Alice and Hatter had been wandering along the cliff bottom for somewhere between ten minutes and ten hours. The exact time was hard to pinpoint because their conversations kept them most diverted, and it was only during the painful lulls, when Hatter trailed off from some anecdote (like the one about Mally chasing Thackery halfway up Marmoreal's front gates with a tea cozy), recalling his own misery, that they again felt the futile nature of their quest. Alice always had another random story from her adventures in China ready, though, so they quickly forgot they had ever paused.
Hatter at one point tried to ask about the bandages peeking up from under Alice's dress, but she had looked at him so archly when he merely glanced at them that he assumed they had some sort of fashion purpose and it was always best never to question a lady on her clothing choice. Besides, they matched the bandages on his hands quite wonderfully. Symmetry in certain areas, Hatter mused, is surprisingly nice.
However, after Alice had finished carefully explaining how chopsticks were supposed to work, and lamenting she could think of twenty other ways they were far more useful than as utensils (to which Hatter added twelve and a half more), she had to admit they might have a slight problem.
"I'm beginning to think we're approaching this the wrong way."
"Should we be walking backwards then?"
"Not what I meant." Alice tried to keep the smirk off her face but was unsuccessful. "Still I do not think we should stray too far from the cliff either." She looked to their right, away from the solid cliff walls and towards the sprawling fog. Silhouetted shapes rose up occasionally, hinting at twisted trees, and every so often the sound of rushing water gurgled up. However, when Alice focused on the sound it became less like water and more like voices, whispering, laughing, crying voices winding their way through the fog. She was beginning to think the noise came from the fog itself, something about the way it drifted and curled – in a bemused yet lazy manner- was very much the act of a sentient being. Or beings.
"Keeps her head on her shoulders this one," a voice drawled.
Alice and Hatter spun around to see a weasel, though his dark coat was oddly striped and his limbs were too long and thin to be a true weasel, surveying them from his perch in the air. The weasel grinned at them then his head vanished, reappearing between his paws where he batted it around lazily. "As for me I prefer mine a bit looser, flexibility is a must down here." He shrugged, "and while you're both delightfully loose as humans go, one more than the other," golden eyes lingered on Hatter, "you simply won't cut it for permanent residents."
Hatter had frozen, stuck deciding between whether to draw his sword or throw a tea cup at the creature; at which point he had realized he hadn't a tea cup on hand and was then completely distracted by trying to discern how he had ever set off from Marmoreal in the first place without at least one tea cup. Alice reacted a little better, though she had to admit she expected a tea cup to hit the wispy creature as well (it was the proper response to all things grinning and vapory wasn't it?), and asked, "are you proposing you know a way out of here?"
"Oh I know several ways. A myriad of ways. Ways that lead to other ways that lead to ways yet unknown. So many ways there are not enough ways to describe where they all lead to." He faded out then back in, head reattached though all of him was still lounging in midair. "And, for the elixirs you carry, I will take you the way you need."
"Elixirs?" Hatter asked.
Alice nodded slowly, "Mirana gave me a few potions in case of …an emergency."
"An emergency?" There had been a pause in her words which made Hatter wary, pauses could be full of anything if you paid attention to them. There had been quite a few pauses, in his experience, that had contained nasty surprises for later on that, if he had but listened to them, could have been avoided. Besides, every time Thackery paused mid-speech it meant he was about to hurl something through the air so pauses were good things to watch out for, just as a general rule.
For a moment Alice did not meet his eyes then her shoulders straightened and she smiled up at him, "yes an emergency. Just like the one we find ourselves in now." She carefully removed the two vials from the bag, holding them just out of reach of the weasel's floating paws. "These potions for our way up, that is the deal?"
"Right you are."
Hatter frowned at the creature, "I did not think your kind were prone to acts of kindness."
The weasels grin grew, "my offer is not at all kind."
"Then we are taking a gamble?" Hatter fiddled with a few stray hat pins on his jacket sleeve, "not that I'm against a risk or two. Quite for them actually. Mystery invigorates one just so, you know? But still I do prefer not to agree to anything or with anything that vaporizes so readily. Your agreements never seem to be as transparent as the rest of you."
Alice, however, had already placed her bet. She tilted the vials into the outstretched paws and tried not to look worried. It is still more likely, she told herself, that Hatter and I make it back to the White Court within a day once we are back in Underland proper than for us to make it out of here in two days time.
The weasel's paws disappeared and the vials with them. Though his paws came back momentarily, attached to his arms once again, the elixirs were nowhere to be seen. "Pleasure doing business with you." He lazily drifted toward the cliff wall, "now for my side of the deal." Once his body hit the rocky wall the smoky creature disappeared entirely and for a moment Alice and Hatter feared he had left them. After a few moments, however, two golden eyes appeared on the rock, glittering gleefully at them. Wispy stripes began to scuttle across the rock in crooked lines so that when they stopped something like a wrought-iron gate appeared etched into the cliff. The gate turned on paw-like hinges and opened out towards a very amazed Alice and slightly bewildered Hatter.
"Well," a sharp-toothed grin appeared in the middle of the door, "up you go."
Hatter was the first to peek through doorway, marveling at the meandering staircase that started from the threshold and continued upwards in a most dimensionally confusing manner. He offered Alice his arm, "stairs like these are crafted with such skill I feel like we must climb them or we'd be doing them a great injustice."
"Well for the sake of the stairs then."
Hatter chuckled, "and perhaps a few other sakes as well."
"One or two," Alice conceded.
"But who's counting?"
Alice could feel Hatter's worried laughter through his arm, and she drew in a bit closer to his side. "Not these stairs, for sure. There's too many for proper numbers so we'd best be heading up." A nod of the hat signaled he agreed and they began their climb.
"One more thing." They both looked back at the weasel-door, "If you have the chance," his teeth took on a threatening angle, "do tell Chessur to wipe that insufferable grin off his mangy, deserting face."
Oh Alice, you shouldn't lie to your Hatter, it's not good to do.
Also, I always thought Chess came from a stock of creatures much more sinister than he himself was - perhaps that's taking too much of a liberty though, let me know what you think?(That's you amazing readers and reviewers!)
Cheers,
-Savi
