Talk:Ideas/@comment-4423292-20150618230105

"It was not the sex that saved her, though the sex was mighty vigorous, even frightening. It was that Turtle Heart didn't blush when Frex showed up, that he didn't shrink from beastly little Elphaba. He set up shop in the side yard, blowing glass and grinding it, as if life had brought him here just to redeem Melena. Wherever else he might have been heading had been forgotten."

"Elphaba had heard all this before—even so. "You were in love with him," she said, to make it easier.

"We both were, we shared him," said Frex. "Your mother and I did. It was a lifetime ago and I don't know why anymore; I don't think I knew why then. I haven't loved anyone else since your mother died, except of course my children.""

""I would love to, honey," he said. "But how could I leave Nessarose? I never could."

"Even if she's Turtle Heart's daughter and not yours?" she said, stingingly because stung.

"Especially if that," he answered.

And Elphaba saw that by not knowing for sure if Nesssarose had been fathered by himself or by Turtle Heart, Frex had decided in some suhrational way that she was the daughter of them both. Nessarose was the proof of their brief union—theirs, and, obviously, Melena's as well. It didn't matter how crippled Nessarose was; she would always be more than Elphaba, always. She would always mean more."

"Across the low ridge of hills known as the Madeleines, into the Corn Basket, looking into the windows of Colwen Grounds, the moon continued its journey. Frex was asleep, dreaming of Turtle Heart and yes, of Melena, his beautiful Melena, making him breakfast on the day he went in to preach against the evil clock. Melena was a froth of beauty, huge as a world, spinning him courage, daring, love."