Floral Frames

Floral Frames
(AU)
If ever in history there was a scream so loud that it could cross universes

Break through the very fabric of time and space and travel to distant lands never hearing of eachother

Peirce through the ears of the poor unsuspecting citicizens of Oz, Wonderland, Neverland, our land, and any other place ending in "land"

It would be the scream of Galinda Upland

But before anyone can understand WHY this unholy screech was unleashed from the tiny woman

One must travel back twenty-four hours to the start of it all

The start, beginning with a phone call

A phone call that a certain witch currently regrets ever making....

"No I can't tomorrow, I have an eye appointment, is next Tuesday alright?"

Bouncey blonde curls popped into the doorway as the woman stopped in her tracks, promptly turning out of the hall and into the kitchen where the phone call was being made

"Next Tuesday at three, I'll see you then,"

With the click of the phone hanging up the green woman at the counter turned and jumped slightly upon seeing the other person only a few feet away from her

"An eye appointment? You never told me about an eye appointment," the blonde said in confusion

"I wasn't aware you wanted to know..." the other said slowly

"Elphaba Thropp! I always want to know these things! How else will I schedule my own activities around it?"

Elphaba raised an eyebrow slowly, staring at her partner curiously

"Why would you schedule anything around it Galinda?"

Puffing her cheeks out slightly, Galinda put her hands on her hips

"Because I need to go with you ofcourse! Now what time is it?"

"One o'clock but-"

"Perfect! I can keep my flower delivery scheduled at eleven!" she smiled

The questions of what flower delivery, why a flower delivery, to where and to who the flower delivery was going, were kept unasked

After the great parade float incident of 2012 Elphaba had made a resolution to stop asking her roommate questions unless it was absolutely vital

It was better for her health that way....

"Galinda you don't have to come with me," she finally reasoned

"Well ofcourse I do! SOMEONE has to drive you back! Those drops they put in your eyes are so disorientating! I had them once, I had the most terrible headache from it... luckily Fiyero was there to drive me home,"

Elphaba completely ignored the bad grammer and immediately felt sorry for Fiyero

She had traveled through that ninth level of Dante's inferno aptly labeled "Galinda Upland's headaches"

And whoever was faced with it, she could swear, was anything but lucky

She felt, in fact, that whoever was in the path of Galinda's headaches was either the most unlucky person on earth or had done something so terrible, so HORRIBLE in a past life that karma dictated they deserved this

Elphaba, having frequently been stuck in this position in the last several years, had yet to decide if her case applied to either, both, or something else entirely

(In the winter of 2013 she had decided that Dante was wrong, there were in fact eight levels of Hell- Galinda had gotten the flu)

"I can fly back, the drops don't bother me much and as long as I see well enough to avoid trees and birds I'll be fine," she reasoned

"Then I'm going for moral support!" the blonde insisted

"My sweet, you don't have to-"

"But I WANT to Elphie, this is what girlfreinds DO," she insisted

Elphaba questioned that but decided not to say anything, she supposed after years and years of doing this alone it would be nice to have some company....

She would soon learn that that was very, very wrong....

Fast-forwarding back to just moments before the infamous scream, we find Elphaba leaning against the wall resisting the urge to rub her eyes

The drops may not bother her as much as they did Galinda but they did certainly make her head ache and her eyes were stinging from the light in the room

"I just don't understand," Galinda mused as she straightened out the non-existant wrinkles in her pink dress

"I mean you see perfectly fine Elphie, how could you need NEW glasses?" she asked with a frown

"I don't see perfeclty fine, I've noticed my vision slowly getting worse when dealing with distance- that's what I have glasses for in the first place, and keeping a prescription that's outdated can ruin your eyes," she explained calmly

"Distance.... I don't see how you have a problem with distance, you seem to see distance alright to me..." the other mused quietly, walking to stand in front of the eye chart on one wall of the room

"I can see distance perfectly fine! A, Q, T, P, E, N-"

"Try it from HERE Galinda," Elphaba said with a small smirk, taking her girlfreind by the shoulders and gently moving her back to the other side of the room

"Oh..." came the unimpressed squeak from the smaller woman

But Galinda Upland was not one to ignore a challenge or to give in to ... well.... anything

"I can still see it perfectly fine! L... C.... F... U? Is... is that an eight?"

Much to the dismay of both women, the optomitrist had happened to hear this nonsensical display and gently insisted on testing Galinda's eyes further

This is what ultimately resulted in the unholy scream

"GLASSES!?" Galinda shouted in upset

Elphaba, crouched down and covering her ears in pain, peeked up at the other woman

"I cannot need GLASSES! No Upland has EVER needed glasses! Not until they were very, very, very, very, very, VERY old! What young person such as myself needs GLASSES!?"

"I am so very flattered," Elphaba said dryly as she stood up straight again

"Oh you know what I mean Elphie! I can't wear glasses! What would people say? What would people THINK? That I have imperfect vision? An Upland with imperfect vision?! It cannot be! I cannot wear glasses!" she cried

"Gali-"

"I can see perfectly fine! I see you and I see him, I see the door and the window, I can see perfectly fine!!"

"Galinda you have the same problem I have, you can see up close just fine but distance gets blurry,"

"It does not!"

"Last week you thought the mail truck was a poodle,"

"It looked VERY poodlish!"

Elphaba took a deep breath and covered her face in her hands

This was going to be a very long day....

~+~

She wasn't wrong

Galinda spent no less than an hour in hystaria over what she could only assume Galinda thought to be the tragedy of the year

By now they were standing in the optical department of a local store and Elphaba was relieved to feel the eye drops beginning to wear off as she glanced out the window

It was getting dark and cloudy and she had to shift anxiously to stop from staring any longer

She really didn't want to have to put on her gloves and boots and other such things to keep away from the rain (not to mention the rather cumbersome umbrella)

It was August, the last thing she needed was to cover up so warmly, but if she got wet in the rain it would wash off her magic concealer, revealing her green skin

And that wouldn't be good for anyone

The magic community had been so hesitant to allow her into normal human society given her unusual skin color

It was only with the concealer and the promise to never allow it to wash off in public that she had managed to stay here for so long

She knew Galinda knew this and perhaps that was why the blonde had finally stayed quiet long enough for Elphaba to turn their perscriptions in

"You can have any frames you want you know," Elphaba said suddenly

But the smaller woman barely glanced at her and the witch knew reasonably that if she were to remove her sunglasses (that Galinda insisted on keeping on even indoors) her eyes would probbably be red and swollen.. and not from the drops

"I'll tell you what, we can have matching frames, how is that my sweet?"

She really didn't think the offer would do much

Sure Galinda had some slight obsession with having matching things- "It's what girlfreinds DO!" she kept insisting- but she doubted it would cheer her up at all

For the umpteenth time in knowing Galinda she was proven wrong

She lifted her head, her pale lips curling into a tiny smile

"Really Elphie? You'll wear any frames I want?" she asked quietly

Elphaba's heart skipped a beat and she felt her face flush

Why after all these years did that little smile still make her feel such butterflies fluttering within her?

"Y-Yes...." she said slowly

That little smile grew bigger and she suddenly took off in a blonde and pink blur over to where the most expensive glasses were

Because ofcourse that's where she seemed to be drawn to

Fourty-five minutes later the couple walked out hand-in-hand

Both wearing thin, pink frames with floral filigree decorating them

It was far from Elphaba's personal preference and the absolute opposite of the plain, black frames she had worn when she first met Galinda in college

But change wasn't such a bad thing

And in fact, she kind of liked the smaller glasses

And Galinda...

...Well....

Elphaba had never thought she'd be giddy over the fact that Galidna was wearing glasses that looked like her's

But here she was, feeling just that

She had to admit, they looked good on her

"Why Miss Galinda," she said as she stared down at her girlfreind, adjusting her glasses for her

"You look beautiful,"