"Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversation was flow." .pg 79
FlowGalinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversation was flow.
Elphaba, on the other hand, seemed to believe strongly in everything she had ever said to Galinda; which is to say, the power of silence, or something to that effect. Nothing about Elphaba ever flowed. Galinda supposed this was appropriate for one constructed of broad, flat planks and unforgiving angles, built with no intention of ever gliding across a ballroom floor, or maneuvering through a quiet tea, for that matter. Built with very little point at all other than, perhaps, a life of stopping and considering.
Definitely, Galinda would sigh, not built for cohabitation.
In the morning, every morning, there would come a grunt and a thump, a moment of strange silence, a grunt and a thump, artless, graceless, without rhythm, and Elphaba would be booted, clumping across the floor to fetch a leather tie for her hair. From across the room would float the breezy rustle of chiffon and lace flowing in elegant tiers to the floor, and Galinda would be decent, padding her way to the vanity. In the morning, every morning, Ama Clutch would make an appearance to fasten the back of Galinda's dress. The clasps would softly snik into alignment, one by one by one.
There was one occasion where Ama Clutch had taken to bed rest. Galinda's bared back had begun to prickle unpleasantly with goose flesh from the chill morning air before Elphaba had rolled her eyes and stalked over to the vanity. Her fingers had been warm as they fumbled against Galinda's skin, struggling unevenly with the fine clasps, artlessly, gracelessly, without rhythm. Focusing pointedly on the mirror in front of her, Galinda had steeled her face against the mortification that threatened to overwhelm her. Elphaba had snorted.
"Even your ears match today."
Galinda had been wearing a pink pinafore.
"What extraordinary accessorizing."
Elphaba only ever spoke to Galinda in monologues or quips. "You don't really think that?" They rarely spoke."I don't know. You say. Does evil exist?" They never conversed. "I don't expect to know" They did not flow.
"You are thinking!"
Honestly, no flow whatsoever.
So as Elphaba snickered, a grin splitting her thin face with the reluctant stretch of a baby being birthed from too small an orifice, Galinda busied herself with her bedclothes, turning them down herself, crookedly as neither Ama Clutch nor herself had anticipated such an early turn-in.
Why ever would a girl be interested in evil, indeed. Her back to a roomful of warm candlelight, Galinda burrowed deeply into her duvet, eyes closing to the sound of softly turning pages. Evil and sluggish blood... but the way Elphaba had so lovingly depicted evil enthralled Galinda. Evil seemed so fluid, pouring from Elphaba's lips, those thin cold lips; Evil as an essence, as a force that envelopes you, feeds you, cradles you, dominates you...
Galinda shivered, a tingling warmth throbbing to life in her stomach, and imagined Elphaba molding liquid Evil with her spindly fingers, cleaving the air with her arms as she shaped Evil, shrunk it and expanded it in the space above her head. Elphaba would be taken with such fluidity, being such a prickly rigid thing herself.
When Galinda awoke to a grunt and a thump, artless, graceless, and without rhythm, she allowed herself a headache in attempting to reconcile the wild girl of her dream, spinning storms with her fingertips, with the green creature snarling oaths at her boot that refused to be pulled on without being undone.
Perhaps this was their own rhythm; depressing, for, permitting herself the occasional moment of empathy, Galinda would feel as though Elphaba was merely functioning within her idiom, within her title of insubordinate student. Were Elphaba to stop thinking within her walls as minister's daughter and Headmistress' bane, were she to expand, to flow... perhaps...
Perhaps what, Galinda did not know, but held the image of Elphaba weaving the evil around herself like a shawl behind her closed eyelids. Elphaba's hair whipped around her bony shoulders and her skin pulsed with an unearthly heated glow.
"Fuck."
Galinda's gaze returned to Elphaba's struggle, watched her spit a tendril of lank hair out of her mouth, and she wondered if Elphaba's skin would feel like energy, and whether energy had a taste.
It was possible that this was something Galinda believed in: the Perhaps of Elphaba, who bit out another curse.
Her dress was already laid out elegantly on the bed, but Galinda bypassed it and went to kneel at Elphaba's feet and untie Elphaba's boot. Elphaba may have blushed, but Galinda made a point of being too courteous to stare. Galinda reasoned that she was only aiding the flow of the morning.