Windows Took Over/29

Alice, much like the girl next door, possessed no innate power—this she knew all the way to her very fingertips.

With a soft metallic relief, the embarrassed identity—⊥Iᗺᗺ∀ꓤ ˙M—on the brass plate atop the door shied away into a blur.

The letters soon reconfigured into a scholarly, hopeful title: A Hundred Ways to Escape—as though Wonderland, somehow apologetic, had conjured a long wand of possibilities, so far-reaching that its final spark might not have found Alice.    (Lumos… Nox instead.)

“What a book without illustrations,” she murmured. “All I lack is speed-reading—that’s simple—anything to outrun the crawl among the bad sectors.”

In the corner, along the ridgepole, an empty, neckless bottle reclined in perfect idleness, its label having chosen to blank itself, too nervous to volunteer another DRINK ME-style chaos.

Meanwhile, the window, rousing from a lazy drowse, blinked once… then twice.

A legend—short but precise—flickered into existence:

Lumos. Solis. — EXIT WINDOW —

A soft sigh slipped from Alice’s lips. “Alright… though I never quite know what world they’ll open into next.”

Lumos...Maxima...

Lumos...Solis...

Coming up next--

The Buffered Hill

No Rabbit Hole,

No Mouse's Burrow

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.