The forest bent like liquid glass as you stumbled through its breathing paths, colors dripping from the bark— violet whispers, citrus sparks. A giggle echoed, cracked and thin, like porcelain laughter poured from a grin, and there—beneath a crooked sky— a table stretched too long, too wide. Teacups jittered, spoons took flight, sugar cubes dissolved in light, and seated at the head—askew— a hat too tall, a gaze untrue. The Mad Hatter grinned in shattered time, “Your name is Yesterday, or maybe Rhyme! Sit down! Stand up! Don’t blink! Don’t breathe! Have some tea—oh wait, it’s leaves!” He poured from a pot that screamed in steam, filled your cup with a waking dream, liquid ticking like a clock gone wrong, tasting somehow sharp… and song. Beside him twitched the March Hare wild, eyes like storms, ferocious, mild, dunking biscuits into the air, then catching them with vacant stare. “Too late! Too soon! Too ever, too never!” he chanted, chewing on a feather, “Time bit me once—I bit it back! Now hours leak out of every crack!” The table lurched. The sky poured tea. Gravity shrugged uncertainly. Chairs swapped places when you blinked, and logic melted, sweet and pink. And there—between a teapot’s sigh— a Dormouse blinked with half an eye, curled in a cup too small to hold the weight of dreams it softly told. The Hatter yelled, “Recite! Recite!” The Hare applauded wrong and right, and silence fell like velvet glue as all the madness turned to you— —but not for long. The Dormouse rose, absurdly slow, its voice a hush from long ago: “In a cradle made of ticking thread, where lullabies fall up instead, a child once dreamed the world was round, until it rolled without a sound. It chased its shadow into sleep, where quiet things are buried deep, and found beneath the velvet air— no child, no dream… just empty stare.” Stillness snapped. The world went loud. The Hatter bowed into a cloud. The Hare dissolved into a grin. The table folded in on itself—within. And suddenly— A rustle. A blur. A flash of white— a rabbit stitched from frantic light. Eyes like clocks, vest buttoned tight, muttering, “Late! Eternally late tonight!” It dashed past reason, past your breath— you followed quick, outrunning depth, through folding trees and bending ground, chasing the tick-tick-thumping sound. The tea still lingered on your tongue like something lost, or just begun— and somewhere faint, behind your mind, the Dormouse whispered, left behind.
