Although the courthouse appeared to extend for quite a distance, C made short work of the excursion, rolling to the far right end and bouncing impatiently in the grass as Alice, her dress still drying from the earlier storm and her head still reeling from being pulled this way and that by the crow, took her sweet time as she carefully made her way after C. At any moment, Alice thought she might simply fall over and go to sleep, but the idea struck her as both queer and dangerous, although she couldn’t put her finger on why.

As she passed by the courthouse, Alice noticed a strange figure behind a slightly fogged window. This fellow had a long and rather pompous looking face, sporting a long and thin mustache that bounced at its ends with severe curls. Alice hadn’t so much as glanced at him before he threw the window open and pointed a long and bony finger in her face.

“Well, I say, ‘twasn’t a suitable endeavor for you-hoo, now, ‘twas?” he wheezed.

“What was?” Alice asked.

“You ask the wrong question,” the man hacked impatiently, the lavender gemstones on his earrings jingling as he wheezed. “’Twasn’t, didn’t you hear? What can you gain by asking ‘twas?”

“But you asked first!” Alice replied.

“I have something to gain,” the man replied indignantly, “but you already have everything! You can only lose from here! ‘Twill not be yours, if you-hoo can make sense of the tense, foolish girl.”

“What won’t be mine?” Alice stood her ground, finding it difficult to get completely irritated at a man who looked so silly.

“If you have to ask,” the man said, “then you oughtn’t haven’t at all! Rules, rules! We’re better off without them!”

Alice suddenly got a sneaky idea. “Fancy that, you disregarding rules at a courthouse.”

“Come again?” the earring-man perked up, his mustache bouncing at the ends.

“A courthouse is built upon the purpose of upholding laws,” Alice said triumphantly, “or rules, if you prefer. If a courthouse can’t be a place of sensible and prudent justice, then courthouses might as well not exist.”

“You-hoo are an idiot,” the man replied, “that much I can read.”

“Wha--read?” Alice shot back, now considerably angered by this demeaning fellow.

“Well, ‘tis all in my name, Dr. Mint Reader!” the man wheezed.

“Mint…do you mean ‘mind?’” Alice wondered.

“I know exactly what I mean!” the doctor seethed. “Who are you to think for me?”

The question struck a nerve in Alice, but she managed to maintain her composure against the flamboyant doctor. “You should know, being a mind-reader and all, that I have to think for you or you won’t be able to do your job very well.”

Dr. Mint Reader began to turning purple with frustration, matching his earrings. “Do you-hoo honestly expect me to read you in full? You’re nothing but a closed book! I can only guess with a six percent likelihood of correction.”

“Then you’re a very poor mind reader indeed,” Alice grinned, turning her back on the man.

“I am significantly skilled,” the doctor spat. “Besides, you haven’t got anything worth reading. Why, you’ll merely fall asleep and start this all over again! You’re a broken record!”

Alice turned back. “And what exactly am I starting over, doctor?”

“I don’t think you-hoo want to know,” the doctor wheezed. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be so difficult!”

“You’re the one who’s being difficult!” Alice exclaimed.

The doctor slammed the window shut, emitting a creaky coughing sound as he did. Alice took a deep breath and let it out slowly before turning back to follow C and finding herself face to face with a misty blue-eyed tall and thin creature adorned from head to toe in white fur with brown streaks--or was it brown fur with white streaks?

“Hello, hello!” the creature said with a child-like enthusiasm, snuggling up against Alice. “Tell me, tell me, would you like a rose?”

Alice opened her mouth to reply, but began hacking as badly as the doctor had. The smell of this creature was overpoweringly pungent.

“I would certainly fancy a rose,” Alice replied through short, laborious breaths.

“Fantastic! Wait, wait, I won’t be long!” the creature scurried away like a ferret (it actually was a ferret, but Alice had never seen a ferret before, much less one with such an innocently humane face), moseying through the grass at a seemingly impossible speed. Alice hadn’t a moment to think before it returned with a blade of grass in its tiny hand. “I know where’t grows! I found, I found you a rose!”

Alice smiled politely and took the blade of grass from the creature. “Do you have a name?” she struggled to ask.

“Ferrabech,” the creature nodded with a jubilant grin.

“Well, Ferrabech,” Alice replied weakly, “I truly hate to disappoint you, but this isn’t a rose. This is a blade of grass.”

Ferrabech’s grin disappeared as she raised an eyebrow. “Blade of grass?” She snatched it from Alice and took a deep whiff. “Oh, just not the same! Sorry, sorry, do let me try again!”

Ferrabech tossed the grass aside and scurried through the field, taking a little longer to search diligently before returning with another blade of grass. “This is better than those! I found, I found you a rose!”

Alice smiled politely once again, barely able to breathe from being around the odor. “You should smell that and see if that’s actually a rose.”

Ferrabech inhaled deeply. “Oh, what a day, what a day! This isn’t a rose, just not the same! Oh, do let me try again!”

Alice quickly put a hand on Ferrabech’s shoulder. “Maybe you should look over there instead,” she said, pointing to the left side of the courthouse.

Ferrabech’s blue eyes gleamed. “Of course, of course! I’ll be back, be sure of that!”

As Ferrabech took off in a new direction, Alice began to run after C, feeling impolite that she had left him waiting for so long yet discouraged that she had to leave Ferrabech behind. The creature was kind and earnest enough, but her odor was far too overwhelming to handle. Alice hadn’t taken more than five steps before Ferrabech bumped into her from behind, eagerly waving a fluffy dandelion. “I found, I found! I know by my nose that this is a rose!”

Without a word from Alice, Ferrabech inhaled deeply, so much so that the entire flower shot up her pink button nose.

“My goodness, are you alright?” Alice asked, grimacing from the scent.

Ferrabech opened her mouth to answer, but only unleashed a massive sneeze. She shot directly into Alice’s stomach, sending the two tumbling through the grassy field and rolling down until they hit a bump with such great force that the bump was dislodged from the ground. When Alice finally managed to look up (realizing that she now must’ve smelled quite horrible indeed), she saw that the bump was none other than C.

“Well, fancy your timing!” C exclaimed. “I dug myself a hole, but that isn’t even the whole matter, though an entire matter of another regard completely, you see?”

“I’m just glad that I was able to free you,” Alice said, standing up and brushing herself off. “I’m sorry that I got held up.”

“Why, you look as though you haven’t lost a thing!” C continued. “Your size has decreased, but I find’t hard to believe that anyone but you could take such a thing from you! After all, you’ve too many layers to erase, you see?”

Alice didn’t quite grasp this, but she didn’t need to consider it further. A symphonic bell tolled, reverberating against the grand orange glow of the setting sun. Everything seemed to hang on that moment, a ringing that stirred every heart that longed to hear it. Alice found herself dreaming of the puddle, that simple patch of shimmering water that seemed to be full of promises, full of satisfied thirst. Her throat began to tickle as the bell continued to echo, causing Ferrabech to make a mad dash for the back of the courthouse.

“Eight, eight, we’ve only just eight!” C said with alarm, taking hold of Alice’s arm. “Come along, we must hurry!”

“But we haven’t eaten anything!” Alice protested, feeling exasperated with the hunger that was piling atop her thirst.

“There will be plenty to eat in good time,” C replied, “but the law comes before bread, at least in this house of trials. ‘Tis only sensible, you see?”

Before Alice could answer, she caught sight of a curious creature curled up in some run-down shrubbery. It seemed to resemble a 3, but its body was considerably inverted. It lay shivering even under a beam of setting sunlight, helpless and--useless.

Alice began to feel uneasy. “What on earth is that?”

“’Tis a mystery,” C said, not even pausing to look at the creature, “a mystery on this earth of yours and just about everywhere else. A universal mystery that hasn’t even a verse! Nobody would explore such a theory so deeply save the crow--”

As the pair reached the back of the courthouse (where there was merely an opening without a door), C finally paused and stared at Alice with sudden realization. “--and, perhaps, you.”

“Me?” Alice wondered.

“Why, that’s how you came here, I do believe,” C pondered. “You thought that dividing was your way out, but now you’ve gotten yourself into something else entirely. First out, first in--why, you’ve turned the theory on the theory’s very head!”

“What theory?” Alice asked, starting to feel dismayed by her scent, her famished stomach, and all these questions.

“The theory,” a voice echoed, “that my brother doesn’t know what he theorizes. ‘Tis expected with only half a brain.”

Alice turned to face this creature: he had C’s exact body type, but in reverse, almost like a backwards parenthesis. “Well, aren’t you rude!”

“I am not,” the creature replied flatly.

“But you are Cero!” C cried happily, embracing the creature’s spindly body. “We are brothers, someday to be none!”

“Not like--boz?” Cero asked.

“Gah!” C suddenly raged. “That rabble-rouser & his brother! They’re’n’t symbols! They’re constructs! They will never be none, unlike us!

“None?” Alice asked in disbelief.

“We certainly can’t be one,” Cero replied curtly.

“We can’t even be none,” C interjected, struggling to align his body with Cero’s. It proved to be useless as the two brothers simply fell apart. “You see? There’s no connection. We’re just not fitting correctly.”

“Not in the least!” Cero said indignantly. “’Tis all her fault, don’t you see? She put us in this undefined state. Garbage in, garbage out.”

Alice began to feel frustrated again. “What exactly am I being accused of?”

“Accused?” C exclaimed, returning to Alice’s side and pulling her along while Cero followed slowly behind. “Why, you’re an accuser! You make the call, you see? You’re a chairman now, aren’t you?”

Alice thought for a moment. “Well, the last time I saw the crow, he declared that I’m the Chairman of the Board of Vice Presidents of Standing Affairs.”

C’s perky eyes shone with awe. “Standing affairs? We haven’t had such a chairman in days! You’ll get a fearsome chair for sure!” He put his face directly against Alice’s. “And I shall be on your right side!”

Ignoring the seemingly meaningless remark, Alice (with some humiliation in her voice) asked, “C, do I…smell queer to you?”

C grinned. “To me? Who knows? C’est la vie!”

Realizing that C wasn’t equipped with a nose of his own, Alice nodded, took as deep of a breath as she could, and entered the courthouse.