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I sat outside ponderously. I had awoken from a night terror that I could not recall, but knew that it involved sitting outside in a singularly ponderous manner. Hence the sitting outside (ponderously), staring at a cup of tea as though drinking of it might solve my provoking dilemma. Steam floated off of the rim in whisps, but I had not the patience to wait for it to cool. However, as I raised the cup to my lips, I heard a slightish splashing sound. A curious noise indeed; I looked round at the night, but saw only the blue moonlight permeating the leaves of the trees in cerulean, turning their boughs deep shades of lapis. It gave the tatter edges of the windmill some drama, outlining each crack as though in a story book. The air was quite chillsome with the absence of the sun, and it was all very pleasing to the eye.
I was jolted out of my thoughts by a dull thudding noise: I peered round the edge of the table to spy the teapot upended onto the carpet, lying on its side. As it was full of water, the wind couldn't have tipped it. I suspected foul play; surveying the mostly-bare tables, I found that my chiefest weapon was a candle-stick, which sat well with me as I judged fire the most destructive thing besides. Creeping forwards with the glow of the wick to guide me, I fancied that my night terror was coming back to my memory... But when some thing inside of the teapot moved, all thoughts of dreams were immediatelike pushed to the back of my mind. I knelt upon the ground, and no sooner had my knee touched the carpet than I heard a squeakish scream that caused me to flinch back. A white dormouse in a threadbare dress backed further into the teapot. She was quite provoked, words rattling off in a feverish pitch, and I paused to listen.
"And what right have you, scarin' me? I thought you were a right ghost! You've painted yourself like one, to be sure... A ghoul or some other ghastly thing from the grave!" She halted her tirade to cough, spitting water.
"I'm not any ghoul," I said consolingly, noting her drenched and mimsy (miserable and flimsy, that is) state. I wondered had she been near to drowning.
"Supposin' you were, though? This would be a locked-room murder, like how that Overlander Poe wrote on." The dormouse poked her head out of the rim of the teapot (now resembling more closely the entrance of a cave) and looked round. "Or a locked... Open... where ever this is, anyhow."
"Are you ignorant of this place, or this province?" I asked, surprised. She crossed her arms, holding her pink nose up in the air.
"I'm aware of both," claimed the mouse. "This is Witzend, isn't it? Home to the clan of mad hatters."
"That's correct," I heard myself say. "Although we prefer to be called Hightopps." This gave her pause; she rubbed one of her nicked ears nervously.
"I'm sorry," she said, voice hushed. "I didn't mean to mention... Well, I didn't suppose any one had..." She trailed off.
"It's perfectly all right," I heard myself answer good-naturedly. "I don't suppose you would like some thing to drink?"
"I'd love that," the mouse said with gratitude, then turned a tad shamefaced. "That's why I was in the teakettle in the first place, y'see. I wanted a drink, but I fell in. I've been travellin' for a while, an' the last river was a ways back."
"It sounds as though you've had an adventure," I said, offering my hand for her to ride in. "Did you not travel with any one?" She shook water droplets off of herself and stepped into my palm, jutting out her chest.
"No, an' I don't need to. Mallymkun the Marvellous can hold 'er own, thanks very much." She gave a sharp, final nod. I theorised that she was only a marvellous storyteller and would forget the title within the hour. As she told her story, I was proven correct.
"I'm from Queast. Seems like a properly long way away now," Mallymkun explained, sipping from her cup of tea (a thimble, in fact, for the time being). "An' I was with my family in our den, just livin' my life, when some concoction started fallin' from the sky-- like frozen rain, but wetter than that, like. It started buildin' up in the plains, all frigid and deep and murky. It hurt when it struck you. Some bloodhound messenger from Grampas Bluffs, you know those lot, he gave the news us, and he said somethin' about that monstrous Red Queen takin' over Underland. Overthrowing Her Majesty the White Queen. My family were all shiverin' with the fright of it. So I thought to myself, 'I can't live here any more.' I said good-bye to my family and they wished me luck in these curious times. The bloodhound offered to take me to Marmoreal-- a nice one, he was-- for safety. I tried taking a shortcut through the White Castle, but these red armoured cards were stompin' around patrolling the perimeter. They had pikes, I swear it, they had proper weapons. Looked scary as any thing. So I sort of skirted round an' got into the castle town, but Marmoreal was entirely deserted. A right ghost town. So I'm walkin' round gawking at the eeriness of it, an' what do I see? A horrible beast, one of 'is curvin' talons as big as myself! Oh, you should have seen it, Hatter-- white fur with black spots mottlin' it, his gash of a mouth all over teeth, rheumy eyes, a fairly heart-shaped nose, a swiping tail. A fright, he was. An' I said to myself, 'Well, he'd better hope 'e doesn't come within a metre of me!' I was armed, you see, with a dead twig all gnawed right sharp. A mighty annoyin' thorn in that thing's poor paw. An' says I to a frog next to me all quakin' with fear what had come out of his house to see the source of the commotion, 'You'd better hold me back, mate! Look 'ere, I'll tussle that rotter, I'll take 'im to the ground if need be!' I learned from some of the locals that Marmoreal was taken by the Red Queen an' her army--" Here Mallymkun grimaced at the word. "--and paradin' that beast, the Bandersnatch they called him, was a show of force, like. Well, I'm not gettin' into the politics of it. I needed to get to somewhere safe. So I dodged Gummer's Slough, that right big swamp, and cut through the Tulgey Wood. An'... now I'm here." Mallymkun gave a little grin. I wondered would she perish of asphyxia by the time the night was over, but it seemed an uncouth thing to say, so I refrained from mentioning it. "So that's me," she said, and there was a profound silence as we both drank our tea. I suppose we both were thinking, as it is difficult to leave off thinking, I've found. I, for one, thought on my night-terror. I was certain that it had involved fire. I noted the little paint on my teacup, in the pattern of splendid and opulent flowers, and the sight drew a little familiarity from me. Curious.
"I 'ave a proposition for you, Hatter," Mallymkun piped up abruptish.
"And what might that be?" I asked, intrigued. Mallymkun had turned her gaze upon the sugar-bowl.
"You give some more sugar-cubes me, an' I'll let you talk out your problem-- You know, why you're sittin' up so late. Be a doctor of humours, like."
"A doctor of humours?" I repeated, uncomprehending.
"I'm supposin' melancholic for you. That's your humour." That spurred my memory: it was an Overlandish theory. People could be of four different temperaments, or "humours," referring to processes of the body. One could be choleric, melancholic, sanguine, or phlegmatic. I believed that I had learned of it when I myself was in Marmoreal...
"Where did you learn medicine?" I asked, impressed.
"Never mind where I learned it," said Mallymkun, waving her paw dismissively. "Have we got a deal?" I considered the weighed benefits and detractions of a hyper-active mouse against a sleepless night.
"We do," I replied. Mallymkun sat back against an unlit candle, taking a lazy sip of her tea as though she were watching a theatre show.
"Go on, then," she said.
"I believe it involved... flowers and fire. There was a grove of flowers, you see-- lilies, I believe, some thing like that-- but they were eaten by a blaze. They cried out as they burned. They told me to save them, but I was unable to move." Mallymkun tutted, advancing and leaning her shoulder against my cup.
"Sound a bit mad, don't you? Are you sure you're all right?"
"I believe I am," I said, stirring another sugar-cube into my cup (which I was decidedly not going to drink from, having been put off my tea). Mallymkum folded her paws behind her back, nose twitching in thought.
"Are you sure nothing caused the fire? There wasn't... Wasn't a dragon, like?"
"No, I don't believe so. You have quite the imagination," I heard myself say; I felt myself smile, a furious cold rattling through my body like the odd half-frozen rain infecting the plains. Mallymkun cut her eyes at me.
"If you say so," she said, and yawned mightily, stretching her thin arms over her head. "Say, do you think I could stay here for the night? Would it be too much of a bother?" Both of my hands were wrapped round my cup so tightly my knuckles showed whiter than usual, and still I smiled.
"No, of course not. You must awaken Thackery, how ever, and tell him that I allowed you to stay. He is a hare-- his bedroom is the second door of the second floor. You can't miss it."
"Thanks, Hatter," said Mallymkun, and hesitated. "Or do you want me to call you Mr. Hightopp?"
"Just 'Hatter' would be fine, thank you," I replied, holding my teacup even more forcefully, smiling more forcefully. With that, Mallymkun stole a few sugar-cubes from the bowl and scampered past a bloomed lilac bush and into the windmill. I hoped that Thackery's awakening wouldn't be too rude.
The cold still gripped me, morphing into heat as I paused at the door; my hand trembled as I reached to push it aside. I withdrew it and felt a little better.
Such was my disposition that I was inclined to stay a while amongst the darkness and dying lilacs. They waved their brownish blooms in the breeze as though saying good-bye. And I supposed that I should have been doing the same; "But I don't very much like it," I thought as I shook. "This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark."
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