holding space for gelphie

And then Elphaba tells her about the birds coming back for summer and how her father’s refusing to answer the phone again and he does this, and she wouldn’t care except her sister gets worried, and all the layers between them feel so delicate and fragile that a wind could tear them open.

i really liked the idea of them basically having less and less reasons not to acknowledge their feelings for each other (the metaphorical layers). and, of course, elphaba's father being unreachable is foreshadowing. he has already had his stroke at this point. in a lot of ways this scene is sort of "stolen" or, like, a pocket in time where everything is still okay even though it's very much not. elphaba's father is dying, elphaba is moving, but they get to carve out their tiny bubble of okay-ness.

it's still a bubble, though. leave it to gelphie to be doomed and not to even know. and glinda, at least subconsciously, is still concerned about the permanence of things, of letting go or not even having anything to hold on to:

“Anyway,” Glinda says, “to return to the large construction sites. They’re gone at some point, right? The dust, the noise…” Glinda scrunches her nose together, tries to imagine a building coming up out of nothing, something that will be inhabited, filled. “And then you have running water and walls that come together at 90 degree angles and it’ll always be there, at that street corner where you built it. And you could put your hand on it every time you walked by and…”

i've always liked to conceive of glinda's architectural interest as this desire for something that is a) very graspable, with very little to interpret in terms of social interaction and b) more or less permanent. so this reflects that.

“We could’ve been roommates,” Elphaba says lightly. “Oh, you’d have loathed me.”

i am rather enamored with ways that glinda could have had her gay awakening without elphaba, and how that could have affected her. and for this glinda i thought it fit that it was something close to canon but fundamentally a situation where she did Not get what she wanted, which is why she flees into areas where success is generally "safer" than romantic relationships. or if not safer, at least tied to less emotional vulnerability.

Elphaba exhales quietly. “It’d just be embarrassing,” she says with her voice pitched low, “if it didn’t work. If he puts all this effort in and I don’t amount to anything.”

i love characterizing elphaba as someone who is very harsh with herself precisely because she sees her own potential. like that ambiguity.... and how it crosses into borderline arrogance sometimes because of her very high standard for herself. mmmm i love you elphaba thropp

and then the time dragon! hehe what a silly billy. i don't exactly know where the whole water spout thing came from originally, but what i DO remember is that i really wanted to focus on the more intentional side of being in love and expressing love. like yes, gelphie is thrown together by fateful experiences both in canon & in nesting box BUT ultimately their choices bring them to each other despite fate in many ways conspiring to part them (again). and here they have a moment of chemistry where they would have had a perfect rom-com kiss except for the dragon but that's not what defines their relationship or the evening in the end. and they're at that point! they're so clearly attracted to each other and lowkey obsessed with each other that there's no logical reason for them not to kiss! and i am a sucker for an elphaba-initiated first kiss but at the same time elphaba needs to be Really Sure, and glinda has certainly picked up on that, and so she gives her a clear signal--

“It’s silly,” Glinda says, reaching out to right them. “But I would’ve had the hardest time getting over a crush on you.”

(upon reread, i'm also thinking about like... the framing of this? like glinda is saying something clearly flirtatious but still, fundamentally, ambiguous. she's still giving elphaba an out! wow she's truly cuckoo. anyway)

and then elphaba, our go-getter, goes and gets it.

But the air smells like Elphaba and it smells like spring, new beginnings and the anticipatory joy of a precious summer yet to pass, rolled up and untouched; clear skies and crisp warm sun.

i tried really hard to establish summer imagery. i'm sure everyone could tell lol.

The rest of the world—the drive and the hair-washing and work—has gone away, like birds leaving for the winter with their bow-curved wings black against the sun.

again with the birds and the seasons and the whatnot. but fundamentally i was trying to maintain this sense of fleetingness within a cyclical system.

Elphaba pushes the car door open; their air floods out, dissipating and becoming part of everything else. “We can go to the Time Dragon festival in the evening,” Elphaba is saying. She’s sliding out of the backseat but she turns around and smiles at Glinda and it feels like a promise, the two of them between the stalls and holding hands and getting hit by the ridiculous spouts together. “I can call you.”

ugh in an alternate universe where frexspar doesn't ruin things they probably had such a good time and made out behind a booth at the time dragon festival :(