semantics

You like to argue semantics, but we know what she is (to you).

I remember once, I told her…

"How fine you look when dressed in rage."

I grinned at her, and she just couldn't help returning it, my Goddess of Revenge and Guilt and Malice. She twirled a little red ball through little red fingers as her eyes darkened. A sunny-day-blue dress hem swirled around long black calves as she whipped the little ball with ease into a nightmare that used to make her cry. Angry red jacks ran after the ball in a fiery rage, piercing the creature and ripping it to shreds with abnormal severity, fueled by Alice's burning desires. I could only watch (with pride) as bleeding pieces of a fantastical enemy fluttered over her, yet not daring to touch what she had become. The ball meekly returned to her, and she grinned at me again.

Red red red, that's all she was.

"Hatter awaits you, my dear. He will be terribly angry that you're late," I reminded her gently. With one last glance over her shoulder, (my goddess) Alice races away, her deadly jacks in hand, crimson covering her apron and hands and skin to do away with the Queen's right hand. As I (slowly) faded, I believed in her.


Now, I see her kneel over my severed head, sightless cat eyes staring at the knees of a (broken) girl. I cannot speak, I cannot breathe, and I know my life is flickering, though why it hasn't gone yet, I cannot say. (My goddess) Alice leans over and I feel her gentle hands upon my cheeks, cradling my bloody face to her chest as fond fingers caress my ears, threading in and out of the golden hoop. Her tears burn through my fur like (beautiful) acid. Those soft hands trace the tattoos with infinite care, a testimony that she was not only a Goddess of Revenge and Guilt and Malice. She was a Goddess of Madness, (and it was that Goddess that wound me around a pretty red finger). Only the Goddess of Madness would wail to the heavens for the death of a cat.

She lays my head beside a broken feline body, visible from the very still tail to the grotesque spine that juts from the severed neck. Time is short, but I feel no regret. Anything for her, and I'll be damned if I'm afraid to admit it again.

And I realize as she pulls out a deck of razor-sharp cards that she has roped me in again.

Red red red, that was what she never was. My goddess needs no spell to look fine when dressed in rage.

Alice runs into darkness with a terrible battle cry and fifty-two cards flying, and I wonder if I shall ever see her again.

"Good morning, Cat."

"It is but the dead of night."

"But it shall be morning soon, and it saves time to simply say 'good morning'."

I lounge in my tree, tail swaying luxuriously as Alice twirls the end around her finger.

"I shall be gone soon, Cat," she finally says forlornly. I remain silent, as I knew this day would come eventually. I feel a bit forlorn myself.

"I know."

"What shall I do in the world of reality? What shall I make of it?" Alice muses to the sky. Today, it chooses not to answer.

"Whatever you want," I reply, twitching my tail away from her fingers. Alice casts her gaze up at me.

"I apologize. It is awfully rude of me to leave so soon after dethroning the Queen, isn't it?" she points out. I grin at her.

"I must say, this is the first time you have apologized for rudeness. You must be very upset," I say to her. She smiles sadly once again. Smiles, not grins.

"I am quite upset, Cat. All of the time I have spent in the real world has been most unpleasant. It is disappointingly grey. Even your earring blinds me," she responds. I do not envy her. A colorless world would be most unpleasant.

"I don't suppose I can stay," she sighs, and I leap nimbly down to curl underneath her generous hand that knows all the right places to caress.

"Whatever is stopping you?" I purr.

"Well…we all must grow up sometime, mustn't we?" she asks me helplessly. I cocked a cat brow at her and let my grin widen, ear to ear, just the way she likes.

"Indeed, but that time never must be now when tomorrow will usually do," I remind her. Alice's eyes dart to mine, and her mouth twitches in the smallest of grins.

"You are nothing less than my greatest friend," she says earnestly. And she is nothing less than my greatest treasure, but I am sure that the sky will tell her that, should she ever wish to ask.