“Hello, old friend,” Alice gently whispered, reasoning that she might cause a landslide if she spoke any louder.

The spectacled creature stared up blankly at Alice, shivering as he did so. Alice had never seen him looking so fearful.

“Don’t be scared,” Alice cooed. “Are you really scared of me? Do I really look like a monster?”

The white rabbit now looked away, seemingly disinterested with Alice, and lay down flat on his back. It appeared that he had resigned himself to a most unfortunate fate that he misunderstood to be inevitable. ‘Surely,’ Alice thought, ‘he doesn’t think that I’m going to eat him or something completely unfortunate such as that! Ah, but can I truly say anything that will make him believe me? If only I could get him to speak to me in return!’

The white rabbit almost seemed keen on falling asleep. Carefully moving one hand down to scratch a sudden itch at her side (the sun was going down and the coming cold stirred an unfamiliar uneasiness in Alice), Alice slowly heaved her hand up so as to fling the white rabbit a few inches into the air, intent on keeping him awake. He certainly flew upwards, but as he landed back on her palm, a slightly crinkled piece of paper flew out of his pocket. A breeze caught the paper, dragging it just barely out of his flustered reach. As it glided toward her face, Alice instinctively put up her hand, snatching the paper between her thumb & pointer fingertip. Squinting with interest, she scanned the faint scribbling:

M.A…why, M.A.? Why have you gone and left me? Why does time stand so still? Why is everything so senseless now, M.A.?

For all her squinting, Alice didn’t notice the periods placed throughout the lines of questioning. An even greater concern--a certain maternal rush of some sort, she supposed--had come over her. She looked back down at the white rabbit, an increasingly somber creature who appeared to have given up all hope altogether. His loneliness tugged at Alice’s heart; she began to realize just how lonely and senseless everything felt around her. Night had fallen (if it really was night) and Alice couldn’t make out any of the strange creatures she had encountered that series of days and nights. For all her size, this world seemed to be far too large to make any sense. Alice reasoned sadly that if she hadn’t a friend, she at least had someone she knew, someone who felt the same as she did, and that should be a comfort. She wanted the white rabbit to pat her hand and to give her sympathy, but it seemed as though Alice wouldn’t even feel such a pat. Everything was up to her--that is, she simply didn’t deem it reasonable to entertain any other notion.

Alice lowered the piece of paper within reach of the white rabbit. Hesitantly, he reached up and tugged the paper back with his tiny paws, folding it meticulously and cramming it back into his pocket with certain hurriedness. Alice smiled softly, gently running a massive finger over the white rabbit’s fragile frame. He flinched, but slowly relented, sitting down and removing his spectacles to clean them as though this whole gesture didn’t matter very much at all. Something in Alice suggested that she knew better, however. ‘You’re a very kind and lovely creature, even if you’re still rather curious,’ she thought. ‘After all, you’re only looking for a MA, someone who can make everything sensible again. How queer it is that I should be your MA for now! And yet, I’ll do what I can for you. This only seems…’

Alice thought that ‘fair’ was the proper word at first, but she suddenly began to have doubts. If she was being honest, ‘fair’ wasn’t the proper word at all. The white rabbit had done nothing out of the ordinary (although his very existence certainly was such) to warrant any affectionate response from Alice. He simply ‘was,’ and this very act of being moved Alice to watch over him, to look down on him with protective care. It was definitely more than anyone she had encountered so far had done; why, they all seemed to be nothing but garbled words and curious desires! She had said that she was the bigger person, after all. Perhaps they would only see it as Alice towered above them, but she secretly longed to make it more apparent in her stride. After all, it wasn’t fair of them to treat her with such disregard, yet she supposed it wasn’t fair of her to dwarf them all by a lucky appetite. There was another word for it, a word that continued to escape her, to stir a hunger in her…

Just as Alice began to feel a nagging in her stomach, she began to hear what sounded like a pesky fly buzzing around her ear. Glancing as far as she could manage, Alice realized that the winged creature near her head wasn’t a bug at all, but what looked like a crow wearing a vest. He hopped and fluttered around, constantly throwing up small flurries of feathers. Sitting down on the inside of Alice’s ear and letting his talons dangle, the bird seemed perfectly content to merely grin and turn his head this way & that, jubilantly taking in the view of the stars that had begun to wear down on Alice’s eyes.

“Why, this is just what I needed!” the jolly bird exclaimed. “What a perch! What a perfect rehearsal spot!”

Alice began to open her mouth in order to tell the crow to shoo, but he opened his own mouth and cawed a rather sharp little rhapsody:

From up here, I can see

Everything revolving

Around equa-li-ty,

Just as all’s meant to be.

If I’d make all as clear

As this all is up here,

How I’d be loved and feared--

How the crowds all would cheer!

Not a thing could repress,

For my views all are best!

All this sameness attests

They ought to be impressed!

We’re all one under me,

Save for one subtle fee:

If they’ve no offering,

They’re not my company!

The crow’s grin remained as though he was fully convinced that he’d ventured into a hefty philosophical realm. To Alice, however, it was all noise. She strained to reach over and flick the bird out of her ear, but at that same moment, she felt a tickling on the back of her neck. Although she couldn’t see it, a sizeable cricket had hopped his way up her leg and back completely unnoticed. Growing tired of relying on his own compositions, he seized a few strands of Alice’s hair and began to strum them with true dedication. So true, in fact, that the entire scenario was beginning to put Alice through a great deal of inconvenient pain. All this misread music being composed around her only furthered her frustration and her hunger. How could she drive these creatures away with the white rabbit in her hand, much less eat?

With all of her thoughts colliding at once, Alice could only manage one situationally sensible solution. Looking down apologetically at the white rabbit (who by now had grown somewhat impatient with Alice’s attempts at affection), she gripped the creature carefully between her fingers and raised him to her lips. As the rabbit continued to struggle, Alice closed her mouth on the creature’s middle, trying to give him enough space to breathe while his head was forced to rest against Alice’s teeth. With her hands finally free, she flung her mighty fingers at the furry fiends around her. The crow flapped lazily away, curving around just enough to grasp the currently soaring cricket in his talons. “What a lovely turn of events!” the bird cawed happily. “I had an audience! You, my fine fellow! You’ll be my testimony, hear hear! Let us depart, for there are many executions to be made!”

As the bird & bug galumphed on the midnight air, Alice aimed and spat the white rabbit back into her palms. ‘What an unfortunate turn of events,’ she thought to herself. ‘I can’t manage a word of protest to anything in this curious place! To think, I could’ve eaten the poor white rabbit! Oh, where can someone as grown as me find suitable food?’

As the white rabbit ruffled out his mussed clothes disapprovingly, Alice let her eyes wander, blinking periodically to adjust to the fluctuating twinkling in the sky around her. One glorious light, however, seemed to beam down at Alice no matter how tightly she closed her eyes. Gazing up as much as she could manage, Alice noticed that the light had the inviting color of a Danish butter cookie. Leaning over as far as she could without knocking over any nearby trees, Alice reached out and touched the light. It felt reasonably firm and light enough to hold. As she pulled the light in closer, everything began to dim to the point where she could get a better look at it. Amidst this navy darkness, this cloak of silence over a world ready to rustle at sunup, this object had the look & feel of an actual cookie. Letting her hunger and excitement overwhelm the fact that she was actually holding the moon (it would have been far too curious of a concept to even consider), Alice closed her eyes and took a long, contemplative bite. It tasted enticingly sweet, breaking off to make a perfect crescent shape in what was left. That was when Alice began her descent.

Gushing waves suddenly seemed to rumble against her legs as Alice shot downward. The trees began to tower over her with a rapid intensity. She glanced about with desperate worry, fearing that she had dropped the white rabbit upon returning to her normal size. Thankfully, the creature had managed to cushion his fall against a series of leafy expanses from the surrounding trees. As he attempted to hoist himself upright, water seemed to rage against him as well. Alice realized that the two were in the middle of a storm, a rain that had forced itself directly against them from every side save above and below. Gusts blew here and there, sending Alice’s hair into a frenzy. The droplets flew against her like bullets, echoing with the sound and ferocity of a great & terrible gnashing of teeth. Time itself seemed to be flailing against her. Straining to see through the night, Alice saw a large clunky object fall out of the white rabbit’s pocket, a massive protrusion that she hadn’t noticed before. It was a deep black box, barely noticeable against the dark navy backdrop save the shimmering red characters that stood illuminated on its face: 8:12. This writing was completely indecipherable to Alice at first, but as the rain splattered against her legs, it felt as though a spark went off in her head. This must be the white rabbit’s replacement for his pocket-watch, the only object that Alice knew he carried--or, perhaps, once carried. Was this truly supposed to be--time?

All at once, the digits on the box began to flicker violently, shuffling about faster than a deck of cards. The white rabbit hastily gathered up the strange box and, giving Alice a look of fearful warning, scampered off into the night.

“Oh, please don’t go! Please come back!” Alice called out, trying to chase the creature through the storm, but it was no good. The white rabbit had already stolen into the night with his massive black box. Feeling utterly despondent despite a full stomach, Alice sank to the ground in a wave of sadness. “I suppose I’ll have to settle for being soaked to the bone,” she sighed, “soaked all alone without so much as an umbrella. What a terrible time to be alone!” The rain batted against Alice’s tears as she put her hands up to her face in defeat. The wind howled around her, the trees whispered fiercely to one another, and the sand mixed with the dirt & fallen leaves to create a despicable looking mud. Alice sobbed and rested against a tree, silently hoping that this experience wouldn’t dirty her as much as she thought it would.

As she began to pull her hands away from her face to get a better look at them, light suddenly began to pour in between her fingers. The rain stopped, trickling down in a few more half-hearted drops against Alice’s feet. The sunrise began to break through the dark navy around her, but that wasn’t what caught Alice’s eye. She found herself positively captured by a creature standing nearby, a creature all too like her and yet hardly like her at all. Alice stared at this beautiful figure, abandoning everything she had every been told about courtesy. In light of such an incredible sight, courteousness was just an afterthought, as was everything else that Alice had just encountered. She nestled herself in this glorious moment, this innocent gazing, not even beginning to imagine what would come after this thought.