Chapter Text
♦♦♦♦♦
In a time different from ours, in a land unlike our own, on the outskirts of Pertha Hills, a distant household stood isolated from the rest of the town.
No townsfolk knew why, though suspicions were afoot. Mostly, they assumed it was due to the family's immense wealth, which made them seem standoffish—unlikely to busy their hands with anything other than the fruits of their opulence. They didn’t come and go as one might hope, relying instead on their servants to handle most dealings with the outside world. Occasionally, the Arduenna men were spotted in town, conducting business or overseeing estate affairs, but their appearances were rare and gave little insight into their lives. Despite countless attempts to uncover if something was amiss with the Arduennas, no one dared utter a bad word about them. As far as the townsfolk could tell, the servants were well cared for, paid fair wages, and, as a result, extremely loyal.
Their little spot on the edge of Pertha Hills wasn’t where the Arduennas had originated—at least not during the foundation of Oz. However, they had lived there for so long, in the same sprawling manor for centuries, that most people believed they’d been born from that very soil. Only their ancestors would remember where they had come from, or whether they had been running from something or toward it. But there they remained, as if woven into the very fabric of Gillikin history.
It was no shock that the news of a member of such a specific clan venturing into Oz in pursuit of a university education spread like wildfire, sparking curiosity among the townsfolk. Galinda, the only daughter of Larena Arduenna and Highmuster Upland, who had spent her life being schooled by excellent tutors in the comfort of her own environment, was set to depart for Shiz by fall.
It didn’t surprise anyone—Galinda had long blurred the edges of her family’s seclusion, her laughter easy and familiar, often heard drifting through shops and café windows like she belonged to the town as much as the hills. In spite of spending her youngest years in relative solitude, the concept of ‘fitting in’ had always come naturally to Galinda. She knew, from her trips into Pertha Hills, that you only had to polish off the parts of yourself that were less palatable. She’d seen the way the townspeople had accepted her, after she had learned to smile and charm and act just right. Once they’d made sure that she wasn’t too different. And she was happy to fit in, in the ways she could.
What intrigued people, however, was the idea of one of the Arduenna women daring to take such a public step. While the men of the family were occasionally spotted in town, no one could recall the last time they had set eyes on Larena Arduenna or even her mother. Some whispered that Larena had been dead for years, though such talk was nothing more than gossipy speculation.
The truth was much more complicated than it seemed, as it always is. At some point in time, no one could say when, or even how, a spell had befallen the Arduenna clan. The reason behind the curse had been lost over the centuries. Some said Galinda’s great-great-great-grandmother had broken the heart of a poor villager with a witch for a mother, who jinxed every woman in their family tree. Others said her great-great-great-grandmother had fallen ill of said broken heart and found a witch herself, to try to save her entire bloodline from any future suffering, asking for a potion to make the heart, the body, and the mind tougher.
Magic, Galinda had come to realize, wasn’t an exact science. They did heal faster than any human, but at what cost? No best intent could make a foolproof delivery of an incantation’s outcome, so the universe—or whatever other nature reigned over the order of things—made their souls and bodies stronger once a month, as they turned into muscled, lupine beasts.
It was easy to forget, when the magic surged in her veins, that creatures like her weren’t supposed to exist anymore. Long before the Arduennas settled here, Oz had been a land where Mythical Beings, Animals, and humans lived openly together. But fear and greed turned that harmony into centuries of persecution. Whenever disaster struck—famine, plague, conflict—rulers needed a scapegoat, and Mythical Beings made the perfect common enemy to hold people together in fear.
One by one, the shapeshifters, sirens, fairies, and other creatures vanished, hunted, burned, or driven deep into hiding until only witches and sorcerers remained, their power too profitable to extinguish completely. People told themselves the monsters were gone, but the hatred lingered. Animals, because of their magic-touched nature and their kinship with those lost creatures, were left behind as easy targets, too close to the beasts of old to ever be seen as equals. They weren’t caged anymore, but laws and prejudice still kept them firmly beneath everyone else.
Sometimes Galinda wondered if that same fate was hers too: a creature meant to stay hidden, half ghost, half myth. When the world you know is limited to the bounds of your family estate, it’s rather hard to see a greater picture of a fulfilled life. Year after year, what seemed freeing at first began to feel like its own golden cage. She could run free all she wanted—between trees, splattering in mud, hunting by the pull of her most primal instincts—yet that was all there was for her.
The secrecy and fear of being seen grew heavy on her shoulders. If she tried to find connection elsewhere, where would that even take her? How could any human not recoil at the sight of her bestial form?
The women in her family had blindly stumbled into the arms of men who loved them despite their monstrous side. Galinda felt so impossibly removed from that idea—it was hard to imagine how anyone could overlook such a thing. Something in her always twisted away from that story before it could settle. She’d never put it into words, but sometimes she wondered if that was her real curse—that her heart never seemed to want what it was supposed to.
It wasn’t just love that felt impossible for her. It was friendship. Connection. Kinship of any kind. Perfection had to be performed to attract anything from the outside world, but on the inside she was so very, very imperfect. The two felt irreconcilable.
She was doomed to roam those woods like so many of her ancestors, to live in the confinement of those forest walls. She had spent years learning to mask the dread that bloomed in her chest each month before the full moon, convincing herself the facade was protection—not loneliness. And in time, she arrived at one logical conclusion, one she believed had doomed her in its true, particular way: love seemed like a true unreachable goal.
So, she vowed never to entertain the idea of it.
And then she went to Shiz.
♦♦♦♦♦
Elphaba Thropp was the thorn on Galinda’s side and everyone knew it, though none knew the extent of it or what it entailed. Being randomly paired, with anyone, was hard enough. Her parents had been adamant with Crage Hall’s headmistress she was to have a single room in the ground floor, facing the back garden so that the walls meshed into the woods surrounding Shiz. It was the compromise made between Galinda and her family to agree to let her come to university at all, a way to ensure in those bloody moon cycles it would be easier for her to make a fast escape without arousing suspicions. But being paired with Elphaba as a roommate added another element to the chaos.
The first time she had entered Crage Hall, on that fateful mid-August day, she felt slightly giddy, her sensory faculties driving her mad because something—no, someone—was overwhelming her completely. She had borne the overloading senses of smell and hearing ever since she was a child, and she was used to crowds, loud noises, and awful smells. After the honing of her abilities, following her first shift when she was fifteen—a late bloomer, the women in her family would joke at their own disgrace—she had eventually learned to dull everything around her. Until, from the depths of Galinda’s despair, Elphaba walked right into her life.
There was a presence—sharp, unignorable—cutting through the haze of newness and noise. Galinda hadn’t even stepped fully into the building, still halfway through the gates, and already something was pulling at her instincts. A scent that made her lightheaded. A feeling that crawled over her arms and ribcage. Then a voice: deeper than hers, a bit rough around the edges, and laced with dry sarcasm.
By the time she set her eyes on Elphaba—arms folded, sitting in a chair, listening to Madame Morrible lecture about some random rule in the main hall—Galinda’s body was already reacting in such a strange way, buzzing down to her core, that she wasn’t even surprised the other girl was green.
It somehow seemed fitting.
Glinda’s skin tingled, her pulse quickened, and her stomach twisted with something she would later label as unease, though it felt suspiciously close to fascination. The new reason her body seemed to be taking on a mind of its own could only be blamed on the most unusual of circumstances. As if some cosmic judgment were raining down to scold her for believing—even for a few years—that she could simply be a normal girl, enrolled to further her education and make friends. No—of course not. A green person was to be the reason for her demise.
Madame Morrible’s unfazed expression showed no hint of apology as she declared there had been an error in the housing arrangements. The division had been trickier than expected, and they could no longer afford Galinda her singular dormitory. She’d be placed with the green girl—whose family was well-connected in Munchkinland, the Thropp Third Descending, no less—but Galinda could hardly dwell on the social ladder when her carefully laid plans were coming undone before her eyes. And yes, also, Elphaba’s scent was making it increasingly difficult to concentrate on solutions to her problems, to be honest.
Her only alternative was general housing with Lurline knows how many girls. Aware she was doomed either way, she had to agree. Elphaba seemed like the safer option, she told herself. Galinda could tell in her first moment with Elphaba—green, aloof, and glaring at anyone who dared to stare—that the other students would have already decided Elphaba didn’t belong among them. It didn’t take much to be an outcast at Shiz. There were rules to these things, you know, and she’d learned them effortlessly. The lesser of two evils, then, since it didn’t look like Elphaba would have any prospects for friends—or people in general—who would take her word about Galinda randomly disappearing on certain nights.
So, in the direst of situations, Elphaba became her choice.
“Well,” Elphaba had said, dropping her single suitcase with a thump on the floor as they settled into their tiny double room. If Galinda laid down on her bed and stretched her arms, she was almost certain she’d be able to touch Elphaba’s mattress. Ugh, her stench would probably get all over Galinda’s belongings. Can you imagine, that smell on Galinda’s bed? Her jaw clenched at the thought. “I hope we don’t kill each other,” Elphaba interjected, with her stilted timing. “Although some people say it’s rather romantic to die young, I’d prefer to haunt these halls a while longer.”
No, the others wouldn’t like her at all.
And it was very safe to say Galinda wanted to kill Elphaba—and her stupid scent—right then and there.
♦♦♦♦♦
The first time she transformed on Shiz's grounds, she had been slowly losing her mind a full week ahead. She had realized that if she wanted to go undetected by Elphaba, she couldn't just jump over the garden walls and leave. So, she had started making a habit of going out with friends on random nights and sleeping in their dorms on the way back. That way, if she didn't sleep in her own bed during a full moon, Elphaba wouldn't get suspicious.
Easier said than done, because she had developed the annoying ritual of never sleeping as well as when she wasn’t in her own bed. She’d never spent the night away from her family’s home before coming to Shiz, of course, and Elphaba's presence—when she wasn't buried inside the library—was a weirdly comforting thing. It nipped at her sanity the fact that the sound of Elphaba's breathing—which no human could have been able to capture since the taller girl slept like a log—and her smell begrudgingly always lulled her to sleep.
The smell in question being of mint and eucalyptus, which was ironic in itself—Galinda had even thought about joking to friends about the green girl smelling like that. However, then people might assume she had been standing far too close to Elphaba, which made her abandon the idea. Not that she needed to be close—she could catch Elphaba’s scent from a mile away. It was oddly strong, almost like she had just applied perfume. Mint, eucalyptus, and Oz...ink. It was bad enough that Elphaba had the most insufferable personality on campus; combined with such a distracting aroma, it was almost too much to handle.
Elphaba was irritating to the point that, even when she wasn't around, she managed to bother Galinda to some degree. She clung to the blonde's thoughts like the damp scent she left behind. Their washchambers constantly reeked of earthy leaves and what Galinda picked up as martyrdom. Her room had a never-ending growth of book piles, as if they were reproducing in captivity at night while she slept and Elphaba studied. Galinda would wake up alone in a maze of literary disorganization. And the boots—often left at the door—were so covered in grass and mud that Galinda wondered if Elphaba rolled in the dirt as a pastime.
Still, none of those habits irritated her half as much as the nights she had to sleep elsewhere—deliberately orchestrated absences to keep Elphaba from noticing her full moon pattern. The worst part? She somehow missed it. The swamp-scented air, the multiplying books, the boots caked in nature—all of it. It was infuriating. She would lie awake in Shenshen or Pfannee’s room, staring at the ceiling and lamenting it all, both the curse that necessitated she’d to leave and the roommate that made leaving so vexingly difficult.
For a bystander, it might have been easy to notice what was happening, however Galinda wasn’t there yet. Not even close. So she kept on being irritated on both accounts: Elphaba’s presence and absence. Two sides of one same burden.
Elphaba's absence did have its benefits, providing more time than Galinda might have wished for to prepare for her first transformation at Shiz. When the day of the first full moon arrived, she had already tucked an extra dress under an oak tree in the middle of the woods behind Crage Hall, just in case something went wrong. In the three years since she’d first shifted, she had mastered all that could go awry due to a lack of planning.
She knew sometimes she shifted too quickly to undress because someone delayed her on the way, and she knew a creature could take an interest in her clothes and steal them while she was still unable to return to her human form. Getting home nude, in the safety of the Arduennas' isolated territory, was easy; coming into Crage Hall in the same state would raise far too many questions. She was glad her whole family had prepared her well over the years.
The first transformation in such a foreign place went without a hitch—at least, as smooth as a gruesome bodily upheaval could ever be. The pain was still there, harsh but mellowed by years of endurance. Bones cracked and stretched deep inside her, sending waves of ache through her muscles. Yet, beneath the torment, there was a strange, almost masochistic rhythm to it—a brutal kind of release that somehow felt just short of therapeutic.
When she was younger, she’d learned to start her transformation sitting down, but now that was no longer necessary. She no longer stumbled or fell—instead, she simply toppled to the side as her center of gravity shifted and her proportions changed. Her bones snapped and lengthened, limbs gaining the strength befitting her curse. Her teeth, usually the center of a charming smile, grew and sharpened to a dangerous edge. Her tongue lolled out of her teeth lazily, a habit so innately canine—and so non-human—that Galinda might have blushed, if she’d been able to. But instead of pale, perfect skin, she was covered in thick, golden-brown fur, unnatural even for a wolf. Her paws, large and heavy-clawed, made easy work of the rough ground beneath her as she explored what was to be her territory for the next four years.
She ran, jumped, and ruffled around the trees as if they belonged to her. The ground seeped, wet and earthy between her paw pads. She couldn't sense any threatening presence around her—only animals, living on their own accord. And animals, as far as she had learned growing up, were far more peaceful than Animals, or even humans, so it offered her a sliver of reassurance. She was safe, at least for now.
♦♦♦♦♦
As the second month of school passed, Elphaba's status as an outcast grew exponentially as other Shiz students got to know her. It wasn’t enough to be green, no—she was brash, abrasive, and often unfiltered. She corrected professors mid-lecture bluntly, without raising her hand, and with zero regard for their egos. She refused to partake in any of Shiz’s events, calling them shallow, performative, or pointless—because Oz forbid a person have fun for the sake of entertainment—and habitually called classmates out on their privileges, which was ironic for someone supposedly next in line for Munchkinland’s government.
It left Galinda unhinged in ungodly ways.
Why couldn't Elphaba just try to adapt? Sure, it was hard… but Galinda had done it, hadn’t she?
After all, Galinda did, indeed, fit in like a glove. Her natural charm captured the attention of those around her, and she managed to make more than a few acquaintances to supplement her college years. As for actual friends? Pfannee and Shenshen were rather dull and had an awful habit of thoughtless speaking, yes. However, if socializing and delighting in what was supposed to be a human experience—her whole point in attending Shiz in the first place—was the goal, they would make do.
She wasn’t particularly concerned with surrounding herself with influential names. She wasn’t here to climb—just to live, or at least try to. To laugh in common rooms, to share inside jokes over tea, to brush against something close to belonging. And as long as it all stayed within the bounds of good taste and social decorum, Pfannee and Shenshen would suit her fine.
“You know,” Galinda said one morning, as Elphaba searched for one of the sheets she had scribbled notes on amid the chaos she called her desk, “you could try to have fun once in a while.”
“I have fun,” Elphaba answered. “I read.”
“I meant socially speaking.”
“Are you inviting me to join you, Pfannee, Shenshen, and those lunatic boys who make moon eyes at you on one of your nights out?” Elphaba huffed with sarcastic indignation, flipping over three sheets of paper until she found what she was looking for. “What’s next? Sharing secrets and braiding our hair?”
Galinda narrowed her eyes, halting her makeup mid-stroke. “Why is everything a joke to you?”
“The world is a joke.” Elphaba gestured dramatically, then slung her satchel across her body, shoving her papers inside. For Ev’s sake, she was such a brute. A bull in a china shop—except the shop was their room, and Elphaba had every means to tear it apart.
One night, Galinda had stepped on one of the other girl’s socks and skidded across the floor, breaking a perfect pair of heels. They had quarreled through the night until someone called the floor’s Ama to put an end to it. It had been unexpectedly exhilarating.
“The faster you learn, the easier it will be to survive the madness,” Elphaba continued.
“It just sounds highly pessimistic.” Galinda responded.
“And your way sounds highly naive.” Elphaba offered her most condescending smile—Galinda could practically picture herself ripping it off her face with her bare hands—then pressed two fingers to her forehead before giving a mock salute. “Toodle-oo, my dear.”
Elphaba stormed out of their room the same way she lived her life: like a whirlwind, slamming the door shut behind her.
Galinda’s eyes lingered on the spot where the green girl had stood, wondering how Elphaba could have declined an invitation she hadn’t even made. She was too exasperated to realize the term of endearment Elphaba had used on her.
♦♦♦♦♦
In the future, her friends would ask where she always disappeared to on those special transformation nights, but in the beginning, only Elphaba would be able to notice her slipping away from time to time—small vanishings meant to make the full-moon less suspicious in the eyes of her roommate. Though, if Elphaba was curious or concerned, she never let it show.
After all, Elphaba had her own habit of vanishing for hours, doing Lurline knows what—probably some strange genetics research. Galinda was fairly certain she’d heard her grumbling to the Goat professor, the one who always managed to botch her name, after class more than once. From the scraps she caught, she gathered Elphaba was helping him keep up with his notes and papers—scribbling down what his hooves couldn’t hold a pen steady enough to do on their own. She tried not to eavesdrop, but having exceptional hearing was both a blessing and a curse.
Still, curiosity lingered. Most nights, Galinda could sense Elphaba somewhere in the building, whereas occasionally, it felt like she was completely gone. Where did she go? She wasn’t exactly close with anyone. There was that tiny Munchkinlander boy who trailed after Galinda sometimes—the one constantly vying for Galinda’s attention—but other than that, Elphaba seemed to keep to herself.
Then, as if fate wanted to meddle, on the next full moon, Galinda caught a familiar scent outside Crage Hall. Elphaba was out there, in the middle of the night. Her ears flattened instinctively, disappearing into the fur on her skull.
How could that girl be so reckless?
Elphaba’s distinct scent hit her moments before Galinda spotted the green girl walking briskly between Crage Hall and Briscoe Hall. What was she doing out there at this hour? Did Elphaba have no sense of self-preservation? What if she stumbled across a wild animal—or worse, someone like Galinda? What was she thinking?
Hidden in the shadows, Galinda watched as Elphaba crossed the open fields between the school grounds and the woods. She clutched her books tightly as she walked, probably with Galinda's original and unfortunately forgotten plan of jumping over the garden's wall in mind. Galinda huffed, the sound slipping out more as a growl than she intended.
Then, she heard them moments ahead of catching their scent: a group of rowdy, drunken boys stumbling nearby. Their loud, obnoxious whistles made every hair on Galinda’s body stand on end.
“What do we have here?” sneered one of them, his voice grating like nails on slate. “Oh, look! It’s the Angry Cabbage!”
Galinda’s breath caught. She watched as Elphaba hesitated, torn between ignoring them and standing her ground. Just walk away, Galinda begged silently. Go on. But of course, Elphaba—whose defining skill seemed to be defying Galinda’s every wish—pivoted to face them head-on.
“Shouldn’t you be under curfew?” one of the boys asked. Mentally, Galinda decided to call him Pimple Boy, since his oily face looked five seconds away from erupting in an acne explosion.
“Shouldn’t you be less drunk?” Elphaba shot back, her voice laced with a hard kind of humor. She really was completely insane—Galinda had to give her that. “It’s Tuesday night. If you keep going at this rate, you’ll be passed out in a gutter by the time you reach your first finals.”
Pimple Boy stiffened, his teeth grinding audibly in annoyance. One of his companions, a troglodyte with what was likely a below-average intellect, chose that moment to snatch one of Elphaba’s books. Turning it toward the moonlight, he squinted to read the title aloud: The Physiology of Animals. He let out a snort.
“Don’t tell me you’re actually curious about accepting your true nature as the college’s Cricket.”
“If I’m the Cricket,” she shot back coolly, “then you’re probably just an Ass.”
“What did you just say?”
“Oh no, are you slow and an Ass?” Elphaba’s eyebrows knitted together as if in deep thought, and then she pretended to speak very slowly. “Are. You. Aware. You. Are. An. Ass?” She turned to his companions. “You boys can help him. He’s clearly struggling.”
It all happened too fast.
The boys stopped laughing and advanced, their alcohol-fueled irritation bubbling over into action. Just as Galinda began to process what was happening, one of them shoved Elphaba.
She stumbled, falling hard to the ground, knees scraping against the gravel. She didn’t make a sound—not a yelp, not a cry—just pressed her lips tightly together as blood beaded on her skin, stark and crimson under the moonlight.
Galinda wasn’t sure what was about to happen next. For all she knew, they’d probably just tear all the pages out of Elphaba’s books. She would never know, of course, because before she could even think, she was already on all fours, running toward the group.
Wolves—and everything she’d learned about them as a child—thrive when they follow their instincts. Balancing a human brain with a wolf’s heart is never easy. They’re constantly at war, and though Galinda was proud of how she usually reined herself in with rationality, her impulses occasionally won.
This was one of those times.
Her claws extended, crushing the gravel with each step, and her fangs—sharp daggers capable of piercing stone if necessary—gleamed as she let out a fierce growl. It was too loud, too guttural. Troglodyte Boy fell flat on his rear, scrambling to escape under the haze of alcohol. Pimple Boy stumbled back just in time, narrowly avoiding her snapping jaws as she nearly caught his heel.
What would she have done if she had? Taken his foot off? Well, accidents happen. He would have lived.
It happened in the span of seconds. The other two boys, perhaps a little less drunk than their friends, managed to haul Troglodyte Boy off the ground and scattered in a wobbly, unsteady line, disappearing from Galinda’s vision.
Slowly, she felt her fur settling back into place, her claws retracting, her breathing slowing as her judgment returned.
What had she done?
When she turned her head, sure Elphaba would be trembling and ready to move away from her, she found deep, curious eyes staring back at her. The few times she had encountered humans while in lupine form, they’d skedaddled before she could blink.
She didn’t blame them at all. She had a mammoth of a body that could never be mistaken for a common wolf or Wolf. She was something else entirely, something that was clear as day, since she, on all fours, stood there a head taller than Elphaba.
“Thank you,” Elphaba said softly. It was the sweetest phrase she had the pleasure of hearing come out of her roommate’s mouth.
Elphaba waited, as if expecting Galinda to say anything back. Was she blind? Galinda couldn’t respond. Even if she could, she wasn’t sure she was capable of stringing together a coherent thought.
“Can you...” Elphaba began. “Speak? At all?”
The wolf gave a mix of a sneeze and a growl, turning its head from side to side. Engaging with Elphaba was the opposite of what she was supposed to do, and she blamed the wolf—that part of her pulsing and taking control of her actions with little to no regard for logic.
“Huh.” Elphaba stared.
Galinda’s body sank, belly brushing the earth, her head settling between her paws in gentle, yielding submission. Galinda knew it was all beyond embarrassing; she blamed it on the wolf—always eager to make her look ridiculous, with instincts that clearly didn’t care for dignity. Meanwhile though, in all honesty, who would know?
Elphaba didn’t move, perhaps noticing the proportions of their size difference and finally feeling a drop of self-preservation. Except Elphaba didn't show signs of struggles over those facts; she had just let her eyes fall to her knees, as blood gushed a little between her fingers.
Galinda didn't know if it was the sting of copper filling the air, but she worried, crawling closer and with huge irrational action, licked the wound. She didn't know if she was more shocked by her own behavior or by the fact Elphaba took the opportunity to flick her in the nose with all her might.
"Excuse you!" Elphaba exclaimed, a bit affronted. "You can't just go around licking people without permission."
The last time she’d felt scolded in her canine state, she had ripped apart one of her mother’s curtains because her father had insisted it was too torrential of a rain outside for them to go out. Safe to say, there was never a new shifting night ritual indoors again. If there was ever a thunderstorm brewing, Highmuster would grab a rocking chair and settle down on the patio until dawn arrived, bringing his women back home.
Elphaba was the one human, besides her father—and probably the Arduennas’ male counterparts over the years—who didn’t look at all scared for her safety around them. Galinda didn’t feel offended by Elphaba’s actions; she felt mortified. Where was her restraint? Why couldn’t she settle and stop making a mess out of herself?
It didn’t matter anymore either way, because Elphaba climbed back to her feet and started to gather her books, which lay scattered on the ground. “I don’t know your name,” she grunted as she patted herself down, freeing herself of all the debris. “Though, thank you. Again.”
Galinda remained unmoving, unaware there was any particular procedure to follow during such a strange encounter. She didn’t expect Elphaba to look back at her and tentatively take a step closer, raising her hand midair, trying to grasp whether it was the right thing to do or not. Galinda decided she should probably put the girl out of her antisocial misery and close the gap between them. She did always know what a social situation called for.
Green fingers touched golden fur for a split second, and if Galinda hadn’t been so focused on maintaining the rest of her unraveling composure, she would have shivered. It had been so long since she’d been touched in this form that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Elphaba had the most intoxicating smell, and her hands, contrary to her sharp exterior, were so delicate in their patting that Galinda could have purred. It was over before it really began, and with a curt nod, Elphaba said, “Goodbye, beast,” then turned and walked toward the garden wall, fading from view.