Defying Gravity, 12/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: Defying Gravity, 12/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Summary: Glinda and Elphaba - and Fiyero - working hand-in-hand, the way it was supposed to be . . . maybe . . .
This chapter: Elphaba meets Glinda's brother, and learns something disturbing about the Wizard's Animal campaign.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Sequel to "The Effects of Gravity," a link to all chapters of which can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
Even More Notes: I completely and utterly suck for being so long delayed in posting. I'll work on that.
~~Elphaba~~
The boy was fair-haired, and pale, and beautiful, as far as small male children went. Perhaps a bit more than the usual, considering his almost girlish curls and his surprisingly neat and tidy clothes. He actually looked a bit like a Munchkinlander, Elphaba thought, with his small dusting of light freckles and the flecks of red in his hair.
It turned out that she had a fair amount of instinct left, or perhaps it was just reflex. When he chased the kitten toward the sofa and reached for its tail, Elphaba had him scooped up in her arms and propped against her hip before the poor thing could even retaliate. She automatically cradled his legs carefully across one arm before she realized that he was kicking to get them free. The last baby she had held, nearly twenty years ago, couldn't have managed such a thing, and Elphaba's arms had remembered.
When she released his legs, Glinda's brother hooked one of them over her waist. He studied her with dark blue eyes and finally pronounced, "Green."
"Excellent point," Elphaba said. Her tone, which would have terrified any ten of the people she encountered on an average day, made him giggle.
She must have been staring at his face, because Glinda's mother put in, "Galinda had them as a child too, the freckles. They faded eventually; I suppose his will, too."
Elphaba looked over her shoulder at Glinda, who was leaning against the back of the sofa beside her mother. "She got sunburned once when she wasn't careful enough in physical education; I think I saw them then."
"Elphie!"
Elphaba laughed and let the little boy slide to the floor, cautioning him, "Leave the kitty alone." He blinked up at her, then calmly sat down on the floor right where she had dropped him.
"Whatever magic you have, Elphaba," Glinda's mother said, "I wish you'd teach it to me."
Elphaba shook her head. "I only had a sister, I've never raised a child. I wouldn't know the first thing."
"Galinda was such an easy child," her mother lamented, wrapping an arm around Glinda's shoulders as she spoke. "She spoiled us."
"He does seem to have quite a lot of energy," Glinda said. "When he isn't faced with Elphaba."
"Well," her mother sighed, "he's a boy."
The little boy pushed himself to his feet and wandered over to the edge of Glinda's skirts. She looked down at him and said, "Hello." He lifted his arms in silent supplication, and Glinda blinked. "Oh. All right." She stooped to pick him up, and braced him against her hip as Elphaba had done. To Elphaba's eye, though, neither of them appeared particularly comfortable.
Their mother leaned over and placed a hand on top of the baby's head. "You remember your sister, don't you?" she prompted. "You remember Galinda?"
"I don't think he does," Glinda murmured. "But he can hardly be expected to. He's only seen me three times, and only once since he's been much able to talk."
Elphaba felt herself slowly backing away from the scene, wanting to leave Glinda and her family to reacquaint themselves without an audience. The sight of the kitten, hiding under a chair from the baby's reach, gave her an idea. "Glinda," she said. "I forgot I was going to go down to the kitchens and see what they can do for the cat."
"Oh," Glinda said, jogging the baby up in her arms to reposition him on her hip. "That's right. We can't keep trying to make him eat biscuits forever."
"I'll be back soon," Elphaba promised.
Glinda's mother nodded. "Lovely to see you, Elphaba. We'll catch up later."
Elphaba gave a little wave as she ducked out the door, grateful to be free to hurry past the guards and run down the stairs. Something had given her a strange energy, an almost nervous excitement, and she was glad to be away.
The assistant head cook looked about as terrified to see her as Elphaba had expected, but the request made a tiny, near-hysterical smile play around the corners of her mouth. Elphaba suspected it was the ridiculousness of having the most terrifying woman in Oz ask her for kitten food. "Of course we can send some things up, Mad-, er, wit-. . . miss," she said. "We'll do the very best we can."
"He's not picky," Elphaba said. "But I expect he needs more meat than we do."
"How small is 'e?"
Elphaba turned around to face the new voice behind her. It belonged to a small man, not quite small enough to be a Munchkin but almost, and with a strange mix of fair Munchkinlander coloring and Quadling hair and eyes. His accent suggested the south, and he was regarding Elphaba with a casual interest as he wiped a serving spoon clean on his apron.
"He's about - er . . ." She held up her hands about a foot apart.
The man smiled, almost. "If 'e's a littl'un, Val, maybe you'd better have 'em send over some o' that paste they make in the la-bora-tory. For the small ones, you know."
"I know," the assistant head cook replied, "I send them over my chicken livers when I don't use 'em for gravy."
"Laboratory?" Elphaba echoed, leaving out only his belabored pronunciation.
"You know, where they keep the young animals."
Elphaba's heart stopped, though she thought she had concealed the fact. "The . . . Wizard hasn't told me much about that," she said.
"Hasn't 'e? When you said you had a cat to feed I figured you were workin' on it with 'im." The little man dropped his voice to a whisper. "Nasty stuff, if you don't mind. Science is all well and good, and I guess I don't hold with no Goat stealin' my job, but some o' that's just not called for. If you won't repeat what I said to the Wizard."
It was a little late for him to be extracting that promise, but of course he needn't worry - not that he knew that, or that Elphaba could tell him. Instead she only nodded, as if they had a secret. "I won't tell him," she said. Groping for something else to say, she added, "I like your turnip stew too much."
It was the right guess; the man beamed. "Now how'd you know it was mine?"
"Because it tastes like a real Quadling recipe made by a Munchkinlander," she replied.
The little man laughed and whacked the other cook's arm with his spoon. "She ain't no witch, this one, she's just smart."
"She's plenty a witch," the woman muttered in reflex, then looked at Elphaba with eyes widened. "If you don't mind."
Elphaba shrugged. "Well, I am, I suppose." She turned her attention back to the Munchkin, or half-Munchkin. "What paste were you talking about?"
"They make it for the baby animals they keep over there, something they can eat before they get big enough for meat. I bring 'em over the stuff for it; I can ask 'em to send some back with me for you."
"Thanks," Elphaba said, adding casually, "So you've been over there, to the laboratory?"
"Only as long as I have to be. Southstairs gives me the willies, even the upstairs."
Elphaba tried very hard to act as though none of this news was a surprise to her, while the cook reached for a covered plate. "Let me get you some things to take to him for now, miss."
"Thank you," Elphaba said absently.
"And miss?" the Munchkin added as she headed for the door, warm plate in hand. "You can tell your sister the South is loyal."
Elphaba paused in the kitchen doorway. "I'll do that," she said.
When she made it back up to their rooms, Glinda and her mother and brother were gone and the kitten was sitting up expectantly on the back of the sofa. "You're uncanny," Elphaba told him as she took the lid off the dish she was carrying. "Come on, come eat."
The contents of the dish appeared to be mostly some sort of small riverfish. Elphaba sat back on her heels for a moment and watched the kitten's rapture. It had flecks of fish on the ends of its whiskers. "I think you're lucky it was Fiyero who found you," she said. "I don't like the sound of this laboratory one bit."
The kitten didn't respond, other than to snort a little in its excitement over the soft fish, but Glinda's voice called, "Elphie?" from behind a closed door.
Small sounds of splashing echoed in the bathroom. Elphaba crossed the room and pressed her ear against the door. "Glinda?"
"Come in?"
Elphaba opened the door far enough to poke her head in. "Are you all right?" Glinda was sitting in the bath, soap bubbles more or less hiding her body under the water with the exception of a pale knee and most of her shoulders. Her hair, though piled on top of her head, was damp.
"Come all the way in, please?"
Elphaba pushed the door shut behind her to keep in the warmth and went to sit carefully on the floor beside the tub, knees drawn to her chest, facing in the same direction as Glinda so as to avoid actually staring at her. "Did your mother leave?"
"Yes. I'll see them tomorrow." Glinda hesitated, drawing one hand through the water. "Where's the cat?"
"Eating fish."
"Then he's happy."
Elphaba turned to look at Glinda, changed her mind, and very carefully reached over to place one hand on Glinda's damp shoulder. "Did something happen?" she asked.
"Not really," Glinda said, letting a sigh escape. "Just my mother wanting to remind me of my duties, while my father was out of earshot."
"I don't suppose she meant tidying the kitchen."
"No." Glinda took a deep breath, and sighed again. "She said she just wants the best of everything for me."
"Well - I believe that she does," Elphaba said.
Glinda squirmed slightly, splashing a bit of water on the hand that Elphaba still had resting on her shoulder. "But I already have the best of everything."
"I don't think your mother was talking about fine gowns and rooms in the Palace."
"Neither am I."
Elphaba stared at her own knees for a moment. "You have different ideas than she's used to," she said finally. "Give her a little time."
"Elphaba Thropp, preaching patience." Glinda took Elphaba's hand from her shoulder and twined their fingers together, resting their joined hands on the edge of the bathtub. "I know, you're probably right."
"Probably?"
Glinda nodded, and squeezed Elphaba's fingers. "Probably."
~~Glinda~~
Her mother returned the next day without the baby, explaining, "Papa took him to the offices."
"Oh." Glinda very carefully poured them each a cup of tea and tried to think of something else to say.
"Where's Elphaba?"
"She went out a while ago, she said she had to ask Fiyero something."
Her mother lifted her teacup with an eagle eye focused on Glinda. "So he is still around, is he?"
"He's a good friend," Glinda said, trying to sound firm but not pointedly so. "He wants to help us."
"Help you do what?"
"Whatever we need." Glinda took a sip from her tea to buy herself some time. "To stay safe in the City, that sort of thing."
"There was an article about him in the Ozian last week, you know," her mother said.
"No, I didn't. There haven't been many articles about him in a while - what did it say?"
"His eldest male cousin has a son," her mother replied, setting her cup daintily in its saucer.
"How is that something about Fiyero?"
"Well, it was predictions about the line of inheritance in the Vinkus. You know he's an only child."
Glinda nodded. The cat crept up behind her and settled on the back of the sofa near her head as she replied, "Yes, I did."
"And he has no child yet - not even the usual rumors about an unacknowledged child. If he doesn't have any before his death, his cousin's child will inherit his position."
"Fiyero's hardly close to death," Glinda said, a little shiver running through her. "He's barely twenty-two."
"No one's expecting his imminent demise, dear, but he is still unmarried and people love to speculate."
"I'm sure he'll marry someone." Glinda twisted and reached one arm behind herself to pet the cat. "Oddly enough, I think he's turning into the marrying type."
Her mother hesitated. "Galinda - we came into town so that your father could meet with his lawyers."
Glinda frowned. "Aren't his lawyers in Frottica?"
"The everyday ones, yes, but the lawyers who handle the estate are here."
"Is something wrong with the estate?"
"No - but his will hasn't been revised in many years, and now he has a son, arrangements must be made."
"For what?"
"Well." Her mother's hands settled firmly in her lap. "You know that a man can make arrangements to choose which of his male relatives will inherit his estate, and take control of his affairs, and look after his wife and daughters. Your father had designated your uncle Reltin as his heir, because he trusts his judgment above that of his older brother."
"And if Father didn't say anything, uncle Serris would have inherited."
"That's right. But the will says that Reltin will inherit over the right of any other legal heir, which means that now it must be rewritten to say that Reltin will inherit only as a temporary guardian, if your brother should be underage at the time of his inheritance, and will not inherit at all if your brother is an adult at the time of your father's death. That way, everything will still be taken care of." Her mother stopped and leaned forward. "You understand what this means for you, Galinda?"
Glinda nodded obediently. "That when Father dies, if I'm not yet married, my brother will be responsible for me - and uncle Reltin as guardian, if he's still too young."
"Yes." Her mother reached out for one of Glinda's hands. "No one's trying to hurry you, darling. I just thought you should know how things stand."
"I understand."
"I have to meet them in town now. When do you expect Elphaba back?"
Glinda stood along with her mother. "I'm not sure."
"Perhaps we'll see you both for dinner."
Glinda was sitting quietly on the sofa with the kitten purring on her lap when Elphaba returned. She seemed agitated, but sat down next to Glinda and reached out to pat the kitten's head without saying anything.
"You're a bit flushed," Glinda said, looking at Elphaba out of the corner of her eye. "Did you and Fiyero fight?"
"A little," Elphaba replied. Glinda hadn't actually expected that answer.
"About what?"
"I wanted him to take me somewhere in the Palace - somewhere I can't go without a guard. He disagreed, at first."
"Oh." Glinda scratched the kitten between his ears. "Where?"
Elphaba's pause was very loud. "I'll tell you after we've been," she finally said. "I don't want to - I'm just not sure what we'll find."
"All right."
Elphaba looked up at her at this. "Did anything happen with your mother?"
"No . . . she just gave me some things to think about, that's all." She rubbed one finger over the kitten's nose. "So that's what I've been doing."
"Thinking."
"Yes."
Elphaba lifted an arm and draped it over Glinda's shoulders. Glinda leaned close for a moment, but then shifted her weight carefully under the kitten and stretched sideways to lay her head in Elphaba's lap. Elphaba's hand settled gently on her hair, and Glinda lay still for a while, her cheek against the warmth of Elphaba's legs, struggling to let her familiar touch drive away the gloomy thoughts.
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Summary: Glinda and Elphaba - and Fiyero - working hand-in-hand, the way it was supposed to be . . . maybe . . .
This chapter: Elphaba meets Glinda's brother, and learns something disturbing about the Wizard's Animal campaign.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Sequel to "The Effects of Gravity," a link to all chapters of which can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
Even More Notes: I completely and utterly suck for being so long delayed in posting. I'll work on that.
~~Elphaba~~
The boy was fair-haired, and pale, and beautiful, as far as small male children went. Perhaps a bit more than the usual, considering his almost girlish curls and his surprisingly neat and tidy clothes. He actually looked a bit like a Munchkinlander, Elphaba thought, with his small dusting of light freckles and the flecks of red in his hair.
It turned out that she had a fair amount of instinct left, or perhaps it was just reflex. When he chased the kitten toward the sofa and reached for its tail, Elphaba had him scooped up in her arms and propped against her hip before the poor thing could even retaliate. She automatically cradled his legs carefully across one arm before she realized that he was kicking to get them free. The last baby she had held, nearly twenty years ago, couldn't have managed such a thing, and Elphaba's arms had remembered.
When she released his legs, Glinda's brother hooked one of them over her waist. He studied her with dark blue eyes and finally pronounced, "Green."
"Excellent point," Elphaba said. Her tone, which would have terrified any ten of the people she encountered on an average day, made him giggle.
She must have been staring at his face, because Glinda's mother put in, "Galinda had them as a child too, the freckles. They faded eventually; I suppose his will, too."
Elphaba looked over her shoulder at Glinda, who was leaning against the back of the sofa beside her mother. "She got sunburned once when she wasn't careful enough in physical education; I think I saw them then."
"Elphie!"
Elphaba laughed and let the little boy slide to the floor, cautioning him, "Leave the kitty alone." He blinked up at her, then calmly sat down on the floor right where she had dropped him.
"Whatever magic you have, Elphaba," Glinda's mother said, "I wish you'd teach it to me."
Elphaba shook her head. "I only had a sister, I've never raised a child. I wouldn't know the first thing."
"Galinda was such an easy child," her mother lamented, wrapping an arm around Glinda's shoulders as she spoke. "She spoiled us."
"He does seem to have quite a lot of energy," Glinda said. "When he isn't faced with Elphaba."
"Well," her mother sighed, "he's a boy."
The little boy pushed himself to his feet and wandered over to the edge of Glinda's skirts. She looked down at him and said, "Hello." He lifted his arms in silent supplication, and Glinda blinked. "Oh. All right." She stooped to pick him up, and braced him against her hip as Elphaba had done. To Elphaba's eye, though, neither of them appeared particularly comfortable.
Their mother leaned over and placed a hand on top of the baby's head. "You remember your sister, don't you?" she prompted. "You remember Galinda?"
"I don't think he does," Glinda murmured. "But he can hardly be expected to. He's only seen me three times, and only once since he's been much able to talk."
Elphaba felt herself slowly backing away from the scene, wanting to leave Glinda and her family to reacquaint themselves without an audience. The sight of the kitten, hiding under a chair from the baby's reach, gave her an idea. "Glinda," she said. "I forgot I was going to go down to the kitchens and see what they can do for the cat."
"Oh," Glinda said, jogging the baby up in her arms to reposition him on her hip. "That's right. We can't keep trying to make him eat biscuits forever."
"I'll be back soon," Elphaba promised.
Glinda's mother nodded. "Lovely to see you, Elphaba. We'll catch up later."
Elphaba gave a little wave as she ducked out the door, grateful to be free to hurry past the guards and run down the stairs. Something had given her a strange energy, an almost nervous excitement, and she was glad to be away.
The assistant head cook looked about as terrified to see her as Elphaba had expected, but the request made a tiny, near-hysterical smile play around the corners of her mouth. Elphaba suspected it was the ridiculousness of having the most terrifying woman in Oz ask her for kitten food. "Of course we can send some things up, Mad-, er, wit-. . . miss," she said. "We'll do the very best we can."
"He's not picky," Elphaba said. "But I expect he needs more meat than we do."
"How small is 'e?"
Elphaba turned around to face the new voice behind her. It belonged to a small man, not quite small enough to be a Munchkin but almost, and with a strange mix of fair Munchkinlander coloring and Quadling hair and eyes. His accent suggested the south, and he was regarding Elphaba with a casual interest as he wiped a serving spoon clean on his apron.
"He's about - er . . ." She held up her hands about a foot apart.
The man smiled, almost. "If 'e's a littl'un, Val, maybe you'd better have 'em send over some o' that paste they make in the la-bora-tory. For the small ones, you know."
"I know," the assistant head cook replied, "I send them over my chicken livers when I don't use 'em for gravy."
"Laboratory?" Elphaba echoed, leaving out only his belabored pronunciation.
"You know, where they keep the young animals."
Elphaba's heart stopped, though she thought she had concealed the fact. "The . . . Wizard hasn't told me much about that," she said.
"Hasn't 'e? When you said you had a cat to feed I figured you were workin' on it with 'im." The little man dropped his voice to a whisper. "Nasty stuff, if you don't mind. Science is all well and good, and I guess I don't hold with no Goat stealin' my job, but some o' that's just not called for. If you won't repeat what I said to the Wizard."
It was a little late for him to be extracting that promise, but of course he needn't worry - not that he knew that, or that Elphaba could tell him. Instead she only nodded, as if they had a secret. "I won't tell him," she said. Groping for something else to say, she added, "I like your turnip stew too much."
It was the right guess; the man beamed. "Now how'd you know it was mine?"
"Because it tastes like a real Quadling recipe made by a Munchkinlander," she replied.
The little man laughed and whacked the other cook's arm with his spoon. "She ain't no witch, this one, she's just smart."
"She's plenty a witch," the woman muttered in reflex, then looked at Elphaba with eyes widened. "If you don't mind."
Elphaba shrugged. "Well, I am, I suppose." She turned her attention back to the Munchkin, or half-Munchkin. "What paste were you talking about?"
"They make it for the baby animals they keep over there, something they can eat before they get big enough for meat. I bring 'em over the stuff for it; I can ask 'em to send some back with me for you."
"Thanks," Elphaba said, adding casually, "So you've been over there, to the laboratory?"
"Only as long as I have to be. Southstairs gives me the willies, even the upstairs."
Elphaba tried very hard to act as though none of this news was a surprise to her, while the cook reached for a covered plate. "Let me get you some things to take to him for now, miss."
"Thank you," Elphaba said absently.
"And miss?" the Munchkin added as she headed for the door, warm plate in hand. "You can tell your sister the South is loyal."
Elphaba paused in the kitchen doorway. "I'll do that," she said.
When she made it back up to their rooms, Glinda and her mother and brother were gone and the kitten was sitting up expectantly on the back of the sofa. "You're uncanny," Elphaba told him as she took the lid off the dish she was carrying. "Come on, come eat."
The contents of the dish appeared to be mostly some sort of small riverfish. Elphaba sat back on her heels for a moment and watched the kitten's rapture. It had flecks of fish on the ends of its whiskers. "I think you're lucky it was Fiyero who found you," she said. "I don't like the sound of this laboratory one bit."
The kitten didn't respond, other than to snort a little in its excitement over the soft fish, but Glinda's voice called, "Elphie?" from behind a closed door.
Small sounds of splashing echoed in the bathroom. Elphaba crossed the room and pressed her ear against the door. "Glinda?"
"Come in?"
Elphaba opened the door far enough to poke her head in. "Are you all right?" Glinda was sitting in the bath, soap bubbles more or less hiding her body under the water with the exception of a pale knee and most of her shoulders. Her hair, though piled on top of her head, was damp.
"Come all the way in, please?"
Elphaba pushed the door shut behind her to keep in the warmth and went to sit carefully on the floor beside the tub, knees drawn to her chest, facing in the same direction as Glinda so as to avoid actually staring at her. "Did your mother leave?"
"Yes. I'll see them tomorrow." Glinda hesitated, drawing one hand through the water. "Where's the cat?"
"Eating fish."
"Then he's happy."
Elphaba turned to look at Glinda, changed her mind, and very carefully reached over to place one hand on Glinda's damp shoulder. "Did something happen?" she asked.
"Not really," Glinda said, letting a sigh escape. "Just my mother wanting to remind me of my duties, while my father was out of earshot."
"I don't suppose she meant tidying the kitchen."
"No." Glinda took a deep breath, and sighed again. "She said she just wants the best of everything for me."
"Well - I believe that she does," Elphaba said.
Glinda squirmed slightly, splashing a bit of water on the hand that Elphaba still had resting on her shoulder. "But I already have the best of everything."
"I don't think your mother was talking about fine gowns and rooms in the Palace."
"Neither am I."
Elphaba stared at her own knees for a moment. "You have different ideas than she's used to," she said finally. "Give her a little time."
"Elphaba Thropp, preaching patience." Glinda took Elphaba's hand from her shoulder and twined their fingers together, resting their joined hands on the edge of the bathtub. "I know, you're probably right."
"Probably?"
Glinda nodded, and squeezed Elphaba's fingers. "Probably."
~~Glinda~~
Her mother returned the next day without the baby, explaining, "Papa took him to the offices."
"Oh." Glinda very carefully poured them each a cup of tea and tried to think of something else to say.
"Where's Elphaba?"
"She went out a while ago, she said she had to ask Fiyero something."
Her mother lifted her teacup with an eagle eye focused on Glinda. "So he is still around, is he?"
"He's a good friend," Glinda said, trying to sound firm but not pointedly so. "He wants to help us."
"Help you do what?"
"Whatever we need." Glinda took a sip from her tea to buy herself some time. "To stay safe in the City, that sort of thing."
"There was an article about him in the Ozian last week, you know," her mother said.
"No, I didn't. There haven't been many articles about him in a while - what did it say?"
"His eldest male cousin has a son," her mother replied, setting her cup daintily in its saucer.
"How is that something about Fiyero?"
"Well, it was predictions about the line of inheritance in the Vinkus. You know he's an only child."
Glinda nodded. The cat crept up behind her and settled on the back of the sofa near her head as she replied, "Yes, I did."
"And he has no child yet - not even the usual rumors about an unacknowledged child. If he doesn't have any before his death, his cousin's child will inherit his position."
"Fiyero's hardly close to death," Glinda said, a little shiver running through her. "He's barely twenty-two."
"No one's expecting his imminent demise, dear, but he is still unmarried and people love to speculate."
"I'm sure he'll marry someone." Glinda twisted and reached one arm behind herself to pet the cat. "Oddly enough, I think he's turning into the marrying type."
Her mother hesitated. "Galinda - we came into town so that your father could meet with his lawyers."
Glinda frowned. "Aren't his lawyers in Frottica?"
"The everyday ones, yes, but the lawyers who handle the estate are here."
"Is something wrong with the estate?"
"No - but his will hasn't been revised in many years, and now he has a son, arrangements must be made."
"For what?"
"Well." Her mother's hands settled firmly in her lap. "You know that a man can make arrangements to choose which of his male relatives will inherit his estate, and take control of his affairs, and look after his wife and daughters. Your father had designated your uncle Reltin as his heir, because he trusts his judgment above that of his older brother."
"And if Father didn't say anything, uncle Serris would have inherited."
"That's right. But the will says that Reltin will inherit over the right of any other legal heir, which means that now it must be rewritten to say that Reltin will inherit only as a temporary guardian, if your brother should be underage at the time of his inheritance, and will not inherit at all if your brother is an adult at the time of your father's death. That way, everything will still be taken care of." Her mother stopped and leaned forward. "You understand what this means for you, Galinda?"
Glinda nodded obediently. "That when Father dies, if I'm not yet married, my brother will be responsible for me - and uncle Reltin as guardian, if he's still too young."
"Yes." Her mother reached out for one of Glinda's hands. "No one's trying to hurry you, darling. I just thought you should know how things stand."
"I understand."
"I have to meet them in town now. When do you expect Elphaba back?"
Glinda stood along with her mother. "I'm not sure."
"Perhaps we'll see you both for dinner."
Glinda was sitting quietly on the sofa with the kitten purring on her lap when Elphaba returned. She seemed agitated, but sat down next to Glinda and reached out to pat the kitten's head without saying anything.
"You're a bit flushed," Glinda said, looking at Elphaba out of the corner of her eye. "Did you and Fiyero fight?"
"A little," Elphaba replied. Glinda hadn't actually expected that answer.
"About what?"
"I wanted him to take me somewhere in the Palace - somewhere I can't go without a guard. He disagreed, at first."
"Oh." Glinda scratched the kitten between his ears. "Where?"
Elphaba's pause was very loud. "I'll tell you after we've been," she finally said. "I don't want to - I'm just not sure what we'll find."
"All right."
Elphaba looked up at her at this. "Did anything happen with your mother?"
"No . . . she just gave me some things to think about, that's all." She rubbed one finger over the kitten's nose. "So that's what I've been doing."
"Thinking."
"Yes."
Elphaba lifted an arm and draped it over Glinda's shoulders. Glinda leaned close for a moment, but then shifted her weight carefully under the kitten and stretched sideways to lay her head in Elphaba's lap. Elphaba's hand settled gently on her hair, and Glinda lay still for a while, her cheek against the warmth of Elphaba's legs, struggling to let her familiar touch drive away the gloomy thoughts.