Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

By the time the end of August rolls around it’s always a touch too cold to walk along the river bank. Galinda does it anyway.

She’s up at dawn that day for a reason she can’t quite put her finger on. Sleep has never come all that easily to her and now is no exception. She won’t sleep well tonight, either. The end of August is always sticky, eerie remnants of summer fastening to your skin and pulling tight enough to strip you clean. Tonight Galinda’s pillow will be a lump beneath her jaw, which will be clenched quite resolutely. She will not dream.

Past the Pine Barrens and at the foothills of the Madeleines a river crosses lush ground. Somewhere up north, nearer to where Galinda’s parents would play in the streams as babies, they called it the Gillikin River. It twists and turns and runs far enough that, down here, where she’d grown up, it is the Munchkin River— rockier, wilder. It’s got a current down here, so strong that it’ll sweep you away in the blink of an eye.

Now it is early morning. Killyjoy bounds ahead of her along the pebbled beach, paws slipping on the damp stones. This is his favorite walk in the world, just down the hill from the inn and always untouched in the morning. Killyjoy leads the way every time, leaping out the back door the moment he can and guiding Galinda down the winding path, sand and dirt flying up under the kick of his legs.

They won’t go very far today. Galinda has hardly slept, so her eyes go achy and sore the longer she keeps them open and there are squeezing cramps in the muscles of her legs that feel bone deep. Like the growing pains she’d always gotten as a little girl, sniffling in bed while her popsicle rubbed circles on her spindly thin calves. Only now she’s as grown as she’ll ever be, terribly enough. She was getting to the age at which people figured things out, wasn’t she? How long can a person be charmingly unmoored?

She leaves her shoes at the top of the beach, shiny black ones that she slips her feet out of delicately enough for her toes to wiggle atop the ground sand. Up ahead Killyjoy waits, exasperated, and bounds toward her again once she’s crossed the beach to the lapping tides of the river. The water’s warmer than it looks, it usually is, but nobody seems to pay all that much attention.

“You’re getting too fast for me, baby,” Galinda tells him affectionately, rumpling the top of his head and giving his fur a sloping disheveled edge to it. There is a piece of driftwood floating in the tiny waves and Galinda leans down to grab it, using her submerged ankle to move it closer. “Here, Killyjoy— go get it!”

The stick arcs through the air and Killyjoy watches it go, there is a moment of hesitation before he’s off and splashing beads of water backward with the force of his run. Galinda smiles, shaking her head to clear water from the tips of her hair before Killyjoy returns and sprays her again.

It’s only temporary. All of this— temporary. One of these days she’ll give it all up, the inn and its dusty door frames and the way it shudders in the middle of a storm. Someone else will take over, maybe Crope from the kitchens, and she’ll never have another nightmare about untucked sheets or burnt coffee cake. Killyjoy will stay behind too, he likes it better here, and so will that awful itching she gets behind her neck when she’s in the bath or drifting off to sleep in her bedroom, that feeling like she’s being watched from somewhere very far away.

She’d give it up and do what she’d planned to do years ago, when she was back at school. Move to the Emerald City like all those other girls she’d known, get a job in one of those shimmery high rises and have an office with a waiting room that had glossy copies of Ozmopolitan stacked up as far as anyone could see. Maybe a year from now she’d go. It’ll get her out of this stagnance, the funk she’d been hazily in for an indeterminately long time.

This, she decides that morning, with Killyjoy racing back to her through the clear river water at seven in the morning and a pebble wedged between her toes, will be the season. By the end of autumn things will be right again.

She gets back to the inn a bit before eight. No guests today, it’s sort of an off season. People come in the summer for the river, they come in the autumn for the foliage. In the weeks between, when it’s too cold to swim but far too early for hot cider and pumpkins, there’s a terrible grave emptiness that settles over the seven bedrooms.

“Good morning,” she calls once she’s back inside and has slipped her shoes, dusty from the walk back up the hill, off by the door. Killyjoy bursts through the door like a rocket, hurtling toward the kitchen. Galinda follows him with a smile.

“Oh, good. I almost thought you were dead.”

“You wish,” Galinda rolls her eyes, poking Crope in the arm so that he yelps and drops a handful of blackberries he’d been washing into a waiting bowl.

“I remember telling you you aren’t allowed in the kitchen anymore,” Crope tells her with a raised eyebrow. “And you’re definitely not getting any of these scones.”

“You have to let me in, it’s mine,” Galinda says, leaning over to pluck a blackberry out of the bowl.

“I don’t have to do anything. There’s jam over there, by the way, if you want it. And I’ve got the nice bread left over from last night.”

“Tibbett left it, I’m guessing?” Galinda asks, swallowing her berry as she strides across the kitchen tile in search of the jar. “Oh, this one’s fancy looking! Peach?”

“Apricot. And some cinnamon in there too, I think,” Crope says, leaning his head over Galinda’s shoulder. “Toast me a piece too, would you?”

“I wonder who else gets the privilege of fresh jam,” Galinda muses while she loads the toaster with two pieces of bread, flaking around the crusts. “Anyone else on his morning route, do you think? No, I bet it’s probably just you.”

Predictably, Crope goes slightly pink. “He’d bring it even if it was just you working,” he protests, kneading the scone dough with both hands and a spot of flour near his cheek. “It’s neighborly.”

“Sure,” Galinda agrees. “Neighborly. That’s the reason he always leaves us for last when he drops off groceries, isn’t it? And the reason he’s always hanging around here? And it’s funny you’re making scones, since I seem to remember him telling you last Thursday that your blackberry scones were… oh, what was the word he used?”

“Practically spiritual,” Crope says, and then shakes his head as if to clear it. “Stop it, I know what you’re doing.”

“Oh?” Galinda asks, the picture of innocence. “What am I doing? Would you look at that, the toast is ready. Hand me a plate, would you, one of the chipped ones is fine.”

“The walls were making weird noises again when I got in this morning,” Crope tells her a few minutes later, taking a large bite from his toast. Galinda watches crumbs fall from his mouth, dusting the cracked tea plate that he’s leaning over.

“Window left open noises or pipes are broken noises?” Galinda asks, taking a bite of her own toast. “Oh, this one is especially good, don't you think? You can tell Tibbs that we’ll buy a few jars for the breakfast nook.”

“Tell him yourself,” Crope says with a blush. “But no, I will. And it wasn’t really either, more like… rattling? From upstairs, I think. The back entrance.”

“God,” Galinda sighs, chewing contemplatively. She presses the toe of her foot into the tile, grinding it down upon the grout ever so slightly. Crope has the window cracked open over the sink and the clouds billow above, a certain sweet wholeness to the morning.

The Shale Shallows Inn is in a constant fragile state of being. It’s a house with good bones, all things considered, for its age. Things were made with more care back then, that’s what her popsicle always says. Finer quality wood and hand painted wallpaper, furniture that someone had constructed with their bare hands and none of the cheap understuffed couches that are a dime a dozen in the Emerald City. Still, though, there is always something. A leak in one room, a broken curtain rod in the next. And then there are the constants, the way the whole inn is permanently a few degrees too cold or the way the wood floors up on the second floor creak and warp from one board to the next.

Or the rattling walls. Just the house settling, that’s what she tells any scared children who are staying in the inn. Galinda can feel the livelihood of the house in her own bones, sometimes. Her head hovers somewhere around the front desk, the kitchen is one warm palm of a hand, the bedrooms are cold fingers or ligaments or even the crook of her elbow, the hollow of her knee.

“Remember that crazy lady we had a few years ago? We’ve got to get her back,” Crope hums, finishing his toast in one efficient bite and wiping his lips. “Didn’t she want to set up a séance down in the parlor?”

“If there is a ghost I think he’s probably quite nice,” Galinda muses. “Probably just wants us to clean out the attic so that he’s not coughing up mothballs anymore.”

“That’s your job, not mine,” Crope whistles. “Let him know that I don’t live here anyway. Just in case he’s wondering who to haunt.”

“I’ll pass the news along,” Galinda says, pushing off from the counter with her hands. “Come find me before you go.” She turns, blowing him a kiss and patting Killyjoy on the head before she reaches the doorway. “And save me a scone.”

“Fine,” Crope grumbles, but he shoots Galinda a happy little wink and so she knows he doesn’t mean it.

Galinda’s mornings look the same most days. A standing breakfast with Crope is the easiest thing, a moment to catch her breath before the tasks pile up. They change based on the season, of course— in the winter she finds herself salting the stepping stones and stoking the fire, in the spring she’s dusting pollen off of the window screens and ledges. Summer is the busiest time, and Galinda flits from one room to the next with a change of sheets, fresh towels, and plates of homemade cookies sent straight from the kitchens.

Now, though, there’s a certain quiet that creeps over the place. Galinda has never liked the quiet. It’s what people imagine for an inn, especially one of this size, but it isn’t common, is it? There’s always a bustle until there isn’t, always a constant trickle of guests until they’re all gone in a poof and a sprinkling of pixie dust. The sheets don’t need changing, there are no wet towels to swap out, there isn’t even a single dish waiting to be sent upstairs. There is only Galinda.

She takes the stairs one at a time, now, and steps as softly as she can. The carpeting is thick beneath her feet and it gives with every step, presses and indentations looming each time she ascends another few inches. There’s something quite meditative about fixing, about being alone in a room. It’s true even with the degree to which she hates the quiet. Two realities can be true at the same time, Galinda’s always thought as much. Criss crossed wires.

“Good morning,” Galinda murmurs on the landing. She’s talking to the house, to no one in particular. Maybe she’s superstitious, call her crazy, but is it not a good idea to start off one’s day this way? When we live in a place, Galinda has decided, it holds all its realities in it. This place was a manor once, toeing the line of grand while still solidly typical, manageable. This place has looked out at the same river for its whole life, it must find something so grand rather unremarkable now. This house stretches every morning just like Galinda does.

No new sheets, no, but a peek into each room regardless. Room five needs a quick dusting, room three is missing a bar of soap. Room seven, down at the end of the hall, has a light flickering just outside of it. There it is, her task for the morning.

“Crope?” she calls down from the top of the stairs, and hears the faint sound of metal on metal from the kitchens. “Did I leave the extra bulbs in the upstairs closet?”

“There’s some in the closet and some in the attic,” Crope yells back after a moment. Galinda gets a whiff of sugar again, a hint of lemon.

And so it is easy to be here, attainable. Simple problems with simple fixes. Galinda takes out a stepladder and tries not to look down. She does not burn her hand on the bulb, she does not unscrew it in the wrong direction. It is fixed in a matter of minutes, simple and clean and more straightforward than things would be anywhere else in the world.

“There you go,” Galinda hums, patting the ceiling affectionately. “Don’t go out on me again, you hear me? I’m getting old.”

The inn would scoff at her if it could. With a smile and a twist of the lips she dismounts the ladder, stuffing it back into the closet and clambering down the stairs.

Galinda eats early that evening. It is a Monday. She is alone in the inn, walls echoing around her. It’s as ominous as it is comforting. She takes a bath and stays in the water until her fingers and toes are pruny. She feeds Killyjoy and watches him curl up for the night on his plush bed beside her fireplace, drooling onto the hardwood.

The nights are starting earlier. Galinda’s feet are still pruny when she leaves the bathroom in a fuzzy towel, picking at her lavender nail polish where it’s chipping at the beds. Outside the window twilight is yawning open, milky and strained as old tea leaves.

The ringing of the phone startles her like she’s in a dream, like it has been placed here just for her. She answers it with a reassuring look in Killyjoy’s direction— he’s cracked open one big eye, paws twitching. It’s a rotary, she crawls across her own bed to reach it and fidgets with the cord for a moment before picking it up.

“It’s late,” Galinda answers, even though it isn’t. She doesn’t sleep much anymore. There is a tumble of wind outside the window and the river, stretched out for miles ahead of her, rustles.

“You go to bed at eight thirty now?”

“Pfannee?” Galinda laughs, rolling her eyes affectionately. “Course I don’t. I thought you were… I don’t know what I thought.”

“Shenshen’s here too,” Pfannee says, and Galinda hears a muffled yelp over the phone that must be Shenshen somewhere in the distance, hustling to get back to the call. “We were just thinking about you. All alone at the end of the world.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Galinda laughs, twisting the spiraling cord around her thumb once and then twice. “I saw your mother at the farmers market over the weekend, Pfannee. She was wearing a really dreadful hat.”

Shenshen giggles into the receiver while Pfannee grumbles something in protest. “I’ve told her a million times that she can’t try things like that, not when her daughter works at Ozmopolitan!” she huffs, and Galinda can’t help but laugh along. “No, I mean it! She’s giving me stress hives.”

“I talked to my mother the other day,” Shenshen chimes in, and Galinda can almost see her face in that moment, the familiar little quirk to her eyebrows she gets when she’s trying to be subtle and failing most miserably. “And you’ll never guess what she said.”

“What did she say,” Galinda says flatly, because it’s easier this way. It’s what Shenshen expects, she’s primed them for it. This same conversation has existed in some well oiled variations for the better part of their lives, in college and over the phone and as children, scampering across the pavement leading to the river with melted popsicles in their hands.

“She told me that there is a certain eligible gentleman bachelor who has been calling on you,” Shenshen says, a joyful little lilt to her voice. “Chuffrey, Galinda? You didn’t even mention! How far have things gotten?”

Galinda wrinkles her nose, flopping backward on her bed. “Is he calling on me?”

“My mother said she saw him coming into the inn for breakfast every day last week,” Shenshen chirps happily, and Pfannee snorts. “She says that when a man’s routine changes so dramatically it means that someone has caught his eye. She says—”

“I say your mother is a horrible gossip,” Pfannee says. “But… well, Galinda? Did he?”

“Maybe he just got sick of cooking his own eggs,” Galinda protests. She hears Pfannee snort again, thousands of miles away in some glitzy apartment in the Emerald City with fancy spritzers to share. And here she is, back where she started, in another old house. One of these days, she reminds herself again. One day, soon, one day.

“God, I haven’t seen him since high school,” Shenshen says. “He was a class above us, wasn’t he? No, two above?”

“Handsome now, I’ll bet,” Pfannee hums. “Galinda, I’m almost jealous. You could have a classic romance novel affair, truly! The lonely young innkeeper and the eligible rugged businessman— what does he do, again?— find love in an unexpected place at the start of autumn. You could carve a pumpkin together.”

“I’m not lonely,” Galinda scoffs. “I’m unhappy. It’s entirely different.”

It isn’t untrue. It isn’t entirely true, either. It’s a strange sort of place she occupies now, caught between contentment and unease. There is the world in which Galinda leaves, goes off to the Emerald City and screws her head on right. The world in which this melancholy, this strange yearning that never seems to abate, is quashed. The world in which she knows what she wants and goes off to get it.

But, all the same, there is something about this place. Sometimes she wonders if there is anywhere else in the world that she’d know so well. She could move to a clean white apartment, one that doesn’t rattle itself awake every morning and cry itself to sleep every night. But where in her bones would she feel a place like that? How in the world would she know when something wasn’t right?

She would fix herself if she knew what that meant. If she wouldn’t miss being this way so much.

“Unhappy young innkeeper then, god,” Pfannee mutters. “I worry about you, girl! Remember that night in college when we went out to the Ozdust and Shenshen threw up, like, six cosmos? And you made out with that hot guy on the dancefloor and we didn’t even see you again until the next morning? We need to get that Galinda to come out for a night.”

“I don’t really see Chuffrey going out to the club, honey,” Galinda laughs. There’s a twinge of defensiveness in her chest, though, scraping at the edges of her lungs. That wasn’t what I… no you don’t understand why I… he wasn’t even…

She shakes it off with a shudder and, looking at her nail bed once again, peels off a line of purple until it crumbles beneath her fingertips and flutters down onto her towel. There’s something quite nauseating roiling around in her stomach— maybe one too many scones. The thought of Chuffrey coming in tomorrow morning, smiling up at Galinda from the cup of coffee she will pour him, the awkward attempts at conversation… she winces, a chill at the tops of her shoulders. It must be her wet hair.

“Not clubbing, even,” Shenshen moans. “Oh, I’ve got it! You can invite him to the inn for dinner. It’s so romantic, you can set up candles or, or! You could take food down to the beach, have your little chef make you a picnic.”

“Crope?” Galinda laughs. “No, he’d never. And I’ve got the dog.”

There’s a brief silence on the other line, Galinda can hear the dampness of her hair sinking into the pillowcase. “The dog will be fine for an hour or two,” Pfannee says slowly. “Are you joking? I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“I can’t have a thing with Chuffrey, he’s a customer,” Galinda says, and that sounds right. She settles on it firmly, twisting her lips to gnaw on the crease of them. No flings with customers, that sounded professional enough. No flings with any of the boys in town anyway, they were all too much of one thing or another. Or too dear to her, boys she’d grown up tumbling in sandboxes with. No flings until she was out, until that white apartment where she wouldn’t hear the walls talk.

Maybe it would be for the better, all things considered. It could make a girl crazy, being out here for too long.

“You’re boring,” Pfannee laughs, but Galinda knows her well enough by now to know she doesn’t mean it. Pfannee, in spite of all her carelessness, can pick up on an uncomfortable feeling better than most. Galinda has known this about her for as long as she can remember. There are photographs of the two of them together as girls, photographs that prove their friendship had existed long before Galinda had even known what such a thing meant. “Speaking of office romances, I have to tell you girls about what I walked in on in the copy room on Thursday…”

That night, Galinda falls asleep with a single lamp still on. It must bother Killyjoy, he snuffles his head under the corner of a carpet and huffs off to sleep stubbornly. No one else is there to see it. It seeps its way into Galinda’s sleeping unconscious regardless, a shimmery fading glow off in the corner of all of her dreamscapes. Every time she turns to look at it, though, it flits away as if it had never been there at all.

Tuesday is so overcast that Galinda wakes up inside a cloud, windows fogged up and unfamiliar humidity playing at her skin. Out on the beach there is a carcass washed up, a dead fish with fragments of bone scattered around its empty gaping eye. Galinda studies it with a wrinkled nose, shooing Killyjoy away so that he lumbers clumsily up onto the rocks instead, face nuzzling against a grove of fresh ferns.

“I have a feeling about today,” Galinda tells Crope in the kitchen that morning. Killyjoy has finished his breakfast, leaving a trail of kibble behind him as he’d made his way to the back door to the garden.

Crope’s eyes flick to her, contemplative. “What happened last time you got one of those?”

“Mm, it’s been a minute,” she says, gliding her finger over the top of the muffin Crope has offered her so that the streusel crumbles under her touch. “There was the time the tree out back got struck by lightning.”

“Oh, or remember when that old couple kept trying to steal the candlesticks off the mantle?”

“Do I ever,” Galinda mutters. “No, it isn’t like that. Not about the inn, I mean. It’s more… existential, maybe? Do you know what I mean?”

“I definitely don’t,” Crope announces, fidgeting with a pot holder. “You’ve got people waiting out in the breakfast nook, though— Mrs. Minkos is out there asking for you again.”

“Of course she is.” Galinda takes a bite of the muffin— peach, this time, Crope is branching out— and leaves the rest of it behind as she grabs the coffee pot and heads for the dining room.

She tries to shake this feeling along the way, whatever it is. There’s a good distance between the kitchen and the breakfast nook, where Crope has already set out an array of pastries and fruit, where he will bring any orders if they’re ever placed. They aren’t usually. When there are guests things tend to fill up fast but on a day like this, a Tuesday with nothing charted for miles in either direction, it’s only locals. Sure enough, there is Shenshen’s mother in the corner nursing a little cup of tea. Galinda smiles, lifts a hand in greeting before—

In the corner, perched on the edge of an overstuffed armchair and holding a day old scone between his thumb and forefinger, Chuffrey. He’s spotted Galinda already, giving her a shy little smile and a nod. Galinda smiles back tightly. There it is again, that drop in her lungs, a sensation like she’s letting herself sink like a stone underwater.

“Galinda, dear!”

It’s Mrs. Minkos. With a glittery smile Galinda makes her way over, resting a hand on the woman’s blazer clad arm.

“Hi, Mrs. Minkos. Can I get you anything?”

“Oh, nothing at all, dear! I just like to pop in sometimes, you know, see how the place is coming along.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” Galinda says with a wide smile, teeth grinding together ever so slightly. “It’s all going smoothly still, a little slow this time of year.”

“Isn’t it funny, dear,” Mrs. Minkos remarks as if she’s just thought of it, as if Galinda hasn’t spoken at all, “to think that I’ve known you since you came up to my knee? I remember it like it was yesterday, funny enough, back when you and Shenshen would dress up for school every day, back when you wore fairy wings all the time! And now you’re all grown up!”

“I know,” Galinda smiles indulgently, “it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“And I only wish Shenshen would follow your lead and move back home,” Mrs. Minkos intones, grabbing Galinda’s forearm. “So much happening in the city and none of it’s good, that’s what I always say. She could meet such a good man out here— you could mention how much you miss her, dear, that might do the trick.”

“I’ll try!” Galinda tells her cheerfully. She won’t, but no one has to know that. Shenshen is frenetic enough without any pointed comments from her. “Excuse me for a second, I need to go fill up the coffee, alright?”

Later that day Galinda eats lunch at the front desk. She’s alone in the inn, Crope having gone home before noon, and there’s a faint misty drizzle pattering across the window panes. From her perch at the desk she can see the pebbled beach, deserted, and the clouds of rainwater on the surface of the river. She shivers.

The bell on the front door tinkles. It’s funny how your life can change in an instant like that, how one tiny choice leads to another and then something pivotal happens before you know it, before you can catch your breath. And then it becomes the case that such an important moment, such a seemingly useless one, becomes forever memorialized by the ringing of a bell and the gust of August wind entering with the creak of a door.

Galinda looks up from her lunch. For a moment she wonders if she's been staring too long at crunchy lettuce and vibrant cucumbers because the woman standing before her, with mist dappled across the top of her head and deflating the volume of a silky black blouse, is coming out entirely green.

She blinks and, when she opens her eyes again, the woman is still there. She is backlit by the bright clouds outside, she is raising a single eyebrow at Galinda, she is still green down to the flecks of her irises.

“Hi there,” Galinda says, placing her fork down on the cherry desk delicately and sliding forward towards the guest book, “how can I help you?”

The woman meets her eye, now, and Galinda feels it in her gut. There’s something almost birdlike about her, almost hawkish. Almost predatory. There is no trace of a smile on her face but she isn’t frowning either, not exactly— it’s flat neutrality, no attempt at false niceties or even the hint of pleasantries. It’s disconcerting.

Shale Shallows is a small town, that is the thing. Galinda was born just down the road, she grew up racing from door to door picking up stray cattails and fastening milkweed in her hair to attract the butterflies. The population hovers somewhere between two and three hundred, inflated quite a bit by the summer people. By this time of year most every summer shop has shut its doors for the season— no more ice cream, no more barbeque off the main road. The bait and tackle shop will be open for another month or so before it converts itself, selling snow shoes and waxing skis out back.

And so, of course, Galinda knows everyone. Everyone knows Galinda. Even the out of towners who come to the inn are friendly, almost too much at times. They leave behind sprawling thank you notes with doodles of the old Shale Shallows lighthouse in the corner, they tip her and gush over Crope’s apple cake in the autumn.

Something like this? A guest so aloof she doesn’t even smile, doesn’t even acknowledge? Well, it’s not something Galinda can say she’s used to. She clicks the cap of her pen once and then twice idly, waiting.

“I want to book a room,” the woman says, flat and monotone. Galinda feels her eyes flicking in every direction— to the windows, to the framed watercolors of the river on the walls, to the green lamp in the corner and the glossy cash register on the desk. This woman doesn’t move a muscle, in contrast. She stares straight ahead, cocking her head as Galinda watches. Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like Galinda should have known it already.

“Wonderful,” Galinda smiles. It’s one of her more charming smiles, the type where her eyes are all round and nut brown. “We have seven rooms at the inn, they all have two queen sized mattresses and an attached bathroom. The three along the left side have a small balcony each, and on the right we have four that face the water— quite pretty in the evenings, and around sunrise.”

She pauses, just for a moment. The wind seems to hesitate too, the inn deathly silent. How often has that happened, in all of her time in this place?

The woman doesn’t say a word. She seems to be waiting for something.

“And we have complementary breakfast for all guests,” Galinda continues, trying for unrattled. “Fresh pastries every morning, and there’s a menu to order off of as well.”

“Do you have a back staircase?” the woman asks, still looking sharply at Galinda. “I’d need a room near it.”

“That would be room seven,” Galinda says, ignoring the pulsing in her head like the start of a migraine, the sloping angles of what in the world? “You get a lovely view of the lighthouse from that room, too, it’s one of my favorites.”

Yesterday, that flickering bulb just outside the doorway. Today, that tingling sensation in Galinda’s fingertips and the corners of her eyes. The edges of lamplight in her dreams, trees struck by lightning. Galinda smiles.

The woman nods, just the once. She does not speak. Galinda waits.

“And how long would you be staying?”

And so for the first time since entering the woman’s face seems to falter, that stony facade giving way to a slight unsureness. It’s gone before Galinda can be sure that it was ever there, though, flitting away into the crevices of lips and cheeks.

“As long as I stay,” the woman says. On third listen, her voice is softer than Galinda might have expected. There’s a little hesitation to the end of it gracing the upward tilt of her syllables. If Galinda hadn’t been curious already she is now, leaning ever so slightly closer. The rotary phone on the desk seems to hum with the potential of it, every inch of the inn staying perfectly still.

But, well. There is not another soul in the room, not another soul for a thousand paces in any direction. There is a certain desperation on the green features before her, a desperation that makes Galinda want to pry. She does not get overly curious about guests, she does not get embedded.

This is the moment that she is going to figure it all out, after all. Come the end of autumn she will know the way ahead. In a season things will be right again and then she will leave it all behind.

For now, though… as long as I stay.

“What’s your name?”

The woman blinks, the hint of unsureness is back and now it is interspersed with a touch of defensiveness, a deepening of the brows.

“Why?”

“For the guest book,” Galinda says. It sounds pitiful put this way, childish and questioning. “For my records. Just… just your name.”

There is another beat, longer this time. Galinda waits on a cliff's edge. Anticipation rattles through her like an open sigh, bracing. She needs more to do, probably. She should get Crope to teach her to bake.

“Elphaba.”

No last name, no spelling. Galinda’s pen hovers over the page, waiting for clarification that never comes. The woman is shorter than Galinda had thought at first. She is moving from foot to foot unsurely. She has no bags. She looks out the window once, twice, three times. Galinda waits.

“I’m Galinda,” she says after a moment, and it feels strangely hollow in the early afternoon air. “Please let me know if you need anything at all.”

It is only Tuesday but Galinda goes out that night. Mrs. Sharpe, who’d been the one to pass on the inn to her in the first place, sits at the front desk like it is a sentry post. It makes her feel useful to come a few nights a week, and besides, it gives Galinda the illusion of freedom. The inn is silent anyway.

Although it isn’t empty anymore. Galinda feels the presence of another person, a new person, everywhere she turns. As a little girl she’d checked her baby pink dollhouse every night before bed to be most completely sure that every little thing was in the right place— that instinct, whatever perfectionist tendency it is, has never quite left her body. On a full evening she’ll walk the upstairs hall, look at each door from one to seven just to check that they’re still there.

Milla is waiting for her outside. “I’ve already had, like, a shot and a half of tequila,” she confesses, “is that bad? Nobody shows up to bonfires sober, do they?”

“Damn it, I didn’t even think of that,” Galinda mutters. She adjusts her top, tugging it up ever so slightly so that it falls higher on her chest. “Is this shirt too slutty?”

“Definitely not,” Milla says, self assured. “You’re sober? Here, take this— it’s fireball, I got the little shooter kinds from my sister. She hoards them, I think.”

“Thanks.” Galinda unscrews the little cap, squinting in the twilight that feels far heavier than it should at this hour. The whiskey is saccharine, strong as vanilla floating up to make her head all fuzzy. She tosses it back in one quick gulp, closing her lips tight around the bottle. Milla’s tiny whoop echoes on the front walls of the inn, bouncing off the dry wood.

“Who’s watching the inn?” Milla asks, leaning forward to fix Galinda’s necklace where it falls between her breasts. “Or are the ghosts roaming free tonight?”

“Mrs. Sharpe,” Galinda says, “I think it makes her feel better about me running it if she’s here some of the time. She thinks I don’t know that she talks about me to all the old ladies— you know how they play bridge together?”

“No,” Milla gasps. “I thought she loved you!”

“She does, she does. She also likes to remind people that I am ‘practically a child, only twenty eight.’” It’s a little colder out tonight than she’d anticipated, but at least it’s stopped raining— Galinda hadn’t packed a sweater but it feels too late now. The flowers in the garden are fluttering in the breeze. “Hey, who’s coming tonight?”

“Oh, everyone,” Milla hums, accepting the subject change easily. “All the people from the bar— there’s a new waitress, she’s only nineteen but she’s such a sweetheart, you’ll like her— and some of Shenshen’s brother’s friends. You remember those jocky guys from high school that he used to hang out with?”

“Hmm,” Galinda nods, busying herself with the tip of the garden fence. “And… is Fiyero? Going to be there, I mean?”

Milla does a good job of looking at her without looking. It would be better, of course, if she wasn’t making it so obvious. She clears her throat, tapping at her palm. “Yeah,” she admits, “yeah, I think so. Is that… it isn’t a problem, is it? Because I could tell him to go home, everybody wants you there more than—”

“Milla,” Galinda laughs. “No, it’s fine. It didn’t even end badly, it’s been a million years, I’m over it. Really I am.”

“I guess,” Milla says, though she sounds unsure. “Listen, I heard he’s talking to someone new. A girl.”

As if it’s a ticking bomb, as if Galinda is moments away from a fresh round of tears. She couldn't be further from it, truthfully— things with Fiyero are perfectly normal. Neutral, maybe even better than when they had been together. That relationship had been rocky because Galinda had made it so, she knew it. Whenever there did happen to be a stretch of peace she’d throw a wrench in it, something stupid and silly and she’d feel the idiocy of it all even as it happened. “Why can’t you just let yourself be happy?” Fiyero had asked, and Galinda had given no response. She’d had no response. What else was there to say?

“Good for him,” Galinda says primly. It gives the reply the quality of seeming diplomatic, like she’s risen above the drama and is being very brave. Milla seems to respect it, eyes widened as she nods, desperate to keep up. Galinda’s always been able to set the tone of such things.

“Should we go, then?” Milla asks, grabbing onto Galinda’s forearm. “We want to be fashionably late, not missing the fun late.”

But before they leave the garden Galinda spares a quick glance up at the windows on the second floor. There is no one there, but then, why would there be?

Galinda doesn’t recognize the boy who greets them at the beach. The sky is blue black, so maybe that’s a part of it, but he’s younger— twenty two, twenty three? There’s a sloping chivalry about him that makes Galinda grits her teeth, though she isn’t sure why. He calls her and Milla ladies, offers them a hand when they clamber down the path over the tiny dune and towards the plume of smoke by the river. Milla giggles and it reminds Galinda of a bird, a lark or some tiny waterbound creature that grazes the waves with its wings. It almost annoys her, only almost!

Avaric is there, though, and some of the other big headed boys who smoke cigarettes outside the movie theater, looming under the marquee when it’s raining. He raises a hand to her, waving her over, but Galinda pretends not to see it.

“We’ve got beer,” the kid who’d flirted with them announces proudly, gesturing toward a cooler nestled into a dug out patch of sand. “Help yourself. Do you girls smoke?”

“Not with you,” Galinda says cheerfully, shooting him a grin so charming that he smiles right back without a thought.

“Oh, yeah, I bet you’re…” he starts, losing his train of thought with a little squint. “Hey, why haven't I seen you around before?”

“Yeah, I think you’re a little young for me,” Galinda tells him. “Grab us some beers, would you? None of the crappy stout stuff.”

Blushing, the boy nods hastily and turns on his heel. Galinda watches him go and then yelps, Milla has slapped her across the shoulder with the back of her hand, shaking her head incredulously around a growing smile.

“You’re such a bitch,” she says, leaning over to knock her head delicately against Galinda’s. “‘Not with you?’ By the way, some of us actually like stouts!”

“Oh, please, you didn’t want to spend a whole night with some kid breathing down your neck either,” Galinda huffs. “I bet your boy is here… what’s his name again? Biq?”

“Boq,” Milla corrects, flushing. “Did you see him?”

“Get a grip, girl,” Galinda rolls her eyes. “Oh look, here come our drinks. Thank you so much, you’ve been so helpful,” she says earnestly, laying a hand on the boy’s upper arm delicately and widening her eyes.

“S-sure, yeah,” he stammers, blinking. Galinda tugs Milla away with a little wink.

“Am I still a bitch?”

“Yes,” she grumbles. “Hey, isn’t that Tibbett?”

And, all in an instant, Galinda knows how she will be spending the rest of her night. She’s right, too— Tibbett, already a few drinks in, embraces her with a yelp of glee and twirls her around in the sand until they land in a scattered heap on the ground. The whiskey from earlier has made its way to her head and she feels it pulsing, feels a twitch in the pinky of her left hand. A twitch that she normally associates with the inn, in fact, with a leak or a spot of mold or a tiny mouse trapped in one of the bedrooms. She expels it from her mind as fast as it had come.

“Come sit by the river with me, Galinda!” Tibbett demands a few minutes later, and Galinda barely has a chance to grab her beer back before he’s tugging her toward the water, yards and yards away from the fire and the ambling crowd. From here they are nothing but silhouettes, shadow puppets on the dunes projected up from the sky.

“My ass is going to get all wet,” Galinda complains, but she plops down on the pebbles and sand regardless, pulling her shoes and socks from her feet and grazing the river with the tips of her toes and the backs of her heels. Tibbett is staring out at the horizon.

“You’ll live,” he tells her. She can tell he’s tipsy by the level of familiarity, the way he’d burst out of the crowd to pull her to the water. She’s known Tibbett for years, of course, just like everyone in this town, but they’re hardly close. Her mind flits to Crope, rinsing blackberries meticulously in the farmhouse style sink.

“I liked your jam yesterday, the apricot one,” she says, and scoops a handful of pebbles into her palm, letting them roll off and hit the ground one by one.

Tibbett smiles. “Oh, good.”

“Crope liked it too. Quite a lot, actually.”

And that gets his attention, although he tries to play it off. He glances toward Galinda quickly, taking stock of her expression before turning back out to the riverfront and squinting into the distance. The scrunch of his face almost hides the honesty of his smile.

“Did he?”

“Oh, he did,” Galinda nods. “He’s been using it on his toast. You should swing by tomorrow, by the way, he’ll have leftover muffins.”

“I don’t usually come by on Wednesdays,” Tibbett says, hesitant, and he fidgets with the label on his bottle. “You don’t think it’d be… I don’t know, weird, or anything?”

“Not weird,” Galinda confirms. “While you’re at it, can I order some more sugar? I think our stash is running low, Crope sometimes stress bakes.”

“Remind me when I’m sober,” Tibbett says, and then flops backward until his head hits the sand with a low thump.

Galinda laughs softly. “Okay,” she hums, “I will.”

She can see the rise and fall of Tibbett’s chest beside her, the way it warps and wavers with the darkness of the early night. It’s strangely hypnotic. Galinda wonders, for a moment, if there are other places in the world that feel exactly like this. Are Pfannee and Shenshen hovering on this same cosmic plane, ever, back in the city? Something tells her they aren’t. Something, a nagging and buzzing the back corners of her mind, tells her she might just be the same wherever she goes.

“We’ve got a new guest,” she says to Tibbett, to the water, to no one in particular. This moment feels charged and ready, like it is waiting for her to say something, anything at all. “A woman, by herself. She’s green.”

“Green like how?” Tibbett says, after a long moment. “Like, what, she’s naive? Green like she’s a stoner?”

“Green like she’s green,” Galinda tells him. “Like, her skin is green. I know.”

And after another moment Tibbett just shrugs. “Huh,” he remarks. “Never heard that one before.”

“No, me neither.”

“Kind of late in the season, isn’t it? How long is she staying?”

“Until she leaves,” Galinda says lowly. “No, I’m not being sarcastic, that’s actually what she told me. I guess indefinitely? She wouldn’t say much, it's extremely annoying.”

“Maybe you’re having your first paranormal encounter, it was bound to happen sometime.” Tibbett says cheerfully and kicks his feet in the shallow water, which ripples around Galinda’s ankles in response. It’s still as warm as bathwater, she could sink into it until it swallows her whole.

“Maybe. Hey, Tibbett? Do you know Chuffrey?”

“Kind of,” he replies. “Not well, he’s quiet. He’s the one I deliver to down at the restaurant. Nice enough.”

Galinda hums, nodding. She feels Tibbett’s eyes on her again.

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason,” she answers easily, tossing hair behind her shoulders. “He’s just a boy.”

“Right,” Tibbett agrees, though he sounds unconvinced. “Just a boy.”

“Sometimes I just think I should get serious about boys, you know. My momsie wants grandbabies. He’s a nice man, isn’t he?”

Tibbett doesn’t answer for a long moment, swollen with silence. “I came out to my parents when I was fifteen,” he says. “And then we never really talked about it again.”

Galinda hums again. She isn’t quite sure what to say.

“My point is,” Tibbett says, after a glance at her wrinkled brow and a quick puff of a laugh, “you don’t have to do something because your parents think you should. You said it, right, he’s just a boy.”

“Just a boy,” Galinda echoes, nodding. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“I mean, it should feel bigger than that, I think. Maybe not at first, but you think about them, you sense them everywhere. It makes you hyperaware, doesn’t it?”

Galinda blinks. “Does it?”

Tibbett glances at her, curious. “For me it does,” he says. “You dated Fiyero, didn’t you? Last year?”

Galinda nods.

“Well then, you know what I mean. Like you’re always paying attention to how much he’s paying attention. To when he’s looking at you or, like, what he’s thinking. Right?”

Galinda looks out at the horizon and lets her eyes catch on the moon, a sharp crescent hooking its way through the sky. She nods again, and Tibbett seems satisfied. For some reason, an inexplicable little thing, she is thinking of the inn again. Of Mrs. Sharpe downstairs, drifting off to sleep at the front desk and smudging the ink in the guest book. Of Killyjoy, full from dinner and loping into his bed for the night. Of a room upstairs, occupied once more, the startling greenness of a woman inside it. Elphaba, she had said, and her voice had been so much softer then. Elphaba.

“So then you know what I mean,” Tibbett agrees happily, satisfied. “You should do what you want to do, Galinda.”

“You’ve gotten pretty wise,” Galinda hums.

“It’s the alcohol,” Tibbett tells her. “When you see me tomorrow I’ll look half dead. Nothing wise about that.”

“Hmm.” Galinda fidgets, letting herself slide backward until her own back is against the pebbles and the sand. Above them the stars are out, lining themselves up in constellations she doesn’t recognize. “You should come by the inn more often, okay? I’m trying to get my head screwed on right.”

“Good luck with that,” Tibbett murmurs from beside her. “I don’t think I’ll ever screw my own head on. Better that way.”

The beach smells like embers and copper. Galinda’s beer is too warm to drink now. Instead she stares up at the stars.

When she finally makes it to bed, only a touch tipsy, the night replays itself in flashes and unsteady chunks, upsurging all at once and making her wince. Killyjoy groans on the ground, shifting positions, and then his breathing evens.

Tibbett, feet in the water. Milla, leaning her head on Boq’s shoulder while perched on a drifted up log. Fiyero, raising a shy hand in greeting from across a blazing bonfire.

Killyjoy is sleeping, the house is sleeping. Somewhere upstairs and to the right, down at the end of the hall, Elphaba should be sleeping too. Is she? Galinda can’t tell. Her limbs are all a bit numb, a bit unfeeling. What has she done today? Is she in her bed where she’s meant to be, like a little figurine in a dollhouse for the night? Will she be gone in the morning and leave nothing but a sprinkling of dust in her place?

Anyone who is anyone in Shale Shallows knows that Galinda Upland, innkeeper of the Shale Shallows Inn, is as personable and lovely and positively welcoming as anyone could possibly be.

Anyone who has ever stayed at the inn itself would confirm— she is just a dear. She checks in on guests and remembers their names, their vacation plans, their favorite pastries. She is always on her feet and she always has a smile on her face. It must be exhausting, they think, to work so hard.

Which is what makes things strange, the whole to-do with Elphaba. Galinda isn’t nosy or overinvolved but she does like to take an interest in her guests, of course she does! At every turn Elphaba rebuffs her, though, so subtly it’s like Galinda hasn’t even tried at all.

She passes by her, up early and sitting with a half written letter on the most uncomfortable chair out of the whole lot in the parlor. “Good morning,” Galinda chirps, smiling kindly, “will you be joining us for breakfast? It’s all made fresh, of course, every morning.”

“No,” Elphaba says, without even looking up, and Galinda blanches.

“There’s quite a lot to explore in town, too, if you’re curious,” she adds when she’s properly recovered. “Our guests can get vouchers for discounts at some of the shops— I’ve got great connections, you see.”

It’s half of a joke and half genuine. She really is well connected, of course. Elphaba doesn’t laugh or smile or anything, just nods distractedly and picks up her pen again. So Galinda gathers that the conversation is over before it’s really begun.

It happens again. Galinda is up on the second floor cleaning, and arranging, and maybe spending a little bit longer than she should lingering outside of room seven. She gets her wish, anyway— the door swings open and she stumbles back the slightest bit and Elphaba is staring at her with eyes very wide. She hasn’t expected Galinda, that is for sure and certain. Galinda swallows.

“Hi,” she hums, and hopes she doesn’t seem half as surprised as she is. “Sorry if I’m in your way, just… cleaning, you know.”

Elphaba just stares at her. Galinda decides right then and there that she’s not about to let Elphaba get away with no answer again— she crosses her arms and juts her chin up and it’s a nice face, a pleasant one, but there’s a touch of ice in it that Elphaba simply must recognize. She must, or else Galinda will scream.

“It’s fine,” she says after a moment, a little begrudging. Galinda smiles widely.

“Oh, good to hear. Do you need anything, Elphaba?” she places extra emphasis on Elphaba’s name to prove a point— you can’t ignore me, she wants to say. It is, of course, just that she cares about the inn, that’s all.

“No,” Elphaba says, and nods stiffly and turns to leave. Galinda clears her throat.

“You’re sure? We can send up food, if you want, or come change the sheets in—”

Elphaba turns around. “I’m alright,” she says tersely. “No thank you.”

And then she’s gone again. Galinda wants to throw something at the wall, but she doesn't have anything in her hands. Instead she decides to let herself hope Elphaba’s pen breaks open on her stupid old letter; she hopes that it’s illegible and she has to write the whole thing over again and know that the first try was better. Of course, she also hopes none of that ink gets on her lovely cherry wood table. It pays to be logical.

“It’s just frustrating," Galinda tells Crope one sunny morning— Saturday, to be exact— over a cup of tea at the front desk. “She doesn’t even acknowledge me. I never see her. She doesn’t even come down for breakfast, Crope, breakfast!”

“Maybe she’s just shy.” Crope taps his fingers along the counter, a drumbeat. “Or maybe it’s you, actually. Probably it’s you.”

Galinda ignores him and pours another packet of sugar into her tea. “I’m so friendly,” she moans, dropping her head forward to hit the desk. “She’s terrible. She’s awful. She’s so… so…”

“Green?” Crope hums casually. “I hate to say it, Galinda, but maybe you could try caring about it a little less.”

Galinda swings her head up, incredulous. “Stop caring about customer service? Stop caring about the good of the inn? What’s next? Stop caring about life? About the state of the world?”

“Did I say that? I don’t remember saying that,” Crope muses.

“Damn it,” Galinda hisses, glancing down at the smudged schedule below her. “Okay, wait— you can’t work next Wednesday, you said?”

“No,” Crope says, leaning over the desk to peer down at the page. “I mean, I could try to get my appointment moved but—”

“Don’t do that, I’ll cover it.” Galinda writes a note on the day, crossing over Wednesday’s looping W. Crope watches her warily.

“Okay, this worries me. Are you threatening to bake? Because we got some complaints last time, Galinda, and I really think it’s easier if I—”

“I can bake,” Galinda huffs, pink in the cheeks. “I can! Fine, then you can make something the night before and I’ll put it out. It’s only Elphaba here anyway. I bet she doesn’t even eat. I bet she just absorbs the souls of all the people she glares at.”

“Did she do something to you, or…?”

“She hasn’t done anything, that’s the problem.” Galinda slams her pen down, taking a long sip of her tea with a clenched jaw. “It’s fine, I’m fine. I just need to be even nicer.”

“Or you could just, you know, be normal about it. Get a hobby.”

“I have a lot of hobbies,” Galinda huffs. “No, she isn’t even going to know what hit her.”

And so the next few days follow that way. Maybe she’s bored. Maybe it’s dissatisfaction with life here, with the childishness of having bigger dreams. She used to stay busier, maybe that’s it— she’d spend the evenings with Fiyero, and the inn would be crowded enough that there was always a question to answer, always a guest to talk to. Lately the emptiness has been draining, swallowing her up and spitting her out again all unmoored.

She’s in the garden when she sees Elphaba, knee deep in the dirt. It’s impossible to clean herself up— her hair is all astray, beads of sweat drying on her forehead and hands caked with soil. She’s been pulling weeds, no gloves and no sunscreen. There are red marks along her fingertips. A pile of roots and stems is crushed beneath her knees.

And so: Elphaba strides out of the front door without a glance, single minded in her laser focus. Galinda falters, stumbles, loses her grip on a particularly stubborn weed. It slides through her sweaty hands— it’s hot today for late August near the mountains— and she loses her breath in a puff.

“Good morning,” Galinda calls, from her terrible squatting perch in the tilled soil, raising an arm in greeting. Humiliating, truly it is, she looks a mess and she’s just lost a battle to a plant, of all things.

“It’s afternoon, now,” Elphaba replies slowly. She looks a bit surprised, stopping and standing stock still on the stepping stone path to the front gate. It is far too hot for the outfit she’s wearing, complete with beautiful drop pearl earrings that swing from her lobes and tap delicately at the line of her jaw. Galinda tries not to stare.

“Oh, well!” she says, wiping her hands on the dusty denim of her pants, tossing in a charming little giggle. Elphaba does not look impressed. “Good afternoon, then! How has the inn been treating you?”

Elphaba nods stiffly, blinking. She moves from one foot to the other on the smooth stone and Galinda unfurls herself from her crouch, standing to reach her full unimpressive height. Elphaba sizes her up and then clears her throat.

“It’s good,” she says, after a beat. “Quiet.”

And oh, how positively maddening she is! Galinda grits her teeth and smiles glitteringly, a terrible prickling at her scalp in the sunlight. “I’m so glad to hear it,” she says with a tilt of her head that she knows is endearing, a widening of her eyes. People love this version of her, the innkeeper with the unending smile and wholesome little life. Cheerful, good, quaint. Galinda thinks of a beer on the beach, a man shirtless and diving into the water. Fiyero beside her in bed, Milla passing her a joint. She wrinkles her nose.

And so Elphaba nods brusquely and her face flickers rather awkwardly. She starts to walk again, one foot uncurling slowly in front of the other.

Galinda can’t explain it but she needs to stop it from continuing, needs to freeze time and stop the world just for a moment. Her face feels hot. Elphaba isn’t looking at her anymore. Something itches in her throat like the start of a cold.

“I like your earrings,” Galinda blurts, and Elphaba stops and turns back slowly. She looks a bit taken aback, startled like she doesn’t know whether she should believe it.

“Oh,” Elphaba murmurs, hand flitting up to her earlobe self consciously. “I… well, thank you.”

There is a terrible and horrible silence. Galinda does not do well with silence. Elphaba fidgets again awkwardly, Galinda mirrors her, tugging on the knuckles of her hand.

“Alright,” she says after a moment, eyes flitting down to Elphaba’s gold pinky ring glinting in the sun, the crispy envelope she’s holding between two fingers. Galinda squints, the cursive address across the front of it is tidy and sloping. “Well… I’ll see you later. Let me know if you need anything.”

Elphaba just stares at her. No response, no indication that she’s heard besides a faint tightening at her lips that could, in another universe, be an attempt at a terse little smile. She grips her envelope a little bit tighter, Galinda can see the wrinkles forming on the creamy paper, and then she’s off again. Her boots click over the stepping stones, the wrought iron gate squeaks with her exit. Galinda turns back to her plants, running a fingertip along the edge of a fern and tugging at that stubborn weed again, looping her fingers around the base near the roots.

But, still— she can’t quite help it, can she? She watches Elphaba as she goes, striding down the path and across the little field that separates the inn from Main Street. There are only a few people out, a handful of colorful spots wavering in Galinda’s periphery. Elphaba is a black and green blur in the distance. Then she crosses the street, turns a corner, and is out of sight.

One day Galinda runs into Elphaba between the front door and the main hallway. She’s stopped there, standing still like she’s awaiting direction in a way Galinda finds incredibly jarring. It doesn’t look right on her, she seems like the sort of person who should know what she’s doing always. This look, the blank slate and the staring into the space of the slightly crooked windowpanes, is unbecoming.

Galinda lets herself roll around in that thought with a little sharp satisfaction. A bad look on her, because even someone so… so as Elphaba can have bad looks. Not so perfect now, is she?

“Good morning,” Galinda says, because it’s polite, but there’s maybe a hint of a bite to it. She’s on her way out to the front to tidy up the lawn and look good doing it, too. Elphaba doesn’t even look at her perfectly precious cream blouse, though. She hardly looks at Galinda at all.

“Morning,” she mutters, or snarks, or something. Maybe it’s not done rudely at all but Galinda is ascribing the tone regardless, because it seems there to her. Alluring still.

Elphaba smells like something Galinda can’t place, it stands out like an exclamation point in the early air. Sometimes Galinda feels a rush at the way all of her guests start to smell the same, like her laundry detergent and the fancy little soaps she stocks in the bathtubs that come from the sweet but vaguely pretentious artisan shop the next town over. She has too many, after all, there’s only so much beeswax one girl can use. But Elphaba smells different, like her own soap maybe.

She’s just showered. Galinda can tell because she smells like it, and because there’s a few stray drops of water beaded at her neck, arranged like those little hexagonal tiles that used to be in Galinda’s granny’s kitchen. It looks almost intentional, like a tattoo, but the world can be oddly particular sometimes. Symmetry in weird places, water droplets on a green neck, a sharp sudden thirst through Galinda’s tongue like she’s not drunk a drop in days. She has, of course, just finished a tall glass of water with ice and can feel the remnants of it at her teeth. She shakes her head.

Elphaba glances up at her out of the corner of her eye— she actually glances like that, eyes swooping but without moving a single muscle of her head. “Did you need something,” she says flatly, and there Galinda is with her silly blouse and parched mouth and thoughts of how particular it was to bring your own soap— something Galinda herself would do, all things considered.

“No,” Galinda huffs right back. Maybe it’s rude, maybe it’s not.

But oh, it seems like it is. Elphaba’s eyes raise the slightest bit and her eyebrows flick up with them, wary. They squint the tiniest bit, miniscule little arches. Galinda feels it in her throat.

She could shower too. She could sit here and refuse to leave until Elphaba tells her something with substance. She could do a lot of things.

She doesn’t. She goes outside, and probably she says something else before she does but, with all the thumping of her head, she can’t quite remember what it is.

On Monday morning Galinda wakes up too late for the beach. It’s pouring, anyway, raindrops as thick as pebbles smacking into the windowpanes. Her apartment smells like butter. Killyjoy snuffles his nose against her leg when she slides out of bed, following her into the bathroom excitedly.

There’s a record on in the parlor when she makes it into the hallway, dressed and hair brushed and pulled out of her face with two dainty little barrettes. Killyjoy darts into the back garden excitedly when she tugs the door open for him, nuzzling against her ankles again. Aside from the music, an old warbling folk singer with a harmonica and a few plucked strings of a guitar, there is pure silence.

And then Crope appears at the end of the hall with a heaping plate of croissants, shiny under the lamplight. “There you are,” he says. “Breakfast starts in ten minutes, did you forget?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Galinda rolls her shoulders back, yawning and striding forward to pluck a croissant from the tray. “Do you ever wish you could get out of here, Crope? Not like moving. Do you ever wish you could start all over with a clean slate, take back every decision you ever made?”

“Not really,” Crope says. “Did you do something stupid? Rebound sex isn’t unfixable, in my experience.”

“Ew, no,” Galinda scoffs. “Also, that’s disgusting. This is a workplace, Crope.”

“Barely,” Crope says cheerfully.

“I just meant… do you ever wish that you could start at the beginning of your life again, and someone would tell you all the right choices to make? And you knew exactly who you were from the start, so you didn’t have to waste any time figuring it out?”

“Would you mind if we saved the existential conversations for after nine?” Crope says, cocking his head. “Or you could talk about it with Chuffrey, he’s in the breakfast nook.”

And, once again, Galinda’s stomach sinks. “Is he,” she hums neutrally, taking a bite of her croissant— almond, this time. Flakes of it tumble into her waiting palm.

“He is. Don’t worry, you look great.”

Galinda looks down at her clothes, the cream colored blouse and the turquoise beaded necklace, the tight slacks in a deep forest green. “I usually do,” she says, ignoring the clench and release of her stomach. “Here, give me those, I can set up the buffet.”

Crope hands over the plate without much protest and gives her a little salute on his way back to the kitchen, wiping his hands on the hips of his pants. With her own croissant in one hand Galinda crosses the parlor, enveloped by the whine of a harmonica, and opens the door to the dining room so that she can spill in alongside the music and the smell of butter.

Chuffrey looks up and smiles at her, sweet and hesitant. Galinda feels that clench and release again in her stomach, her lungs, her heart.

He is rather handsome. Tall, a fine little line of stubble that makes him look appropriately rugged. And he’s dressed well too, fresh clean button down with the top two buttons undone. A nice smile.

“Good morning, Galinda,” he says shyly. “Those look amazing.”

He’s sweet, patient. Galinda could like him. There it is again, that clenching— a tell tale sign, if she knows herself. It’s how she’d always felt with Fiyero at the beginning, too, that familiar fluttering of nerves whenever he looked at her in a particular way. Galinda, who likes to be looked at, has always felt a bit shy when a boy looks at her like that. She feels it now, even with Chuffrey’s clean bright face so early in the morning. A good sign.

“Good morning,” she smiles, trying to level as much charm as she can into a single phrase. “Come take some, we’ve got plenty.”

“The best pastries in town, I’m sure of it,” Chuffrey says happily, rising to snag one. His eyes don’t move from her the whole time, he’s taking in the press of her collar and the way her pants flare out above her shoes. Galinda resists the urge to fidget with the fabric.

“Oh, aren’t you sweet!” Galinda laughs. “You don’t mind if I sit with you, do you? It’s a slow morning with all the rain.”

And at that Chuffrey pinkens, delighted. “Please,” he offers, pulling out the chair opposite his own and gesturing.

It’s always quite satisfying to know she’s won. It had taken, what, a minute of conversation? And here Chuffrey is now, wrapped around her finger. A good thing, to be sure. A handsome thing, a distracting thing. There is a creak upstairs and Galinda, eyes catching on the green of her pants as she sits down, is suddenly reminded of just how distracted she would like to be.

The rain beats on the windows. Chuffrey takes a bite of his breakfast, and then another. And Galinda waits.

“You’re very young to be an innkeeper,” he says offhandedly, and Galinda bristles. The harmonica in the next room sounds rather shrill, all of a sudden.

“I’m old enough,” she says, voice tinkling musically, a tight smile on her lips. Her tone stays light but he can tell that she’s gone stiff. Chuffrey blinks.

“No, I didn’t— I didn’t mean it like that. Really I didn’t.”

“Alright,” Galinda agrees mildly, taking a bite of croissant. What would make Elphaba leave that blasted old room, she wonders? A fire, a flood? If Crope were to knock over a shelf of pots and pans, would she be startled? What if a bird flew into her window, what if something crawled out from under the bed?

“This isn't going well, is it,” Chuffrey laughs self deprecatingly, and, oh. He’s quite charming like this, isn’t he? There’s a touch of embarrassment there but he’s meeting Galinda’s eyes like he’s waiting for her to give him grace, like she’s intelligent enough to know the difference. “It’s just… I’m thirty, you know, and I’ve got no idea what I want to do. I like the restaurant fine, it’s good money, but it’s not what I thought I’d be doing, back when I was a kid. It’s good to see someone like you, someone who does what they love.”

Love, isn’t that a strange word for it? Galinda does what she does. She loves the inn, in her strange little way, the creaks and groans of the floorboards into the night and the way the smell of fresh laundry pools up outside her window. Love, though? Is she doing what she loves?

Maybe she is, truly, There’s something amiss, a piece out of the puzzle and a step cut off of the staircase. Maybe it’s the inn, maybe it’s something else. Maybe, she thinks wildly, Chuffrey could be it.

“What did you think you’d be doing?”

Chuffrey glances up at her, surprised, and then his face widens and broadens into a lovely little smile. Galinda can’t help but smile back, in spite of the tempest whirling in her feet and knees and toes. “I wanted to be a rocket ship,” he says. “Not an astronaut, the actual rocket. You’d get a better view that way.”

And when Galinda meets his eye there's something pleased in there, something glittering. Galinda can almost picture it, a tiny boy with scruffy brown hair dreaming of rocket ships and stars. And, well…

Chuffrey could be it, couldn’t he? Not forever, just for this moment. One day Galinda will look back on this time in her life, far off in the future when she’ll have to dye her roots and won’t have to furrow her brow to see her wrinkles. She’ll look back and this will be a season, the time before she moved on to bigger things. Chuffrey could fit into that picturesque little backstory quite nicely, she thinks.

She’s always liked how she looks on someone’s arm.

The giggle that comes isn’t faked, though. He is charming, isn’t he? And it’s an easy day, rainy and slow and the room smells like butter. Chuffrey lights up at the attention and, yes, she thinks she can work with that.

“I used to think I was magic,” she confesses, tearing a flaky line from her croissant. “I was convinced that if I spent enough time trying I’d become a witch— a pretty witch, of course. With a lovely wardrobe.”

“Of course,” Chuffrey laughs, and he’s much more comfortable now. Galinda can tell because he’s leaning closer, and his posture has changed, and there’s a certain relaxed air to his shoulders and forehead and the jut of his wrists on the table. “It’s funny we never really knew each other, isn’t it? And there’s not many people to know around here.”

“Isn’t it?” Galinda agrees, leaning closer across the table herself. This will be a new moment for her, for before she goes. Just for now.

Isn’t it funny, Galinda thinks, how something can become a part of one’s life so firmly and so abruptly?

Like the inn, for instance. One day she’d been in charge, just like that, and now it would never be a place she didn’t think about. She’d grown up alongside the inn, of course, back when it had a different name and was painted blue instead of white. It was a place to bike past on the way to the general store, a place she’d darted up the path of on Halloween with a pillowcase full to bursting with candy. And then one day it was hers, and the rumpled carpet and peeling wallpaper had been important enough to creep its way into her nightmares.

She’d dreamed of Chuffrey last night and had woken up with a tension in her neck that hasn’t abated, a crick that no amount of neck rolls can quash. He’d be back for breakfast this morning, she’s sure of it— they’d talked for quite a while yesterday, he’d left with a straighter spine.

And she doesn’t mind it— no, it’s actually a good thing! She isn’t quite sure why she hasn’t done this sooner, because Chuffrey is really rather good for her. Handsome, but not so much as to upstage Galinda. Charmingly funny, but not so much that she can’t get a word in. Quiet, a little shy, just how she likes boys. Men, she supposes— Chuffrey is a man with a house and a job and thirty years of life behind him. A man, but boys sounds so much lovelier. Like she’s in a fairy tale, a little girl on the playground again picking petals off of daisies.

It’s seven in the morning. Killyjoy is lying on the beach already and letting the ripple of waves splash him in the face, drenching his nose and coating the ends of his ears.

The beach is rocky, pebbles slipping and sliding beneath Galinda’s shoes. The water laps at the shore blandly; across the river the hills are coated in luscious green that is scooped out every few miles to make space for another manor, plopped indelicately in among the trees and the grass and cutting itself into the skyline. They’re each rather awful, in their own unique way— the columns on that one, the steps on the other, the garish marble exterior. On this side of the river things are cozier, homey and only uncanny late at night when things start to turn blue and silver.

Galinda picks up a pebble and tosses it as far as she can, hurtling it so hard that her shoulder and bicep ache and the seam of her sleeve digs into her forearm. It arcs through the sky delicately, promisingly, and then the wind changes. It hits the water fast and hard and, because a wave has just lapped at the surface, Galinda doesn’t see it splash. It’s as if it had never been there at all.

With a little whine, Killyjoy flops onto his back and rolls over, shaking water droplets from his coat. Galinda plops herself down beside him, letting her dressing gown get damp on the rocks, inhaling that familiarly musty smell that she could drink in one big gulp.

“Hello my darling,” Galinda says to him, leaning down to ruffle the fur on his head. “Are you so tired?”

Killyjoy rolls over again, squirming delightedly as Galinda pets him and nuzzles his head with her own. Maybe there would be some things she’d miss, after all.

She’s come out here to draw, something she’d never breathe a word of to anyone. When Galinda had been small she’d refused to tie the laces of her sparkly purple sneakers in public, practicing for hours in her bedroom until she could do it seamlessly, the first in her class to manage such a feat. She’ll always be this way, probably— cards close to her chest, always. Galinda does not believe in half assing things: makeup, outfits, parties, inns. Drawings.

She’s armed, today, with only a few things— Killyjoy, still panting happily near her calves. A thick creamy paged sketchbook, warped on the side from an encounter with the river. A well worn charcoal pencil. Her hair is tied back, one strand falling into her eyes with the wind, and she can’t be bothered to scoop it away.

It starts with a few flicks of the wrist. She’s drawing the view down the beach, the lighthouse off in the distance with a cluster of boulders in front of it. A floating piece of driftwood bobbing so far out that it could be a seal or a shark or a sea monster, if this were the ocean. The stripe of the clouds low in the sky.

She will let Chuffrey ask her on a date. If he asks, she will let him take her out. If he takes her out she will be lovely, charming as charming can be. She can wear that new white dress with the pink flowers, maybe, or— no, the pastel yellow with the lace around the sleeves? Maybe with opals, or pearls?

August will be over in a day. She’ll have to start thinking about autumn soon enough, but maybe Chuffrey can help with that. He seems like he’d look handsome in a flannel tugging apples off of the trees. Galinda has always done this with her boyfriends, she has slotted them into particular categories in her mind. It helps her understand them, understand what she likes about them. How they should touch her, how she should kiss and how she should smile.

Far out, on the beach near the driftwood, there is a dark blob moving quite slowly. It zig zags and then straightens and, even when Galinda squints, she can’t quite make it out.

Another dark line and then a delicate smudge with her ring finger. There is the lighthouse, and Galinda adds a tiny tree beside it impulsively. The beach is hard to draw, what with all those pebbles. She starts on the clouds.

But when she looks up again the blob is closer. It’s certainly a person but, for the life of her, Galinda can’t figure out who. No one is ever out on the beach this early, no one except Mr. Quince but he only strolls on weekdays and he always walks in the other direction.

Because in Shale Shallows everyone has their spots, and it is important that it stays that way. Milla has the glade past the middle school, back in the woods behind the soccer fields. For Crope it’s the rusty old bench out past the park. Even Galinda’s popsicle had his little place, that particular rock near the stream where he’d haul a guitar. For Galinda it is this part of the beach, it has always been.

It is seven in the morning and it is a Sunday, it is cold and it is overcast. To get here from town someone would’ve had to walk quite far and through more than a few brambles. Killyjoy stands up with a yawn, ambling down the beach.

Galinda squints again, then whistles. “Killyjoy,” she calls, clicking her tongue. “Come back here, baby!”

But Killyjoy doesn’t listen, of course he doesn’t. He speeds up little by little and bounds down the beach, approaching the figure and spinning gleefully to race back in Galinda’s direction. She’s still clutching her pencil.

It’s as if Killyjoy has wiped fog off the lenses of her eyes, because all at once Galinda can see most clearly and there is Elphaba, most unmistakeable, walking down the beach. She looks starkly out of place here for no reason in particular, or at least no reason that Galinda can place. There’s something anachronistic about it, like the way her granny doesn’t look like she should exist in a world with pop music. Elphaba walks like she’s being watched— which, Galinda supposes, she is. She smiles at Killyjoy, though, and Galinda feels that familiar rush of desperation.

When she’s close enough Galinda waves. Killyjoy bounds toward her easily and Elphaba’s eyes have nowhere else to go— they flick to her tentatively, as if she’s trying to ignore the urge. Galinda straightens up at the shore, putting her sketchbook down so that it covers her bare knees.

“Good morning!” Galinda chirps, beaming, and Elphaba seems to falter. Good, Galinda thinks bitterly. She hopes that Elphaba knows how rude she’s being. What sort of a person won’t even smile at their loveliest and most welcoming innkeeper? What sort of person shirks every damned attempt for human connection?

“Good morning,” Elphaba says, and it’s rather formal with the way she nods her head and clenches her lips into a polite little smile. In the early morning sun Galinda gets a better view of the green than she ever has. It’s rather mesmerizing, isn’t it? Probably it would be very rude to say such a thing but it’s true, it’s like nothing Galinda has ever seen. Elphaba can see her staring.

“I’m so sorry, I must look a mess,” Galinda laughs. It’s almost true— she does, but only a little bit. Her hair is perfect and her skin is perfect and her toenails are painted where they graze the water. She’s not properly dressed, though, and Elphaba’s eyes seem to linger on her dressing gown. It makes her skin feel rather prickly, like she’s running a fever, like every inch of her is covered in goosebumps that don’t abide by the rules of such things.

“You look fine,” Elphaba says solemnly, and it’s the most she’s really spoken since they’ve met. Galinda latches onto it.

“How have you been finding your stay?” she asks, near desperate to keep the conversation going. Killyjoy curls up at her feet, leaning his head on her thighs. “Have you made it into town yet? You know, I’ve got a list back at the inn of some great places to visit— restaurants, hidden spots that only the locals know about, that sort of thing. I’ll pass it along to you.”

Elphaba doesn’t answer, not exactly. “Is that your dog?”

Galinda blinks. “Yeah,” she says slowly, looking up at Elphaba with a furrow in her brow that dissipates when she feels the clench of it wrinkling her smooth face. “This is Killyjoy. He’s a sweetheart, don’t let him fool you.”

Elphaba’s face softens ever so slightly. “Can I… would he mind if I…”

“Pet him?” Galinda finishes, cocking her head with raised eyebrows. “Please do, he’d love it. But I should warn you that once he befriends you he won’t leave you alone.”

When Elphaba crouches down, kneeling on the sand and stone, she looks much younger than before. Galinda has hardly gotten a close look at her but, here and now, she seems far more human. It’s something about the careful pattern of her hair, the thick eyelashes grazing her face, the tiny gold hoops looped through her earlobes. Killyjoy inclines his head excitedly, nudging Elphaba’s hand with his nose. One corner of her mouth tugs up at that.

“He’s very handsome,” Elphaba murmurs, scratching under Killyjoy’s chin. He wiggles happily and Galinda looks on with something odd in her stomach, a strange sickening feeling like hunger but a little smoother around the edges. The water feels very cold around her toes, all of a sudden.

“He thinks so too,” Galinda quips, and Elphaba actually lets out a tiny puff of air at that, something bordering on a laugh. Is she still asleep, is anything real this early in the morning?

“The inn is very nice,” Elphaba says a minute or two later, after Killyjoy has begun to lick her hand. She looks at Galinda out of the corner of her eye as she talks, like a concession or even an apology.“I haven’t explored much. I mailed a letter. But it’s very nice.”

What a strange person she is shaping up to be, how inexplicably odd! But Galinda feels a thrumming in her chest all the same— she’s won. She’s outlasted the aloofness, she’s triumphed over this particular green ice princess. Up by the inn Chuffrey must be arriving, Crope must be taking pastries out of the oven. She stays right where she is.

“I’m so glad to hear it,” Galinda says, and her smile is quite real now. “I… I do try my best.”

And then Elphaba looks up at her, piercing eyes in the cool morning. “I can tell,” she says, and Galinda shivers.

There is a beat of silence. Killyjoy shakes some sand out of his eyes. Galinda clears her throat and clenches her hand around her sketchbook, leaning to close the cover. Elphaba’s eyes flit down to it.

“That’s quite good,” she says, and leaves it at that. She seems to move with a constant abruptness, an abrasive energy that the world must adapt to and grow around. Galinda can see it happening already, with the way the river rolls in just out of reach of Elphaba’s black boots.

“Oh,” Galinda glances down and blushes most traitorously. “It isn’t done or anything. I’m not an artist, obviously, I just… it’s good for me, I guess. To have something to do.”

Elphaba doesn’t answer for a moment, cocking her head. Galinda’s heart beats louder. “It’s a small town,” she says, and why in the world can't she stop talking? “I won’t live here forever, I’m not really who I… well. Thank you.”

Elphaba just raises an eyebrow, but not unkindly, and gestures at the page. “It’s the beach here, isn’t it?”

Galinda nods, trying to purge her mind of the terrible display of moments before. “You should go,” she says, “to the lighthouse, I mean.”

Elphaba gets a strange little look in her eyes and then she squints, wrinkling her nose. It’s almost endearing, almost. “I might,” she says. “I’ve been reading a lot lately, could be nice to do it outside.”

And Galinda blushes again, biting at the inside of her cheek. “Oh,” she says. “Of course, yeah. I don’t… I don’t get a lot of time to read. It’s bad, I know.”

But Elphaba doesn’t roll her eyes, she just nods easily. “I’m sure you’re busy,” she says easily. “Lots of stuff out there if you’re ever looking for something. Lots of stories about little towns like this one.”

“Lots of stories about lost women like I am,” Galinda says lowly, more to break the fall of her misstep than anything. But Elphaba just studies her contemplatively.

“You don’t seem all that lost to me,” she says, and then without waiting for an answer she stands up in one swift motion and turns away. She’s half gone before Galinda even processes it.

“I’ll see you later,” Galinda says, struck by the blatant abruptness.

“Yes,” Elphaba replies, with a little nod, and then she’s gone.

Galinda waits, silent, until she hears the tell tale creaking of the gate up by the inn. A moment later a door slams shut and she exhales so firmly that she’s almost convinced her lungs themselves have left her body with the leftover air, hovering somewhere over the old river with its murky bottom and creepy scaled creatures that Galinda pretends do not exist when she’s swimming.

There is a lump in her throat. Just a few minutes of her life, it seems, has become enough to utterly destabilize her. The sketch is unfinished before her and there is a single drop of water on the top left corner, right above the tree she’d sketched in impulsively. She stares at it for a moment, watching it rattle with each of her breaths.

Chuffrey would be waiting. Galinda gathers her book and pencil. Killyjoy follows her up into the brambles while she tugs her hair down.