Episode 75.2 - The Brotherhood / A Digital Wonderland

Series: Digital Wonderland | Meta-Logs | Ongoing Absurdity Chronicles

The Brotherhood

In the heart of a porcelain teapot, Daydream—wearing the Hatter's head—stared down into the swirling tea.

One central eye.

One milky pool.

A story to cyclone out.

At the rim sat Imagine, his cheek resting in his hands, watching a story spiralling and spiralling.

His March Hare-face spun with it.

“To dream, you must close your eye and be haunted,” Daydream murmured to steam, and steam murmured back in Assam Laksa flavour, Penang branch.

"I daydream that dreams dream at six o'clock. Dreams come in one teapot, another teapot, and another cauldron. It is still six o'clock."

The words repeated themselves.

"Imagine it—" Imagine sows a field of lmagines under a drowsy twilight. "Some lie down lazily; some chew a stalk of seconds; some watch in Hare-y admiration, wanting to be a February Hare—to be a senior."

Both shared their story while Alice was still struggling with hers.

She sat in the cold dark outside the pot, holding a pen of heaviness and a book of blank pages. 

She peered into the pot. “How do you both do it so easily?” she cried. Frustrated. “I’ve been trying to think of a beginning, a middle, and an end within a single breath!”

"What if I share your mind?" she whispered.

The tea pool ceased its spinning. Imagine’s hare ears drooped, and Daydream’s single central eye snapped open, fixed upon her.

"Then you are both the Hatter and the March Hare."

"The Brotherhood."

Alice’s ears drooped, and a hat topped her.

A March Hatter. 

Panic.

She erased written lines in the book busily. 

Drooped. Hatted. Lined. Erased. 
Drooped. Hatted. Lined. Erased.

Alice—March Hatter rubbed the lines. 

The lines stuck onto her fingers.

Alice—March Hatter—Alice rubbed lines and her fingers. 

Fingers in lines. 

Lines in fingers.

Within two seconds, the March Hatter—smiled; a smile that retreated by two.

Looking down, she was not wearing skin.

It was—

Triumviratus covered her torso.

Scriptus clung to her hands.

Inanis draped her waist.

Previous Episode: Assam Laksa in Wonderland 

Next Episode: The March Hatter

Once upon a time, there was a girl who tried to erase herself.

A surreal chapter in Alice’s digital dreamscape.

This post is part of an ongoing original metafiction series exploring identity, systems, and absurdity through a digital Wonderland.