"It's a pity." Alice put down her teacup, right on top of, as luck would have it, the Dormouse. It squeaked gently, and rolled over, unfortunately tipping over the young girls tea in the process. The small brown puddle was of really no consequence, however, on a tablecloth so blotched with tea already that the new addition could hardly be noticed. Still, Alice tutted at the dormouse (who was still sleeping) and dabbed at the stain with her apron.
"About what?" replied the Mad Hatter. He stared rather uncertainly at Alice, who was still trying to blot up the mess of tea and now soggy biscuit crumbs and had quite forgotten that she had said something.
""Hmm? Oh, yes. I was just going to say how it was a pity that-"
"A pity? About what?" interrupted the March Hare, who had just woken up and still had crumbs stuck to the side of his face. "The fact that you never answered that riddle? Or that the Cheshire Cat ate that mouse friend of yours? He DID spit him out, you know. Said that he never realized how dirty those little things are." Here he was cut off from saying anything else by a well-aimed crumpet, thrown from the Hatter's general direction.
"AS Alice was saying," the Mad Hatter said loudly.
"Yes, as I was saying. It's a pity, these days. About the things people write of Wonderland, I mean." The Hare tried to interrupt, only to be foiled once more by a crumpet (this one half eaten and decorated with sprinkles). " I just don't understand. These people see something as, well, amazing, as Wonderland, and twist it. Ruin it. It's quite unpleasant to be written an insane murderer, you know." Alice sighed unhappily before continuing. " They really are sad. Both the things that are written, and the people who write them."
"And never a once do they realize what they're actually doing," added the Hatter, his head drooping so low that the large top hat he wore was in eminent danger of tipping onto his plate.
A thick, wet, crumb-sputtering noise was heard from the March Hare, who had evidently tried to say something but instead choked on a few unchewed chunks of pastry. Under the combined stares of Alice and the Hatter, he swallowed (not without effort), and wiped his face on the slumbering Dormouse.
"To Wonderland?" the Mad Hatter said, questioningly raising his tea in the air. Two mismatched cups were lifted in reply, and even the Dormouse woke up, sensing that something important was happening. They drank lukewarm tea to the toast, and Alice leaned back in her overstuffed, slightly decaying armchair. She gazed up at a sky with less blue and more cloud, framed with leaves with less green and more dark, than either of them, perhaps, had had in times past.