Wonderlander // Nonsense

[lobsterquadrille]

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."

"I don't much care where--"

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go."

A) It's a perfectly normal day in a perfectly normal world. Everything is as it should be. There is no flying butter, but butterflies are fluttering through a park garden, and women with human children stop to look in the window of a charming antique shop, and there is probably actually nothing strange about the skinny boy who's wearing a large, knitted scarf and no jacket in seventy-five-degree weather. Nothing odd or curious about the cracks in the sidewalk or the shapes of the clouds or any ownerless cats who happen be wandering about. Just another normal, sensible, boring day.

B) It's a perfectly normal day in Wonderland, which is to say that absolutely nothing is particularly normal, logical, or under any obligation to be nice. A blond, oddly plain-looking boy is wandering about, looking a little concerned. He's down the Rabbit Hole, trying to fit various keys into various doors, or he's hopelessly lost in the always-menacing (but well-meaning!) Tulgey Wood, or he's trying very hard not to step on any hedgehogs or gophers or flamingos as he picks his way through the Red Queen's beautiful garden. Wonderland doesn't really care where you are, as long as you aren't late.

C) Every once in a while, the worlds of Mundaneland and Wonderland overlap in ways that they maybe shouldn't. The white-walled, child-safe, health-conscious halls of the hospital are hiding all kinds of things, especially with how the inpatients mumble, scribble, and stare at normals who come to visit. Not all of them are completely mad; some of them are actually quite thankful to be here. The boy who looks like he's never slept, for example, staring intently down at the tile floor between his feet. He also reads very large books, far away from everyone else in the recreation room. And once or twice he's escorted out of the fancy doctor's office because he's gone and thrown something, and was yelling about how he's not a fucking liar.

D) “Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Comments

C

[fishy_go_byebye]

[Del giggled, and the words twined and whipped around the hall to curve a sinuous line.]

"We must have a trial: For really this morning I've nothing to do~!"

[She peeked around the corner, blue eye with silver flecks twinckling impishly, come here come here come here too much to do can't do it alone don't you want to come?

Come on Aliceall the others are too drugged and they smile and they lay and she needs to be here, but here is just where people don't want her.]

[lobsterquadrille]

[he'd been perplexedly resistant to all the little pills they keep trying to give him. they finally made him take something in front of them so that he'd settle down, but it's been an hour alone and no actual down has happened. he's more settled up than anything. there was far too much up already, he's much too big, feels cramped in his own head. all he'd ever wanted was to get smaller, though now he'd even settle for his original size...

whatever that used to be. the point is, he is a snail without a snail shell, but he still has eyes and ears and knows perfectly well when he's being spoken to. he looks up from where he is sitting on his bed, biting absently at his fingernail, and speaks with extraordinarily little surprise:]

You're late.

A

[unwonder]

[Mundaneland is such a bummer if you ask March. But how is she to have a tea party if all the invitations aren't delivered? Never mind she can't trust anyone with delivering the invitations. They'll simply lose them. Eat them. Or worse - deliver them late and then not a single soul will show up. What a disaster that would be! So here she is, suddenly reflected in the window of a shop. She's dressed rather oddly herself, galoshes on her feet, a short skirt with a sweater that's far too many sizes too big and with gaping holes here and there. Her bright red hair, as always, is disheveled in such a way you know it's entirely intentional. Slung over her shoulder is her bag, an old thing that's seen much better days with most of the lace and embroidery lost to time.]

There you are.

[Her smile is all-teeth.]

[lobsterquadrille]

Oh...

[the young man had peered into a store window only to realize the window was smiling back at him... and he was understandably surprised, until he turned to find that there wasn't a single person behind him.

ah. and he'd been doing so well today, too.]

There I was...

[me mumbles this down into his scarf, the stripes of which could almost look like teeth if one looked at it with a very broad imagination. the looking-glass girl is still very much there when he looks back.]

Now I can't rightly say where there is, can I?

[he seems rather put out by this. disappointed.]

[unwonder]

Well, I hardly see how that's my problem, [she drawls as though this conversation is already intensely tedious for her.]

[Except, she supposes, in some way it is a problem for her. It's difficult to hand over an invitation to someone who doesn't know where he is. How is one to address it properly? (Yes, that's even with the understanding she is hand-delivering them.) At any rate, she starts digging into her bag.] What's your name again? So hard to remember these days...

[Remember. Care. They are the same things to March.]

[lobsterquadrille]

[part of an argument dies before it can even make it out of his mouth. he learned a long time ago that there's really no sense trying to argue with these kinds of people. he'll be wrong no matter what, especially when he doesn't say exactly what he means...

but what does he mean? Alec glances over at some extremely normal-seeming people down the sidewalk, who have yet to notice that he's mumbling at the reflection in an antique store.]

My name's... Alec. [at least, he's fairly sure it is.] Unless you're here to deliver something terrible, in which case I'd like to change my answer.