"I have a question," the Gryphon says. He hisses words around his narrow tongue and wraps the world around his profile; he hangs the imaginusphere from his hooked beak, and it sways there, heavy as a mouthful of meat. Wonderland is still a malleable place. It still responds to the impossible and the beautiful. Perching on the fist of a black mountain, the Gryphon makes mountains real, preserves the idea of them, guards the memory by remembering it. Bloody gums and amnesia on the ledge below, the Cheshire Cat only leers.
"I have a tail," the Cat retorts. "And two ears. And four paws. And thirty vertebrae, if you include the tail, which I did just a moment ago, do you recall that, so this statement is cyclical, it's clever, what was your question again."
"Is Wonderland a ship?" asks the Gryphon. "Are we going somewhere?"
Brass wings and a scimitar beak, the Cat thinks. Raised for war against the sky. And the Gryphon has blue eyes. A born sympathizer.
"That's two," the Cat says. "Questions."
And the Gryphon blinks blue eyes, or the sun winks out.
"But perhaps it is," the Cat replies, winding sideways, scissor paws across the blank stone as it begins to rumble, as fine cracks pour upward from the belly of the world. "But perhaps we are."
Casting no shadow, the Gryphon is a long obelisk atop curious minds lost in dark places.
"Don't look up," the Cat says. "The sky is on fire."
"Oh, Alice," the Gryphon sighs, and ash falls like night.