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Glinda watches the wizard float away and thinks I should have killed you with my bare hands.
She smiles and waves, a little elegant flourish of the fingers. Dorothy is crying, hand pressed to her mouth. Really, isnt that a bit much?
She’ll satisfy herself with seeing Madame in a cage.
——-
Elphaba would be so happy for the return of the animals— Glinda is only selfish. She hoards their stories, Dulcibears her favorite, small pieces of her as a child, already so—
——
“Good,” the crowd sighs as Glinda allows a flying squirrel to alight on her arm.
She is suppressing a wince, the instinctual thoughts of dirty paws, diseases. When they pass, she finds the little things body is warm, light in the cup of her palm.
“Hello, little one,” she says.
Is this what you felt? she wonders. She blinks quickly. Cant ruin her mascara.
——
She dreams of fields of green, curling vines, of thick, moss heavy forests tangled as the hems of her robes. The trees shift, become bodies whorled, carved from oak, proud as the maidenhead of a ship, long hair whipping in the wind.
She floats above a marriage bed, watches Fiyero cup that face, whisper ardent promises he will not be able to keep. She watches other things. She wakes, and finds her hands tangled in the sheets, the insides of the pillowcases transformed into mountains of green ribbon that slide through her fingers soft as silk.
She laughs. Accidental magic, bubbling in her fingers. If she is going mad, she cant find it in herself to care.
She sleeps with the little bottle on her nightstand. Touches it when she wakes in the dead of night, a widening, sucking hole in her chest, the cool glass smooth under her fingertips.
Such a little thing. In the end, the Wizard wouldnt have cared it was his own daughter he chased to the ends of the earth, left alone and frightened and— but no. Elphaba was so brave, in the end, that it makes her sick to her stomach, cold to her bones. She will spend the rest of her life living up to her example.
She imagines sinking a knife into the Wizards chest, over and over. She wonders if she could, or if shed have been a coward to the end, if shed have risked breaking a nail. She weeps, in the nighttime, wakes with robes tangled around her knees in a circle of disgusting snotty tissues.
What a touching performance, the voice says.
But thats not right. Elphaba was never cruel.
Well, she did steal Glindas husband, which shes still so incandescently angry about she can feel it in her teeth, but. Fiyero didnt belong to her. He knew his heart better than nearly anyone Glinda knows, and she is so furious with him for it, so j—
It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing seems to, except for tracing the shape of the gaping hole she left behind, for sleeping curled around the brim of a hideous black hat. And if Glinda is the only person left, the sole keeper of her memory, goddamnit, she will get it right.