And some," she made flapping movements with her pointer fingers extended in Elphaba's direction. "—operate with a grievous intent, because they find a wicked, twisted amusement in stirring everyone else up."

"You may now add 'spoon' to my growing list of nicknames."

Galinda shoved a book into her tote as the clock chimed the hour.

"Oh, for the sake of goodness, I'll be late! See you in a bit, Elphie!"

The blonde grabbed the strap of her bag and bolted into the hallway, several notebooks and a large text thudding to the ground in synchronization with the slammed door.

"Oh, hell and Oz, Galinda," Elphaba said, rising to grab the sorcery book.

She didn't even pull on shoes as she tracked the blonde girl, trotting inelegantly down the hall and stairwell in an attempt to catch her roomie. Her sharp chin turned a sharp corner and dislodged the rounded Miss Shenshen, arms laden with quilted squares of severe orange. Her cheeks were sunburned and unattractive.

"Miss Elphaba, watch where you're— your feet!"

"Are attached to my ankles. Thanks for noticing. I'm just trying to get this book to Galinda."

"What—"

"Wait—"

They spoke over each other, Elphaba the quicker on the uptake.

"Don't you have a sorcery seminar at this time?" Elphaba asked.

"Miss Greyling would never expect us to waste Friday afternoons in springtime at a seminar."

"But, isn't it part of the sorcery module? Galinda skips off this time every Friday."

"Perhaps she just doesn't see the benefit of wasting her Friday afternoons with a cabbage."

Elphaba rolled her eyes.

"So there is no lecture?"

"No. Knowing Galinda, she's probably keeping some delightful liaison of the masculine persuasion all tight-lipped until she has naughty details to share."

Elphaba left without a goodbye, trudging back to her room with less inspiration than she had for her descent. She was contemplative, and that was okay. But she was likewise puzzled due to her roommate's misinformation. She laid the book back on Galinda's bed and stooped to retrieve several notebooks from the floor.

Their friendship was novel and tenuous, but not so fragile. An image of the pair captured in multifaceted, Quadling-blown glass dangled in her mind's eye like an infant's mobile.

Elphaba appreciated forthrightness. Galinda knew this. The green girl would not have condemned the girl for her afternoon escapades. In fact, it would have made much greater sense, and did, as far as the flightiness of the blonde was concerned.

But this episode did not strike her as fanciful. It was planned, recurrent. She never saw Galinda Friday afternoons, as she was under the impression the girl was attending a lecture. Or if not a lecture, at least the company of the terrible trio. But Miss Shenshen's presence on the stairs debunked that idea. And now Elphaba had spent precious minutes looming over her roommate's desk, contemplating the mystery that was Galinda Upland.

Did the girl really need to escape her company so regularly?

She shoved pages carelessly back into the flimsy bindings. It was all quite innocent until one of the legal pads was knocked from the stool to the ground with an errant elbow, and papers were dislodged in the foray. And that's when Elphaba began rifling through her roommate's things.

Unlike the loopy, inefficient cursive and calligraphy she had seen some fellow female classmates employ, Galinda had drawn diagrams. Concepts were not relayed in words but in images, sketched with a deft hand over the lined notebook paper.

It should not have surprised Elphaba that Galinda was a visual learner.

The girl drew everything.

Especially buildings: sloping, tiered, tiresome roofs, determined sconces, gothic, dragon-like demons perched atop stone pillars at the entrance to a building Elphaba had never seen before. There were three stained-glass windows melting into afternoon light. Elphaba recognized them as those on the west-facing wall of the maths hall. And then the Shiz clock tower, from all different angles, in as many different lights, shaded, and the interior of their dorm room, all high ceilings and beleaguered moldings. Even the disparate furniture made it into the sketch, a blob of pink pierced one side of the page, while navy and green inhabited the other.

She found more notebooks; and in doing so, found more of Galinda. The second contained designs: swooping skirts, trailing trains, primly cut blouses and lists of materials. But beside these dress sketches were paneled stories, drawn in linear blocks to convey narrative. There were no words, but the milkmaid bumbling back from the barn in one panel wore a patterned kerchief, the same pattern as the summer dress cleverly constructed in the page's center. Another page, another story: a Winkie teen moving through the grasslands in a heavy tunic, coarse fabric evident even in the two dimensions. He held a set of woodwind pipes in one hand, which explained the patterned musical notes running the length of the sketched ensemble. There were Quadling women, Emerald City aristocracies, Gillikin merchants, Glikkus miners, Vinkun tribesman. And every ensemble told a story.

And, even if Elphaba was disinclined to actually wear the pieces, she at least had an appreciation for them that had not been present before. She finally acknowledged the thought put into it. Turning to the last page in the notebook, she studied the dress there the longest. 'All of Oz', the sketch was titled. The pink one, that mimicked Quadling rubies, with the weaved patterns and pleated skirt, erasure marks and lead swoops clouding the page. There were measurement numbers out to the side.

Hadn't Galinda worn this?

"It's about the dress." Elphaba recalled.

Galinda had… made a dress? Designed it and sent it off for mending? Sewed in the dark of night, fingers pricked and bleeding beneath a hapless thimble while Elphaba slept a dreamless sleep?

Soon the implications surfaced. Galinda couldn't very well design. It was beneath her station. And tailoring was manual labor to a lesser degree, which was so far beyond the social strata of the Arduennas that they might as well have traversed to the fabled oceans. It was talent, but it was shame, and Elphaba wilted at the realization.

Limitation applies to ascension as well as declination in the Ozmotic sphere of social mobility.

More notebooks, more sketches. Landscapes, still life, more dresses, more buildings. Main street in Shiz. Shop window displays. The kitchen gardens. The stock uniforms of the boys at Three Queens. Even the bulging, yellowing, scale-like chinks of Horrible Morrible's kimonos.

She finally got to the people: Boq, with loads of erased smudges above his likeness. Galinda couldn't seem to get his height correct in scale to the others on the page. Slight Milla, rotund Shenshen, haughty Averic and fussy Ama Clutch. She'd drawn Crope and Tibbet back to back, smirks so real Elphaba almost heard the nasty joke the former threw to the latter. Pfannee scowled at the boys over to the side, and Fiyero looked blank and sheepish, blue jewels riding the ridges of his barbaric cheekbones and jaw line.

And below, facing them, hand in hand, a sketch of the back of two women, one tall and dark, the other short and light. 'The Charmed Circle' arched above the characters in fluffy script.

Their friends (her acquaintances, Elphaba conceded) occupied the majority of the legal pad. She could see the improvements made over time, as the faces became more expressive, the shading more articulate, the junctures more seamless. Unfortunately, the blonde did not date her work.

Elphaba returned the series of notebooks to their rightful places in the desk. She should have felt guilty for invading the private musings of her roommate, but she was too thrilled with the revelation. Galinda thought, and labored, and cared, to the point that it burdened her.

They were not so different after all.

Fueled by curiosity and the stirrings of genuine affection, Elphaba searched Galinda's side of the room. The closet revealed nothing more than tulle and stitching; none of the pieces were of Galinda's design save for the pink dress. Perfumes, powders, barrettes and broaches resided in the recesses of the vanity. She gave the bed a light pat down, the only surface she felt the smallest of qualms violating due to the intimacy of its function. Her search yielded results: shifting the corner of the mattress revealed a cracked, thicker bound journal. It was coming apart at the seams.

There was no title, but its hiding place suggested sentimentality. Opening the cover, Elphaba read the jotted notes:

The princess marries the prince.

I wish I had a unicorn.

Spring is the best season.

Pink is my best color.

Expectation is exceptional; I'm expected to be excepted- Momsie

Other people can get you what you want.

What do they say about girls who read too much?

University is not for everyone. I am not for everyone.

Green is awful.

Society is just as difficult as poverty.

Perhaps green is not so awful.

It is growth as pink is warmth.

In spite of and despite its soullessness.

What is spirit? What is soul?

Elphaba watched the progression of elementary scrawl and musings morph to adolescent writing and then a more refined dictation. Galinda had had this diary for quite some time, if the maturation of her thoughts was any indication.

The drawings began on the next page. Bumbling little stick figures from a child's hand, too much color and not enough limitation for accurate depiction. And then the idea of the sight line and perspective, birds in flight became m's, trees more impression than distinct parts. And halfway through the book began sketched sophistication. A handsome, svelte looking man in breeches with rough hands tucked at the small of his back, a pipe dangling between his lips and smoke curlicuing into dissipation. A cabin on the edge of a lake, foreboding cyprus A-frame and stalwart balcony commanding the water like the helm at the front of a ship. A solid (or liquefied?) transparent sphere, floating above patchwork fields against a star-speckled night.

"Galinda…"

She could be an architect. A seamstress. An artist.

Elphaba quite expected the first picture of herself to be cast in a negative light. And it was: a caricature more than character. Her features were exaggerated, nose hyperbolic in its sharpness, with a pointed jaw that could tip an arrow. And Galinda, drawing herself over to the side, had been all soft curves and rounded edges, yellows and pastel blues ameliorating that combative green she'd used for Elphaba's coloring.

But, like her notebooks, exaggeration gave way to realism. Galinda cushioned the edges, used her rubber to enhance shading, highlighting where the green girl's natural skin tone shifted from emerald to jade to beryl.

Elphaba turned the page.

Elphaba on her bed, kinked into reading position. Elphaba on the bench in life sciences, arm raised, eyes bright, with the other girls drooping onto their supportive elbows. Elphaba scowling… no, thinking, fingering the bridge of her glasses. Elphaba smirking at the table in the canteen, half an apple on her plate and a giggling Galinda across from her.

Suddenly, the drawings took a turn for the anatomical: Elphaba recognized muscle tissues; capillaries; bone and cartilage from a flexioned knee; shoulder blade that melted into deltoid and triceps, with whispy black hairs concealing the spine; vertebrae, notched and bumpy like the dismantled yellow bricks to the east; squelchy grey matter, two purplish hemispheres and a dangling cord that drooped right off the page.

These drawings were too exact in angle, too refined in coloring and shading. She had not discovered a practice sketchbook for anatomy. But, she was in this far, so Elphaba continued.

The next drawing was her most careful, possibly, for there was a light sheet of wax paper protecting the piece from the friction of the previous parchment page. Done up in colored oils, it was Galinda's best work yet:

From the jutting hips of her torso and up, Elphaba's likeness stared back from the page. The miniscule circular indent at her navel bled into smooth planes of bare green stomach, and then an unseen hand sliced upwards with an autopsy scalpel. The entirety of her slender, nude ribcage opened like the hinges of a cabinet. Her right side was covered in floating white rib and pink lung, but where her sternum should have been, Elphaba saw the exact rendering of a physical heart. Tilted slightly, ventricles and valves and vena cava. It did not burst red but glowed purple, pulsating gold from the inside out with an odd shading that made the subject feel very warm in her own chest. Pupil, iris and sclera faded out of distinction and into one brilliant gold, shimmering almost demon-like in the same radiance that pulsed from the open heart. Her usual flat, black hair was swirling around in ethereal tendrils, defying the gravity of the page.

In the bottom corner of the diary, so as not to detract from the subject, Galinda had embossed her title: Heart and Soul.

It almost made Elphaba believe she had one.

"Galinda."

"Elphie. Still at the books, I see?"

"Always. And yourself?"

"Oh, you know. Just getting back."

The blonde rearranged some items on her desk, withdrawing two notebooks from her bedazzled tote.

Elphaba was concentrating on her own book with what she hoped was an unassuming vigor, but she heard Galinda release a short gasp as the blonde worked to put away her sketch— that is, notebooks.

"Elphaba?"

"Hmm?"

"Have you been looking through my things?"

"Oh, that? Your book fell out of your bag before class and I tried to get it back to you. When I didn't catch you, I just brought it back and put it on your desk. Not like your sorcery electives require much reading."

"A simple 'no' would have sufficed."

Elphaba took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. "No, because then I would have been lying."

Galinda looked down at the notebook in her hands.

"I ran into Miss Shenshen on the stairs," Elphaba admitted. "There's no sorcery seminar on Friday afternoons."

"So you—"

"Yes."

"How much of it?"

"Quite a bit."

Galinda snuck a look toward the head of her bed.

"There, too, if you're wondering."

"Miss Elphaba! What right did you have?!"

"None."

"You could at least feign some contrition."

"Why should I feel ashamed?"

"You violated my space!"

"Well, you opened my chest, so who's the real violator here?"

Red surged to Galinda's round cheeks, anger and embarrassment heating her face like a furnace.

"And how is it—" Galinda huffed, "—that I'm about to be the one to apologize to you, even though you're the one who was in the wrong here?"

"No apologies necessary for something that brought me such joy."

"I… how… you, joy— WHAT?"

"Isn't art supposed to inspire sentiment? Well, mission accomplished."

"But you—"

"I suppose it was rather inappropriate of me to go flicking through your notebooks."

That was the closest Elphaba would get to an apology. Galinda's downturned head jolted up. Elphaba could see from her more relaxed expression the golden-haired girl knew it.

"Why do you keep them private? You're quite talented you know."

"I'm sure you've figured it out for yourself."

"I might have. Galinda's Mending and Apparel doesn't have quite the appeal that Lady Galinda of 'insert landed estate here' seems to."

This produced a wet chuckle from the blonde.

"I made such a fuss over that silly dress."

"It's not silly," Elphaba said.

"You couldn't even tell the difference between it and all the others!"

"Who cares what I think? You said yourself you take no stock in my opinions on style. If it's important to you and it has some, well, redeeming factor inclusive in its make-up, then I see no reason why you shouldn't continue pursuing it."

"Besides the fact that it's a dead end?"

"It's constructive. Galinda, I don't compliment often. You know this. But I believe you could illustrate scientific textbooks with a hand like that. I've been shadowing Dr. Dillamond for a few weeks now. He's done some work with dual lenses, and discovered minute orbs that need to be catalogued on paper. With your interests in architecture, you could draw them to scale—"

"Elphie, I appreciate your… support? Approval? Suggestions? But really, this doesn't change anything. Besides me being able to leave my supplies out, now."

"As if you have room with all those perfumes cluttering up your desk."

Galinda squealed and retrieved three separate bottles from her vanity, skipping toward the end of Elphaba's bed. She uncapped bottle number one and poured its content onto the green girl's blanket.

"Colored pencils."

Bottle two.

"Charcoals."

She screwed the top of a powder container out of place, and, where a giant marshmallow poof should have been, there lay a thick green paste.

"Oils."

"You seem to be using a lot of that color, in that book over there." Elphaba nodded to the top of Galinda's bed, her journal still resting under the mattress.

Galinda handed the oils off to Elphaba and crossed to retrieve the journal. Elphaba studied the paint in her hands.

"Don't touch it! It smears easily."

Elphaba threw Galinda a dead look.

"Well, not on you— that is, it could stain your clothes."

"My clothes have seen worse."

"Don't I know it," Galinda said, turning toward some of her latter drawings.

She stared down at her pages, then would stare at Elphaba. As she did her eyes narrowed, and her left cheek caved inward, molars gnawing against fleshy cheek in absentminded study.

"I can never get your ears right," Galinda said, boldly reaching for Elphaba's jaw and jerking it to the right. "You've always got your hair pulled over them. It does absolutely nothing for your lines, which are exquisite by the way."

Elphaba pulled back and her brow arched. She had never been investigated with such scrutiny. Gawked, ogled, and leered at, affirmative. But never… dissected. And Galinda's nearness, her impertinent fingers sweeping a chin that had never been truly caressed, not even in childhood, had the green girl's discomfort manifesting in foreign tingles. Sometimes in her head. Sometimes on the undersides of her feet, or at her gangly elbow, on the back of her neck, all separate and all at once.

"Lemme see," Galinda said again, and yanked a chunk of black curtain away from green cartilage.

Elphaba couldn't see with her head turned sideways, but when she felt a finger trace the jut of her ear, she swatted at it.

"Quit that," she said.

"Then at least tuck it back."

"Why?"

"So I can see it!"

"You don't have to draw my ears, Galinda."

"Yes I do."

"You don't have to draw me." Elphaba itched at her shoulder, but tucked the hair back anyway. "Why do you draw me?"

"I… I guess because I see you a lot."

"Oh."

"Yes. And you're rather, well, I get to see more of you than other people."

Elphaba hissed.

"Not… not like that. I'm sure if I ever wanted to try nudes, Crope and Tibbet would be clawing at each other to volunteer," Galinda smiled. "It's just, I see you out there," she motioned toward the door. "And I see you in here, in our room, and in here." She petted the top of Elphaba's head like she was a particularly well-behaved spaniel. "And there's more of a spectrum to work with."

"I don't quite understand."

"Neither do I. I suppose you're just—"

"Unavoidable?"

"Unavoidable. As good a descriptor as anything. Now, sit up straight."

Galinda proceeded to undo Elphaba's braid and arrange her hair just-so around her shoulders. She ran her thumbs over her brows, and, to Elphaba's horror, tapped her long nose with a finger and an accompanying "Boop!"

"So where is it you go, every Friday afternoon?" Elphaba said. Galinda's fingers were now somewhere pressing into her temples while trying to move her jaw at the same time. Talking was becoming a chore.

"Depends. Lately it's been the biology hall at Three Queens."

"You mean that's where you've seen the body parts?"

"Well I didn't go looking for them," the blonde said, lifting and bending a wiry green arm like a puppeteer. "I overheard Averic and Boq talking about 'specimens' one day, and it piqued my interest. Ama Clutch just assumes I'm at lecture."

She tugged Elphaba's opposite wrist across her body, then threw her hands up and released the green girl from the pose.

"But I'd had this idea for the heart—"

"For this one?" Elphaba asked, turning to Heart and Soul.

"Yes."

"I quite like it."

"Me, too. It's…" Galinda looked up at her roommate, that studious air returning. "It's my favorite."

"Who would have thought you would go in for the macabre and twisted?"

"Who would have thought the macabre and twisted would be so beautiful?"

"I don't know how to respond to that."

"Just accept the complement, you silly green thing. And look! I was working on something new today."

She set aside her more formal bound journal, twisting to grab the notebook she'd taken with her that afternoon. As she did so, Elphaba tried studying the blonde in the way Galinda had studied her: physically. But Elphaba was not a visual learner. Hers was more auditory, more active. She rewrote notes and mumbled to herself, reread and revised. Merely looking at Galinda wouldn't reveal anything the girl didn't want her to see.

But this afternoon, her study, her investigation into the Frottican princess, it was triggering an irretrievable slipping of judgment. Elphaba could like Galinda for what she was, but she would appreciate her more for what she could be.

Galinda indicated the dog-eared page and Elphaba thumbed to it. To her dismay, it was more dresses. A bulbous blue ball gown that sparkled along the corset and draped limply across the shoulders, then bulged into shimmery, poofed layers of paneled fabric at the waist. The best she could say for it was that it looked sort of like a waterfall, which meant she would never go near it.

"I know that's not what you were hoping for, but here's yours," Galinda said, and turned the page.

"Mine?"

"Yes yours, silly. I have to practice designing for different figure types. You've got that tall, lithe-limbed thing going for you. Though the color will pose some problems, when it's ready for color, that is. It would look great in green, honestly, but we could never let you get away with that, you'd look stark nak—"

"Black," Elphaba said. "It should be black."

"So dreary?"

"You said it was my dress. Shouldn't it be in my color?"

"Well, it would pop what little curves you have. So willowy, your frame."

The dress itself was in its early stages, but it differed from the ball gown in every aspect imaginable. Long sleeves that v-eed to points over the tops of the hands, high collared, snug fit at the bust but not corseted, which fell into a practical, flaring skirt just below the hips. It was textured but not embellished, and Elphaba could see herself wearing it as she made the transition from student to woman.

"I think I like it," Elphaba said.

"You think a lot, so I'll definitely keep working on it." Galinda shut her notebook. "I'll draw you in it next time, that way I can get a better feel for your body in the fabric."

Elphaba smirked and Galinda blushed.

That seemed to be the pattern these days.

"I— thank you for not, well, blowing up about the whole thing," Galinda said.

"Again, why would I? You've no more violated me than I you, so we'll call it bygones and have done with it."

"I apologize for all the staring to come. It's for all of this," she said, with a grand gesture to her materials. "If you ever feel uncomfortable, you need only let me know."

"I am always uncomfortable, so don't bother over me," Elphaba said.

"I'm going to draw your soul, Elphie," the blonde asserted.

"Well when you do, be sure and let me have the picture, so I can keep a good hold on it. Can't have it running away and disappearing like it's wont to do."

"No, Elphie. You keep protesting, but one day, I'll get it right. And then one day, you'll believe."

"You never cease to surprise me, my sweet, so I won't deny you again."

Galinda looked up, eyes shining at the endearment. Neither addressed it. Elphaba returned to her book, and Galinda to her pads and pencils. The green girl didn't look up as she spoke.

"You remember when you asked me if there was anything I had faith in?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, I think a flat 'no' is far to definite."

"Oh, Elphie—"

"But a 'yes' is equally so. Though I suppose that, given some recent musings, I might, in the indefinite future, find someone to put my faith in."

"You just have to let yourself."

"I'm not ready. I… could, though."

"You can. And one day, you will be ready. Just not quite yet."

Elphaba smiled and looked up at Galinda.

"Not yet."

The End. Would love to know your thoughts, if you feel so inclined. -A