Cheshire: Cat Monologue

Alice stared at a caterpillar inching across her shoe. “Then tell me something precise.”

At first, he was just a grin. A crescent of luminous, disembodied teeth floating six feet off the ground. Then, as if remembering he had an audience, the eyes appeared—two emerald slits that blinked slowly, one after the other, like distant lighthouses. Cheshire Cat Monologue

“That’s not helpful.”

“We have an appointment every time you look at the sky and feel too big for your own skin.” The rest of him poured into existence: a striped head, then a torso that shimmered like heat haze, then a tail that ended in a question mark. “Sit down, or don’t. Both are equally uncomfortable.” Alice stared at a caterpillar inching across her shoe

Alice found him on a branch of the old Twistwood Tree, which grew in impossible directions—some limbs pointing down into the earth, others curling into their own knots like thoughts trying to escape. Then, as if remembering he had an audience,

The Cat’s tail curled into a spiral. “Ah, but that’s the secret, isn’t it? There is no wrong fork. There are only forks you haven’t invented yet. The Queen is terrified of that truth. That’s why she needs rules. Rules are just panic, embossed.”