He tripped over something overturned on the floor. There was always something overturned upon the floor.

"Elphaba!"

There was nothing but white. No one but white and light.

"Elphaba!"

The shutters clacked against the stone. Light flickered across the room, the wind was blowing. "Elphaba, for Oz's sake, stop leaving so many things upon the floor! Your blind little old, your blind little old Chistery, and you'd think, you'd just think that you didn't even…"

The Snow Monkey was so hunched with age that it appeared to drag itself along the floor rather than crawl. It had been years since a single day had passed in which he hadn't spoken to the Elphaba that was no longer there.

"and, by Lurline, if you don't tell that old hag of yours to keep herself quieted once in a …"

He paused. The room was so still that he could have been as dead as the rest of it.

"Elphaba?!" he called, suddenly, frantically, toward the door. No reply. No sighs, no heavy footsteps, but he knew that it had been ages since he'd stopped expecting those sounds along the hall, and even longer since they had left. But what she'd left him with wasn't silence. It was Nanny.

He moved, slightly, toward the door. "Elphaba!" he shrieked to the walls, the courtyard, the castle of dark and dust. The wisps of wings on his back crackled like leaves. There was no returning sound of banging pots, no returned hoots of "Elphaba! Elphaba!" Just silence and wind and leaves.

He crawled along the floor, trembling fingers trailing on the stone. He met something soft.

"Elphaba," he whispered to it. "Elphaba, get your nanny off of the floor."

Nothing answered.