3rd abnormality [Dictated] (Wonderland plot)

[teratologist]

[A booming voice poured out through the books. There was much yelling at people all around that didn't seem to be directed toward the book just yet.]

I don't care! Find her! Arrest this Alice I'll not have her running around spoiling my gardens and grounds.

[A somewhat sweeter voice now issued from the page.]

Dear citizens of Wonderland, this is your beloved Queen with a message of dire urgency. Somewhere...lurking somewhere in our fair land is a threat to our way of life! Do not be fooled by the child like visage of this villain, should you encounter this Alice call for the Cards immediately. I implore you not to try heroism, this despoiler of the peace, this vile challenge to the very existence of our Wonderlandian morals.

Arrest Alice, bring her to me, she will be dealt with.

[more screaming seemed to fade as she stalked off to find anther object to vent her ire upon.]

Comments

[teratologist]

Questions are tiny arrows, little digs at the wall of our lives. Each one chips away a bit more, steals another bit of the status quo.

[unnaturalpause]

And yet chipping away at the status quo allows us to learn new things, build greater things, even allows us to sit down with someone new and enjoy tea. [He's sounding rather calm really as he talks, as if he's used to prodding at her about things.]

[teratologist]

Well yes that's true but, no! You do not change things! I've created this world for my people. [Exaggeration only, but she feels all this is her realm.] I say what is good and what is not. I call for tea and cakes. I am the Queen!

[unnaturalpause]

[He's glad to know some things don't change, really.] Are you afraid that asking questions will lead to you no longer being their Queen? What happens when something odd happens, like with your Miss Alice, and people decide to follow suit?

[teratologist]

It would lead to chaos! We cannot have chaos here, none that is different anyway. How do you not know this?

[unnaturalpause]

If you recall, you remind me of a friend, my perception of you is rather altered by that. [Sigh.] And it would only lead to chaos if you refuse to change. Why can't you allow a few questions?

[teratologist]

I do recall, but she must be a foolish creature if she would allow such questions of her own judgement.

Do you know what happens when questions undermine the establishment?

[unnaturalpause]

I wouldn't know much about foolish, stubborn perhaps in her ways, but it saved her more then once.

And things change. Either through chaos or over time, questioning things sees change, it's how that friend of mine went to university in her younger years. [Nudge, nudge.]

[teratologist]

[Things were rattling lose in that gray matter. Ideas, memories perhaps, glimpses of conversations about saving beings, protecting...it was all very deeply disturbing.]

I don't want to hear any more about this woman.

[unnaturalpause]

[There's only one problem with trying to avoid topics while talking with James, namely that he rarely ever allows a topic to drop when he's certain he's gaining ground.]

Why? Afraid you'll get similar ideas?

[teratologist]

[Too close to the bone James, she was bristling now.]

What do I have to fear of that? I have my head quite securely on my shoulders, unlike others.

[unnaturalpause]

[Oh this was familiar territory.]

Why have your head and be so normal, when you can be abnormal and know so much, even with a brief life and losing your head? [That word choice was deliberate.]

[teratologist]

[There was posturing and preening going on, all designed to show just how much attention she wasn't paying to him...until that word. Eyes snapped to him, brows furrowed.]

Abnormal....abnormal.

[She tasted the word on her tongue, rolled it over and around, savoring the softness of such an absurdity. Her mind connected it to something.]

Keeping things as they are is how I have kept the peace here. It is the sanctum...the sanctuary of the people.

[The word had been beating around her brain, it found a way to worm itself out and now there were two words burning bright in her mind searching for connection.]

[unnaturalpause]

[He's grinning through the journal, because the more he can use this well, hopefully he can get her back.]

Even a sanctuary needs change. Times change, people change, so should a sanctuary. Even when it's home.

[Because that's what their Sanctuaries were, their homes, weren't they?]

[teratologist]

But some changes are too radical! I've run the Sanctuary...this sanctuary...for too long to let it fall apart.

[But the pace and intensity if her words died off as she realized she had meant them about something completely different. Why was Sanctuary a concept in her mind of real walls and filled with life?]

[unnaturalpause]

You don't need radical changes, for a Sanctuary [Yes that's deliberate too.] to operate. But some are needed. Leaving one for another, leaving old friends behind, they're all changes. But we grow from them.

[And he's glad to hear those changes in her voice, glad he's getting through some how.]

[teratologist]

I...I will think on this.

[She needed to think, her head was starting to hurt now. Like it was over full and ready to split open and spill her memories on the grass.]

[unnaturalpause]

Don't think too long, Helen, a young woman's head rests on you. If you delay too long, she may not have it much longer.

[He's pushing his luck he realizes, but he needs to do this.]

[teratologist]

Yes...yes......so much to think on.
[But there wasn't the strength of earlier, more questioning. But as so many do when in fear, she shut him out. Literally closing the journal on their conversation.]