hold out if you can hold out my sweet -> i am married just not to a man -> as you abandoned me. you did, donβt deny it, stop those lightning bolt looks at me, i wonβt have it -> you were devoted to glinda you were everyone knew -> [the night elphaba is βvanquishedβ] lady glinda had a bad night, a night of shakes and regret and pain; she guessed it was the early signs of gout from her rich diet. but she sat up half the night and lit a candle in a window, for reasons she couldnβt articulate. the moon passed overhead in its path from the vinkus, and she felt its accusatory spotlight, and moved back from the tall windows. -> βtell me what you need, tell me why i should help, and iβll see what I can do. in memory of elphaba. you knew her.β her head tilted again, but up, this time, and it was to keep the sudden wetness from spilling into her carefully colored false eyelashes. βyou knew my elphie!β + her hands reached out hungrily for the cape and rubbed its hem, as if it were leaves of thyme or hyssop. + glinda reached out and took the charred broomstick and cradled it. -> βoh, oh,β she managed, βi donβt know that iβll see you againβ¦and you remind me so of her.β + βher power was only part of it,β said glinda. βshe was brave, and so are you.β -> [at the mauntery of saint glinda] i suppose i shouldnβt be surprised to find you here. after all, elphaba was here for a while, you know. itβs one of the reasons i like to support it. + glinda raised her chin. βno, liir. she lives. people sing of her. you wouldnβt guess it, being youβbut they do. thereβs a musical noise around her name; there are things people remember, and pass on.β + you refuse to be consoled, donβt you? well, thatβs as much proof as i could ever need that youβre kin to her. she was the same way. the very same way. -> βdidnβt elphaba trust you once to try? itβs your turn.β / i donβt mention her name,β said glinda. not coldly, but in deference.β -> her thoughts returned to elphaba thropp. It was more than fifteen years since they had parted ways. what an uncommon friendship they had hadβnot quite fulfilling. yet nothing had ever taken its place. years later, when that boy liir had shown up at glindaβs house in the emerald city, she had known him at once for elphabaβs son, though he seemed in some doubt on that matter. (children.) he had had elphabaβs broom, after all, and her cape. more to the point, he had had her look: that look both haunted and thereby abstract, but at the same time focused. a look like a spark on a dry winterβs day, that staticky crackle and flash that leaps across the air from finger to the iron housing of the servantβs bell. -> she didnβt believe she dreamed of elphaba; she didnβt have the kind of aggravated imagination that loitered in dreams. maybe she dreamed of a door opening, and elphaba coming back from the afterlife. to settle glindaβs consternation; to save her. or maybe this wasnβt a dream, just a foundational longing.-> for a moment, or ten, she was back in shiz, darting up some alley of flowering quinces, racing elphaba to the fountain at the back of the quad. elphaba was glowing with the effortβglowing emerald!βand glinda, in her dream, was almost absent to herself, caught up in admiring her friend. it happened so seldom, vacating the prison of oneβs limited apprehensions. even dreams seemed ego-heavy, she thought as she was waking. but oh, to see elphaba, even in dreams, is both reward and punishment, for it reminds me of my loss. -> βhere i go.β please, lurlina, please. or the unnamed god. anyone who might be paying attention. elphaba. -> βbesides, i was hardly a stranger. i had known your grandmother. we were like this.β she twinned her second and third fingers together as if they might strangle each other. -> her glasses had broken a year ago. she didnβt need them anymore, not really. she knew who was turning the door handle of her cell. she called her name sleepily, and added, βyou wicked thing. youβve taken your own sweet time, of course.β