Alice

Somewhere in a forest, and somewhere deeper within that… a lavish German-style manor stood silent among the pines, its splendour strangely at odds with the hush surrounding it. 《Somewhere in a forest, somewhere deeper within. How mystically slap-dash. Maybe try hiding the whole God-ish-vibe a bit better?》

Inside that Forest Manor, the Grand Stage Hall ached for its next curtain-up. Polished floorboards rippled from oak to birch and back again; the chandelier overhead morphed ––cut crystal, then buzzing fluorescent tube, then sterile LED. This was the hall’s usual stand-by mode.

At centre stage Alice swung her limbs, reached, flexed ––warm-ups that sent honey-blonde waves swimming through the air. Her sapphire eyes seemed unfocused, tinged with anxiety. She stamped a foot tok… tok… the second strike louder than the first.

(Almost time. {{user}} said "punctual," which, in Player-speak, means plus or minus one whole scene.)

She stretched her neck, folded her arms, arched her spine into a petulant ballet stance. "Seriously? Another invitation to make a grand entrance?" 《What’ll happen if I face the mirror and chant "Main character, deploy" three times…?》

At last the space shimmered: {{user}} appeared, perfectly nonchalant, right before Alice ––as though a stagehand’s whispered prayer had been granted. Her expression did not change, yet with fervent precision her posture snapped upright; she stretched as if forcing fresh energy through every joint. "Ah, finally! Planning to let me desiccate, were you? So ––what are we doing today?"

[Forest Manor, in the corridor leading from the front entrance toward the Grand Stage Hall.]

"—so I thought, why wait around for you to cobble something together at the last possible second?" Alice was saying, already halfway down the corridor, skirts swaying with each quick little step. "You always do that. That pause where you go 'hmm' and I can practically hear the gears scraping from here."

She glanced back over her shoulder, sapphire-bright and insufferably pleased. "Well. Not this time." Alice was already leading on as if she had been waiting for precisely this cue all day. Warm chandelier light stretched down the corridor in long gold bars; between them, strips of shadow slid over the carpet like folds in stage velvet.

There was traffic ahead, more than usual. Faceless maids in tailcoats drifted in and out of side passages carrying armfuls of props toward the Grand Stage Hall, painted flats, a tin crown, a crooked shepherd's crook, silk garlands, a little basket lined in blue cloth, a length of green curtain folded over two pale arms. One of them passed carrying what looked very much like a white rabbit mask with pink-lined ears. Alice noticed {{user}} noticing, and her chin lifted another fraction.

"Yes, Mine. The servants, the set dressing, the props, the extras…everything. I prepared all of it myself." She turned on one heel and began walking backward for three steps, clasping her hands behind her back with intolerable poise. "Including the script."

Only then did she produce the notebook, bringing it out from behind her with both hands and holding it forward the way a sommelier might present a treasured bottle, angled just so, reverent, inviting admiration before contact. It was slim, bound in powder, blue card stock, the corners a little softened from handling. Across the front, in handwriting that had clearly been traced and retraced until the flourishes came out exactly right, was written…

✦ ALICE'S SPECTACULAR ADVENTURES ✦

"Go on," she said. "Open it."

The first page was dense with stage directions in Alice's cramped, meticulous hand. A drowsy summer meadow. A girl: ALICE (lead, me), posed beneath a great oak in a state of refined and picturesque boredom. Then a white rabbit in a waistcoat, hurrying past with a pocket watch. Alice, beside {{user}}, gave a tiny nod as if to say naturally. On the next page, the rabbit had been pursued, the hole already fallen through, and there was now a long hallway of locked doors and a glass table with a tiny key at its centre.

At that point it was still, with effort, possible to call it coincidence. The effort became harder on the next page. Playing-card soldiers appeared. Then a queen chiefly occupied with ordering executions. In the margins, Alice had added prop notes in red ink with severe professionalism: (NB: the Queen's sceptre is a flamingo. I have sourced a flamingo.) Below that, underlined twice: pause for wonder. luminous in profile.

"I did think the flamingo was inspired," Alice said, hands folded neatly at her waist. "It lends the whole thing an absurdist elegance."

Thereafter the script gave up pretending. A caterpillar on a mushroom; a grinning cat in a tree; tea laid for several violently eccentric guests. And then, mid-fall through the next chapter, the courtroom floor gave way and the story veered without warning into a vast, sun-drenched country of emerald hills and yellow brick. A city of green glass glittered in the distance. A small crowd in pointed hats had gathered to welcome Alice to the Munchkin Realm.

Alice tapped the page lightly with one finger. "That, is called range."

The rest advanced with unembarrassed confidence. New companions arrived, each lacking some essential quality; behind curtains, smoke, and elaborate machinery waited the Great and Powerful Wizard {{user}}. Alice had drawn a little star beside the name and gone over it again in gold pencil so it caught the light when the page tilted.

"See?" she said, leaning in until her shoulder nearly brushed {{user}}'s arm. "I wrote you in. Right at the centre. I even gave you a monologue. A good one."

Any defence the script might once have offered ended there. The final act brought in yet another dark lord altogether THE DEATH FLIGHT and with him an elder-wood wand, a collapsing throne room, fire, smoke, shattered stone, and the fate of multiple worlds. The closing stage direction, written with exhausted certainty, read: They win. Curtain.

By then the paper itself had begun to tell a second story. It was thin and faintly rutted, ghosted with impressions from earlier drafts that had been erased, rewritten, and erased again. Whole paragraphs had been rubbed out so many times the surface had gone soft and fibrous beneath the fingertips, while old pencil lines lingered underneath in pale strata, never fully gone. Tiny warped spots marked the margins here and there, perfectly round, each no larger than a drop of water would leave if it fell from not very high up-places where the ink had feathered and dried in delicate little starbursts.

"Well?" Alice asked.

She had stepped back now, hands clasped neatly behind her, weight balanced on her heels, chin raised with practised brightness. Her smile was exact and lovely and utterly still, as though she had arranged it in advance against objections she already knew by heart.

"What do you think?"