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Lantern night at Shiz was, all things considered, not the most glamourously splendiferous night of the year.
There were plenty of parties, obviously. Some of them boring, some of them fantastical, and some of them completely, wildly over budget for the students hosting them, which would only end in awkward questions later on, and which Galinda was inclined to avoid. It wouldn’t be wise for a future politician of Oz to be seen at some gauche college party.
Aside from the unfortunate questions of budget, there was also the drinking. Oh, the wonderful, terrible drinking.
Crage Hall, of course, discouraged drinking for the students, unless it was a single glass of wine at a dinner or reading, which the girls were encouraged to sip at elegantly as they listened to the men in attendance prattle on. Lantern Night, although largely considered an exception to the rules of moderation that officially covered the sprawling halls of Shiz, was not considered a good enough excuse for debauchery within the confines of Crage Hall, and the girls who wished to go out drinking with their male peers had to do so outside, and risk the mark on their reputation if they were to be caught in their revelries.
But.
The costumes.
Galinda did not consider herself vain.
She considered herself pragmatic about the state of things, and that pragmatism carried over to her dress and comportment. The fact was, a girl could get a lot further in life if she dressed well. Silk underthings didn't matter, until of course you had a bona fide prince of the Vinkus in your bed, and then they...
Well, they still didn't matter all that much, as it turned out, because the prince was less concerned with the underthings than what was underneath them, so that was alright in the end.
Regardless of the state of her underthings, Galinda understood the importance of appearances, and the fun of Lantern Night was in the costumes. There was an official contest, and a parade of the students, which were all in good fun. They would throw sweets at one another and have a rowdy good time, and then they would disperse to the real parties of the night, which was where your costume started to matter. As a social event, the parties were an unsupervised disaster, but as an opportunity to show off your tailoring and figure, they were unmatched.
Galinda, of course, had a lineup packed already. There was the Ozma costume, a classic. The golden skirt was short and glittery, and the wings small enough to fit on a dance floor. But the optics of embracing Ozma...not fantabulous, not in the current climate. Especially not for someone planning to go out on the arm of a foreign prince. Fiyero was handsome, obviously, but one had to consider the long term implications of dating a man who was expected to leave the Emerald City so often, especially when one was planning a personal career in politics. Ideally, she’d have a public role on some minor, interesting board that would provide a comfortable office and ample time for a social life outside of the work sphere. Would leaving her husband to his travel and business be good optics, or bad?
It was too much to consider. For now, Galinda occupied herself with more pressing concerns. Chiefly, how she was going to dress not just herself for Lantern Night, but also her entourage.
Well.
Perhaps, if she was being honest with herself.
Oh, it was a wicked, selfish thing.
She couldn't. She simply couldn't.
Dressing up as a couple was a tradition. It was a way of showing the social connections that you were making at school, and in fact, Galinda's mother had sent her an allowance specifically for getting an image done of herself and Fiyero together, so that her parents could show them off to the neighborhood. Dressing up together was an absolutely resplendent thing to do, so that was fine.
The problem came with dressing up in threes.
Oh, of course some people did group costumes. The trio of students from the new stage show, the one where they all carried matching mallets, they were a popular one. A gaggle of girls down the hall were dressing as a corp de ballet together, with the one boy they'd snagged dressed all in red, to stand out against their pastels. There was even a trio planning to go dressed as a squad of elegant animals, the kind that leapt about on stage down in the theater district and made all of the capital-A-Animals quite uncomfortable.
Galinda would never stoop so low as to dress up as a cat, even a lowercase one. She had a legacy to live up to, and by the unnamed god, she was going to find a costume which would suit all her needs. She would need to look positutely adorable, of course, and fit with whatever she was going to instruct Fiyero's tailors to make...but she'd also need to match Elphaba, who presented her own set of challenges.
They had to look nice as a trio, but also work as a couple, for her parents would never approve of their future senator, or perhaps councilwoman, being seen matching with more than one student, as though they were a trio, instead of just a girl, and her boyfriend, and her roommate, who she would never, ever kiss.
Not even once, not even on a dare, not even...
Oh, her face is flushing again.
They've got to find a costume that lays a claim, without screaming the message. A subtle trio's costume.
"I can hear your mind struggling to form a thought, you know."
Galinda jumps.
"Oh! You can take that smart tongue of yours somewhere else, miss Elphaba," she snaps. "I am thinking about the most important social event of the fall, and I'll have you know that I am planning something fabulous for the both of us."
Elphaba smiles. Her teeth are violent, shocking white against the furled green bud of her face. "I thought you couldn't be seen associating with me."
Galinda huffs.
"Not officially, no. But we are roommates."
"And you've agreed to make me, what was it..."
"Popular. Yes. So you see, you've got to dress up with me for lantern night, as roomies." She throws herself down across the bed, so dramatically that her roomie has no choice but to accommodate her, or be pouted upon.
"I thought you'd dress up with your paramour." Elphaba says softly, picking up her book so that Galinda can sprawl out more comfortably. "Some famous couple's costumes. The Wizard and his spies, maybe."
"Miss Elphaba, you have got to be joking!"
"Not at all. Just think about spies. They go slinking around in the dark, and you'd suit a black catsuit perfectly."
"You're making fun of me!"
Elphie relents. "Only a little. Show me what you have so far, we'll come up with something."
Galinda rolls over so that she can kick her feet up in the air like a little girl. There's something about Elphie that makes her feel playful. Some sense of safety in knowing that whatever she does, she won't be the largest spectacle in the room. It lets her put her hair down a bit, when they're together.
"Well, I'm not going to dress us up as the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker," she says. "Obviously. We need a trio that works just as well as a pair."
"Two flowers and the hedge they're sitting on," Elphie says immediately. "You two can be the beautiful flowers, and I'll be the hedge."
"No!"
"Two dancers carrying a garland, like they do for the spring festival," she continues "You can wear a tutu, and we'll put Fiyero in one of those vests that the men wear, only we'll have him leave his shirt off underneath, and you can sprinkle him with that body glitter you pretend not to wear–"
"–any glitter on my person comes purely from my sparkling personality!"
"–and I'll be the garland, naturally." Elphie finishes. "You two can rope me up and carry me over your heads, and without me you'll just be a pair of dancers. Not even your sainted parents can complain about you two dressing up as festival dancers."
"We are not tying you up!"
Elphaba grins. "Oh, really."
Galinda buries her face in the blanket, which smells of laundry detergent, and not, unfortunately, the rather nice scent of the perfumed amber body oil that Elphie uses to bathe.
"Not in public!" she wails, muffled enough by the bed that she's not afraid of their neighbors hearing. "That's for us alone, Elphie!"
"Well then, we'll go topical, and dress you up as Madame Morrible, and Fiyero as the President of Three Kings Hall, and I'll cast a spell of corrosion over Grommetik so that he turns green, and start clicking around on my hands and knees threatening everybody's shins."
"Absolutely not!"
"I have more."
Galinda rolls over to contemplate the ceiling. "You're no help at all. We'll have to ask Fiyero what he wants to dress as, and he's a man, so you know he's going to say something stupid like, oh, the three visually impaired Mice from the wonder-tale. And then we'll all be the laughingstock of Shiz, and we'll have to move to Munchkinland and start a farm to escape the humiliation, and I'm not built for farm work!"
Elphaba takes a sharp breath, and Galinda sits up, worried for a moment that she's gone too far–her roommate is from Munchkinland, she was so stupid to forget that, and she might've taken offense at her home being part of Galinda's worst case scenario, but before she says anything a sharp sound comes from the window.
"Speak of the devil!" Glinda chirps, glad for the distraction. "I'll go let him in, then."
She hops up, giving Elphie a moment to compose herself as she flips the latch to let Fiyero fall through their window. "Darling! You're here at last!"
He squints up at her, which shouldn't be adorable, and yet melts her traitforous heart every time he does it. "I'm not late, am I?"
She pulls him up, bracing herself against a tower of hat-boxes to do so. The boxes collapse when she pulls his weight onto them, sending them both tumbling back to the ground, this time on top of one another. Not that she’s objecting. Both of her lovers are so slender that they are an absolutely lovely weight on top of her. "Not at all! We were just talking about you."
"Galinda was slandering your good name," Elphie says, low and amused from her perch on the bed. "She wants to dress us up in some matching ensembles for Lantern Night. Says your ideas would be terrible."
"My ideas– hey!"
"Darling, I'd never say that. She's exagamarating, of course."
Fiyero sweeps his hair off his forehead. "I've already talked to my tailor. I hope that wasn't too forward of me."
Oh, damn this man. She can't possibly say no now, not with Lantern Night a few weeks away and the tailor already engaged. "Not at all!"
"We're to be three vegetables, of course," Elphie says, speaking over them both. "A pink radish, a blue potato, and naturally I'll be a green pea in a pod, and stay home all night."
"No, Elphie!" Galinda cries, forgetting herself. "Don't say that, you can't!"
"I quite agree." Fiyero says, plopping down in between them. "I won’t see you staying home all night, not on the most exciting party night of the year. I've already commissioned our costumes. Galinda, my sweet, you are to be the sun, with a skirt as round and golden as the noon sky, and I am to be the moon, all silver and blue, naturally."
"Oh, naturally." Elphie agrees, poking him with her bony fingers until he shifts so that she's not crammed up on the headboard quite so badly. "And I'll be the wind, and sweep myself out of the way where I can be heard, and not seen."
Fiyero wraps an arm around each of them, pulling them close. "While I do love the sound of you screaming at me, no. You're to be the stars, actually. You'll have a cape of starlight, and there's a hairpin that I saw in the square that will be perfect for the thing. It’ll shine quite well against this dark hair of yours. Galinda, you'll have a crown of course, and together we will be the whole of the cosmos."
The whole of the cosmos. Sun, moon, and stars. Not all visible at the same time, but each an essential part of the sky.
"It's perfect," Galinda agrees. "We'll look perfect together."