This is the tongue-firmly-in-cheek story of an unconventional romance between two of Wonderland's most famous occupants. This comic prides itself on chucking logic out the window and we were never inclined to make anything polished out of it. So if you're expecting professionalism, look elsewhere! We amuse ourselves by throwing everything *and* the kitchen sink into this comic, after all. One moment you'll be reading a slapstick scene that involves invisible purple brain-squirrels and a moment later the story jumps the shark and goes downright perspicacious on you. Anything goes here...and probably will. Oh yes, this comic has more issues than the National Geographic. But what does it not have? Believable, well-thought out characters? Nope! Polished writing and clever prose? Nope! Brilliant plot twists? Nope! A coherent storyline? HA. Thoughtful insights on life? LOLNOPE. Look, this comic has always been a few grapes short of a fruit basket. We know that. But that's probably why it has earned such a following over the years. That following is why I fought so hard to keep it alive when the end nearly came, and that following is why the tea party has begun once more here on Tumblr. The fans who stood behind this beast - and therefore saved it from demise - are probably quite a loony bunch themselves. So this is for you, ya sparkly bunch of fruit loops. ~ Rain Meet the WCMI Art Team here! http://curiousinsane.livejournal.com/63166.html ***Follow the address below to navigate all segments in chronological order! This method is highly recommended and will make things MUCH easier for you!*** ---> http://zippitydodah27.livejournal.com/33908.html <--- Let it be known that WE LOVE COMMENTS! Don't just reblog, say something too! body, a:hover {cursor: url(http://cur.cursors-4u.net/food/foo-5/foo440.cur), progress !important;}
Inspired by a gloriously cinematic scene from season 4 of AHS where a woman's haunting song unwittingly summons a dark spirit in the form of a man wearing 1800's Victorian garb. Her mesmerizing voice lures him through the night like a moth to a flame in one of the best scenes to ever come out of AHS.
Click to see a HD video of that creepy, beautiful, mystical, atmospheric, moody, sexy and overall awesome scene. In time Reginald would follow Alice's voice out of his world, too....
This piece was done by RamblinQuixotic, who will be joining the WCMI art team as of this week! Everyone go stampede her DA...there's a good fandom. *pat*
Pub 33 is a sort of 'in between' social gathering point for any and all characters in the WCMI/Disney universe. It's not the last time the pub will be utilized in the comic, and yes - the pub's name is a wink at a certain exclusive Disneyland club.
Some elements were cut from the Pub scene for time. These include Rafiki showing up to take a swing at Reg with his staff and impart wisdom...at which point Jack would excitedly yell "A monkey! Shoot it, see if it's undead!" and one of the Tremaine sisters appearing as the bartender. We also toyed with putting Simba at the bar with the men...no really....and he'd be like "present her with a freshly killed zebra!" or something stupid like that. We cut it because while WCMI may be ridiculous it's not THAT ridiculous!
Lastly, the fellow that Genie is greeting with such delight is exactly who you all think it is. Like Elvis, he was away from his home world a long time and has been sorely missed by old friends. That's our little tribute.
The guy that Genie almost mows down is Mark, the artist who did this scene. The irate gal yelling at him is me, because dammit Mark you're not supposed to be in there GTFO!
Alice stood on the porch to wait for Reginald in the gathering dusk.
It was no secret that this strange world was positively brimming with a wide range of fantastic (and occasionally terrifying) creatures. The wilds beyond her town played host to golden deer, bread and butterflies, burburling-snitchseekers and green forest pigs. The seaside was home to the narwalaby and the lethal sandshark; less alarming than the sandsharks were the elegant seahorses that could serve as aquatic mounts. A herd of rainbow-striped zebras with tiny flightless wings made an occasional appearance in a corn field not far from here, and in her own vegetable garden Alice sometimes found finger-length silver snakes that sang as sweetly as nightingales.
But Alice was a unique sort, and in a world where one could find a living unicorn it was the common fireflies that she liked best.
She had seen these phosphorescent insects countless times in her own world. Many a summer evening had seen her chasing them about until one of her parents chastised her for being too rowdy. The fireflies that she found in this world were nearly identical to the ones back home, save one glaring difference: color. Here, in this fantastic place, the fireflies glowed in every color imaginable.
Alice now stood on the porch and watched the darting points of living light flit over her yard in hues of pink, green, lavender, red, electric blue, orange, turquoise and a strange iridescent blue-black. She knew she would miss them when she went home to England.
Reginald arrived on foot no less than thirty minutes after she called for him. He came at a sprint with a look of panic to him and she turned her head on instinct to see if something was pursuing him. Nothing was, of course…well, other than his shadow. She half expected him to crash full tilt into her picket fence (he did once, and performed a very impressive headlong flip over it into the grass) but he stopped himself short at the open gate.
She continued to watch. He seemed unaware of her presence.
Reginald looked at the open gate before him and scowled at it dramatically. He stepped to the left and neatly vaulted over the fence next to the offending gate…only to be instantly and hopelessly distracted by the kaleidoscopic firefly swarm. The brightly colored insects seemed to congregate around him, perhaps attracted to the peacock blue of his vest. Several settled down to perch on his upheld hands.
Alice felt oddly jealous. Other people could walk right through a swarm or cup one in a hand, but not her. The fireflies always avoided her, and she didn’t know why.
But then again, maybe she did. You’re not part of this world, remember? Perhaps they know.
She cleared her throat to get his attention.
He spun on his heel at the small sound, agitating the firefly swarm into an absolute delirium of color that swirled around him once and was gone, dispersing elsewhere over the yard. He saw her then, so still and quiet on the porch. In a split second his jaunty demeanor was gone, his focus fixating on her so intently that a nervous little jolt prickled through her, like so much static electricity. He crossed the yard to join her on the porch, stopping to toss his coat over a railing. One bright blue firefly was still roosting on his sleeve.
“You require my presence, cricket?”
“I do.”
“Well, here I am.” Reginald proceeded to strip off his gloves and pocket them, and she tried very hard not to stare at his hands.
“Thank you for coming. I - ”
“We can resume where we left off when your phone interrupted us, if you like.”
She paled.
“Or we’ll not.” He reiterated, cracking a smile at her sudden deer-in-headlights expression. “Perhaps you’d rather have a seat on the swing over there….” One hand gestured toward the empty porch swing. “…and in my opinion firefly-watching still sounds like an excellent idea. Although…” he lifted his wrist to peer closely at the glowing bug that was still latched onto his sleeve, “this one seems to be rather taken with me."
“Reginald…”
“Yes?”
“I’ve made a decision.” she stated this coolly, turning her rehearsed speech over in her mind. She would say this, and then she would say this, and then….
He looked up from the firefly on his sleeve and met her gaze steadily, saying nothing. The insect’s luminescent blue glow was reflected in his eyes.
…and then her meticulously pre-worded script collapsed and dissolved along with any thought as to how this was supposed to go or what she was supposed to say. She opened her mouth to speak anyway, and what came out of it what was not what she had planned for at all.
“I want to be with you.”
Reginald’s response to this was very anti-climatic, all things considered. All he did was arch an eyebrow and turn about to face her fully with an expression denoting mild surprise. He did not do a double-take or take on the appearance of someone who’d been run over by a carriage. Neither did he cross the porch in three strides and try to sweep her into his arms as she thought he might - he later told her that it was only willpower that kept him from doing exactly that, and she in turn told him that she would not have refused him if he had.
“Well, then,” he said after a heavy pause, “it seems that you and I are finally on the same page then. What would you have us do about that?”
“Nothing,” she asserted quickly, trying to reverse the damage.
He blinked.
“Yes, you heard correctly. I’ll have you as a friend, but nothing more than that.”
He blinked again and suddenly seemed more interested in watching the firefly cling precariously to the tip of his thumb.
“I am not from here, Reginald. I was not born here, I was not raised here, and I did not intend my stay to be permanent. I am only a visitor, and you know what everyone here says about visitors.”
“Oh, of course.” he said, looking remarkably untroubled by the conversation. “They always go back.”
So he does understand…good, that’s good. “Yes! They always do - we always do, I should say. There has never been one who spent a lifetime here, did you know that? I don’t see how I will be any different, and I have family in England, after all. So it’s best that we settle this now and agree to remain friends and only friends, yes? It’s…it’s very good advice.” She was talking too fast, babbling really, but didn’t care.
He drew himself up to full height at her speech and put on a playfully defensive air, firefly still attached to fingertip. “Well, my father did warn me about women like you when I was a lad. ‘Heartbreakers, the whole lot of them!’ he told me. He never would have approved of you, indubitably. But I suspect that your parents would hardly approve of me, either.”
“Tsh, my father would set the dogs on you at first sight. But...you do understand, then?”
“Oh, I emphatically understand. It is good advice.”
“So we are in agreement, the –“
“No, we are not.”
She stared at him in dismay.
“Please allow me to explain why. Firstly, are you familiar with Tulgey Wood?”
She nodded.
“Well, that forest contains a rather obscene number of unexplored paths that lead nowhere in particular. Some of them are safe, some are not. When I was a boy I made a point of investigating whatever paths I could find, much to my poor mother’s woe and worry.” His hands danced in animated emphasis, the firefly hanging on for dear life.
“Yes, quite a few of those paths did culminate in dead ends. I ended up in a briar tangle at the end of one such path and spent the rest of the day extracting thorns from places…ah…places best left unmentioned. Another one of my explorations saw me being chased back up the path by an angry vampire mole - it made off with my left shoe, actually - and yet another path almost dumped me over a cliff and gave me a fright to last a week. Nevertheless I’ve no regrets on taking those paths, because they were gloriously scenic and a joy to explore. In short, they were completely worth the unpleasant outcome.”
He sidled closer. Too close, she thought…and then she thought that he wasn’t nearly close enough
“In fact, I would trot myself right back down those paths if I ever found them again, even though I know from past experience how badly it would end. Because the walk was worth it, and I’ve a hunch that you would be worth it…so very worth it that I don’t really give a gribber’s spotted arse as to how it will or will not conclude.”
The wheedling voice in her head piped up. Launching is still a valid option, dear.
“Now, you have made a very brave and honest admission,” he soothed, his tone coming down a notch. “and I think it’s only fair that I make one of my own.”
Alice started to speak but he held up a hand to hush her.
“When this whole kerfluffle began I set after you solely because I saw you as a challenge - a tough nut to crack, as the saying goes. I’ve never been told no before, at least not with such spectacular wit and aplomb, and I do like a challenge. I courted you not because I wanted you, exactly; but because I wanted to win.”
Her face began to ice over dangerously at his words, so he hurried on.
“You quickly – painfully at times, might I add - enlightened me to the fact that you are different from the average woman. With them that old adage ‘what you see is what you get’ wasn’t far from the truth, but not so with you. I wanted very much to puzzle you out, if only for my own amusement. I was curious, that’s all. But then I came to know you as best you would allow, and it all ran away with me like an ill-behaved horse. I just didn’t care to stop it, I suppose. My curiosity turn into intrigue, intrigue became enthrallment, and then…well…”
He held his hands out beseechingly, palms upturned. “Here I stand hopelessly bewitched with some four months gone, still trying to crack that nut. In the beginning I just wanted to win, Cricket…but now I just want.”
Now it was her turn to look befuddled.
“There are levels to you that would rival any ocean, if it’s not too ludicrously poetic of me to say so,” he continued. I also think that there’s a marvelous, colorful fish in there somewhere, one that will absolutely astonish me if I can find it, if you’ll just let me look for it…” He took another half-step nearer and something in his gaze seemed to shift, unnervingly so.
Don’t look at me like that -
“You might drown,” she retorted fiercely, scrambling to relocate her wits. "And that was too ludicrously poetic."
“I am willing to take that risk. You still keep me awake at night, Alice….”
Alice blinked at the use of her name instead of the ‘cricket’ moniker, scouring through her memory cache in search of another occasion where he had spoken her name. She did not find one. You’ve been keeping me awake at night too as of late, she wanted to say, but didn’t. She also wanted – needed, actually - to scoot away from him for sanity’s sake, but didn’t do that either.
“You’re not backing away,” he observed. “That might be a first.”
“I am not going to.”
“Oh? You’ve always backed away from me before. In more ways than one, at that. ”
Because I don’t want to -
“Because I want you to back away this time.”
…and just like that, she broke him.
Reginald seemed to wither and shrink where he stood before her, all of his ardent mettle leaving him like air escaping a popped balloon. He opened his mouth to speak and said nothing at all, his confidence lost and gone. All at once he reminded her of a confused schoolboy who had been called into the principal’s office and was in a panic to remember what awful offense he had committed.
In that moment of composure loss, that pleading instant of I don’t know what to do anymore, he started to reach for her.
Alice did not say anything or make any move to avoid that reach, because she suddenly didn’t have the heart or the will to refuse it. Reginald did not know this, of course. He stopped himself in mid-reach and dropped his fidgeting hands, certain of rejection, and so the moment was lost.
…and then he took a spacious step backward and swept his hat off, tipping it to her in a courteous bow.
“As you wish,” he said.
Don’t, she thought. But you must. It’s good advice.
He took another step back, and the porch suddenly seemed much too big for Alice’s liking.
“Reginald.” Her voice quivered.
He looked at her questioningly and a little hopefully, hat still in hand.
“I am going inside now." (I must, she thought, because my heart is trying very hard to overrule my mind right now, and if I don’t go inside I may act the stupid gint and make a poor decision.) "Thank you for understanding…and…I’m sorry, I truly am.”
She turned away, then paused.
“You’re a good man. If I’ve any regret, it’s that I once thought of you as anything less than that.”
She went inside and shut the door without looking back at him.
Don’t leave, knock on the door and insist that we talk, please convince me, I want to be convinced -
Several minutes passed. Alice slipped to the window to risk a peek through the rose-hued curtain.
He was still there, albeit with his back to her, and he appeared to be in the midst of a hushed conversation with someone on her porch swing. Alice took note of two things; firstly, the swing was empty. Reginald was animatedly conversing with thin air, or so it seemed. Secondly, whatever he was talking to appeared to be winning the argument. How one could lose a debate with themselves was certainly an interesting notion, but Alice had other concerns at the present.
Reginald flinched away from the swing with a wounded expression, clearly distressed by something the…nothing…had said to him. He looked so hurt that Alice felt a ridiculous urge to fly out and scold the empty swing for being cruel. She watched him cross the porch and come to a pause at her door, hovering there with one hand raised as if thinking to knock. He looked terribly tired in that moment, and terribly old for some mystifying reason. She had never thought him older than thirty, but now she wondered.
She waited.
His hand fell, along with her heart.
Reginald suddenly turned on his heel and swept off the porch, grabbing his coat off the railing in passing. Down the yard path he walked with none of his characteristic saunter, his eyes downcast and shoulders low. She watched him round the end of the fence and fade away down the lane…and then she understood with perfect clarity. This was defeat personified.
He had given up on her.
As you wish.
Alice dropped the curtain and leaned against the wall, waiting for the sense of relief that didn’t come. Oh, it would come soon, she was sure of that. It had to come, because what else was there? The relief would come in due time, because her decision, however unpleasant, really was for the best. Not just for him, but for her as well. His heart was not the only one at stake here, after all.
“It is for the best.” she said to nobody.
That’s right, the voice hissed in the back of her mind. You just keep telling yourself that. You tell yourself that again and again and again.
“Why?” she muttered, knowing and not particularly caring that she was talking to herself.
Because even the most foolish lie will sound like truth if it is repeated often enough
It's good to hear your voice, you know it's been so long
If I don't get your call then everything goes wrong
I want to tell you something you've known all along
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone
"Did it work, dear?" The Hare's dulcet welsh accent quipped across the phone line.
"What?" Alice blinked rapidly, trying to gather her scattered wits. Her heart had lodged itself high in her throat and was reluctant to budge, while her arm still prickled where Reginald's ungloved hand had touched her. He had removed his gloves before he reached for her, she was candidly aware of that. Some women needed to be handled with kid gloves as the expression goes, but he already knew that the reverse was true for -
"Are you there, dear?"
"Ears? Yes, yes. Did what work? Did....oh."
"I saw the two of you pass by my yard and thought you might appreciate a timely interruption." Ears went on. "Saved by the bell, as they say."
"Well, your timing was impeccable..." she stammered.
Now Ears was a very intuitive fellow much of the time. Not all of the time, but much. Sometimes he seemed more aware of other people's internal workings than they were aware of themselves. He was a very old rabbit - although one would never know that from appearances alone - and he was remarkably observant when it wasn't March.
It was only October, and even over two miles of telephone wire there were things she could not hide from him. On the other end of the line Ears immediately put down his cup of tea.
“I’ve made a mistake, haven’t I?”
Alice was quiet.
“I should not have called.”
“Yes...no. Maybe. I don’t know!”
“I am all ears, my duck…pardon the pun, please.”
Alice sighed. “You know how fond I am of you, and we both know I've come to you for advice in the past, but right now I need to talk to a woman. You do understand, I hope.”
“Perfectly, but I’ll still be here if you’ve a change of mind on the matter.”
They exchanged parting words and hung up. The hare stared at his telephone.
The telephone stared back at him questioningly, as appliances are wont to do in this realm.
Ears had always thought of Reginald as someone who usually couldn't see the forest for the trees. Now the hare suspected that he himself was guilty of the very same blunder, and quite possibly had been making the same misjudgement for some time now. The irony of this was not lost on him.
“A fine job, Edwin A. Roderick," he chided himself. "Good intentions or not, you may have just botched up royally.”
Ears turned away from the phone in a huff…and in doing so, he accidentally knocked his half-full teacup from the end table with an elbow. The fine bone china was very delicate; so delicate in fact that the plush carpet did not save it from breaking.
The old hare blinked at the fragmented tea cup, watching the still-steaming tea soak into the carpet weave. What a pity. He rather liked that old cup.
But perhaps he could fix it. That, and other things.
Belle had just tucked herself into an overstuffed easy chair with a warmed blanket and a particularly enthralling book when Alice rang. The chair was abandoned and the book dropped in mid chapter – right before the plot twist, and she didn’t even pause to bookmark the page.
Alice told her all that had occurred over the day. The impromptu zoo trip, the sprint home in the rain (why not call a coach, Belle had asked; Alice concurred that Reginald thought a walk in a light rain would be a pleasure, and despite her skepticism he turned out to be right) and the romp in the mud that followed. She was still caked in mud as she huddled there with the phone pinched between ear and shoulder, actually - on any other day she would have rushed for a hot bath the instant she set foot indoors, but today was not any other day.
Belle was somewhat affronted at this part of the tale, and not because she considered it poor behavior or anything of the sort.
“You’ve never done anything like that with me.”
“Well, you did get me tipsy on one occasion and he's managed nothing of that sort. So you shouldn't feel too left out, I think."
“Oh you weren’t tipsy. You were drunk.”
“No, I wasn’t! I was just a little….snookered.”
“Alice, you spent an hour in my hall closet yelling something about Narnia.”
“……so perhaps I was a little drunk. But can we please bring this conversation back on topic? I didn't call to debate what may or may not have occurred in your hall closet last year."
"Yes yes, go on. What happened after the mud skirmish that I wasn't invited to?"
There was a very long pause on Alice's behalf. Belle leaned against the wall where she stood and said nothing during the lull, content to wait.
"He tried to kiss me. On the porch, when we arrived at my home."
Alice paused again.
"In the rain." As if such a detail mattered.
"And?" Belle was no longer leaning on the wall.
"....and...I was not entirely abhorrent to the idea."
"....and?"
"I would have allowed it, if the phone hadn't rung. It snapped me out of it, I suppose, and I sent him on his way." Alice finished in a rush.
"Oh." Belle resumed her lean against the wall. "It was Ears on the phone, wasn't it?"
"It was." Alice laughed, but it was a strained, anxious laugh. "He thought I wanted a rescue."
"Did you want a rescue?"
Alice nervously twisted her fingers into the phone cord. "See, this is just the reason I've called. I need you to talk some sense into me - you're very good at it, you know. The conundrum here is that I'm...not entirely sure that I am glad for Ears' interruption."
Belle waited.
"But I should be! I should be absolutely grateful for it, if not ecstatic. I should not have any romantic interest in this man and any notion to the contrary is...is simply absurd. A friend, by all means yes - but he is completely inappropriate for me as a suitor. Wrong, all wrong! Oh Belle, you don't know the half of it..."
"No, I don't know the half of it, and that's because you've been keeping to yourself so much as of late. So tell me." Belle cut in.
So Alice did, and what began as a simple explanation quickly unhinged into a verbal outpouring that she did not care to control. The blonde paced the room as the words came thick and fast, the phone cord twisting itself around her body and straining to the snapping point.
"That man is a free spirit in every possible perception of the term. He does not care to check his impulses…nor conceal his ardor toward me, for that matter. He is…unbridled; I suppose that's the one way of putting it. He flips from one extreme to the other so quickly and everything is just such a blur when I am with him...a bewildering, infuriating and wonderful blur! Heaven help me Belle, one moment it’s like being in the company of an enormous four year old child who has snuck too many sweets, in another moment I seem to be in the presence of an absolute genius…and the next moment I am trembling at my bedroom window while sincerely wishing I had forgotten to lock the front door!"
Belle raised an eyebrow at that, but otherwise remained quiet.
".....he is a fantastic mess, a convoluted hodgepodge of everything my upbringing taught me to shun! He is everything that a well-raised person of my upbringing is expected not to be, and - "
"..and THAT," interrupted Belle sharply, "is exactly why you want him."
The line went dead silent, save for the faint hiss of static.
"Oooh. Hit a nerve, did I?"
No answer.
“Oh yes, I think I did.”
The quiet coming from the other end of the line was so perfect that one might have thought the connection had been lost. Belle knew better, of course. She always did.
“You know, Alice...” she went on, idly wrapping the phone cord around her wrist, “I once had to confess to myself that I was smitten with a beast. One with fur, great twisty horns, claws, a tail that he chased when he thought nobody was looking, and the fleas to match. If I found the fortitude to admit to that, then this should be teacakes for you.”
The phone line crackled. Nothing more.
Belle tried again, gently. “It’s only me to hear you…and honestly, you could do worse. At least he doesn’t have fleas – “
“YES!”
The brunette almost dropped the phone, startled by the deafening squawk that blew out of it.
“Yes, I want him! I confess, concede, admit, surrender, call it what you like! I am unbearably enamored and I haven’t a clue how, why or when it happened! Three months ago I wanted nothing, NOTHING to do with him and now I want everything to do with him!”
Belle held the yowling phone at arm’s length to protect her eardrum.
“…and what’s more, I shouldn’t want him! My good sense tells me to avoid him and sometimes I try; then I am horribly disappointed when I actually succeed at avoiding him. I’ve tried to talk sense into myself time and again, there’s this merry voice in my head that just keeps drowning me out, saying “oh, so sorry but I can’t hear you over the sound of freckles!”
Belle stifled a giggle into her hand.
“I consider myself a reasonable woman but then he came along and mussed it all up! Reasonable? HA! If he appears at my bedroom window and looks at me like that one more blasted time I just might lose my head like some stupid besotted gint and launch myself at him! Is that reasonable?!”
Belle heard a distinctly frustrated screech on the other end of the line, followed by what sounded like a booted toe impacting a wall…followed (not unexpectedly) by “...ow.” She waited for a moment before warily bringing the phone back to her ear.
“Alice?”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t suggest launching yourself out your bedroom window. It’s on the second story, and you cannot fly.”
Alice snorted. “Oh I would be fine. He would break my fall, and gladly I expect.”
“Then he would not be fine.”
Alice’s voice cracked with a sudden fit of laughter. “Then should any launching occur I will try to retain enough sense to use the door. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough. Now, what are you going to do next?”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“He’s waiting! He has been waiting some time now, in fact. So go find the poor sod, give him a big smacking kiss – which he is absolutely desperate for, I am sure – and stop this business of running about in circles.”
“Oh, Belle…I can’t.”
“WHAT?” Now it was Alice’s turn to shy away from the roaring phone. “Why not? You are being a stupid gint, no launching needed! You want him, he wants you – what outlandish little upchuck of a explanation could you possibly have this time? Wait, let me guess: a deep-seated fear of freckles! That’s why you – “
“I don’t want to hurt him, Belle.” Alice cut through.
“………..ah?”
“Both you and I know that it was never really my intention to live here permanently. You know what everyone says here about people of my ilk – those who come here from...other places, I mean. We never stay past a few years, and I suppose I won’t either. “
Belle knew where this was going.
“So why start something that I cannot finish, and worse yet, start something that might inflict hurt on someone when I leave?”
You are already going to leave some sad hearts behind when you leave, Belle thought to herself. What's one more? Still, she had a point. Belle sank into thought for a moment, and worded her reply carefully.
“Who’s to say it would become anything of a serious matter? So many courtships are flippant things that end as lightly as they begin. This could easily cool off into nothing less or more than the friendship it already is. Then you’ll part ways with hardly a sour thought. Many couples do exactly that.”
“That is possible, yes. But there's the other possibility and I would be a fool to discount it. The possibility that we could…become overly attached.”
“You mean ‘fall in love.’ ” Belle stated bluntly.
“…...yes, that.” Alice was still for a moment. “I’ve come to know him fairly well, I like to think, and I get the strong impression that he wouldn’t handle loss very well. Not as you or I would, a least. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but my instinct tells me that sadness would affect him like…like…taking sunshine away from a plant. I don’t know how else to explain it, really…”
“No, no, you have explained it rather well, actually.”
“That’s not the only concern. I don’t want to be hurt, either. It’s terribly selfish for me to say so, but there it is.”
“Alice…”
Alice went on obliviously, lost in her thoughts. “When I was young I watched my older sister go through just that very sort of heartache. It was not a gentle time for her, and..."
“Alice……”
“...I hardly want to experience the same for myself without…without very good cause, I can say.”
“Alice!”
“Yes?”
“Listen to me! You must make a choice. If your decision is no, then you need to tell him that and be firm with it. If your decision is a yes, then by all means, launch away! Oh Alice, he has tried so hard..."
This time Alice’s verbal shutdown stretched into the double digits. When she spoke, her voice cracked. It was faint, but Belle heard it.
“I…I don’t want to be done with him."
“Then keep him! But you need to decide, Alice. Either open the door to him all the way, or shut it and lock it. It needs to be done for his sake; some would consider it a mercy at this point. Besides, for all you know the right woman could be within arm's reach of him right now, while he's too busy barking up the wrong tree to notice. Would you want to keep him from that?"
Not a peep on the other end of the line.
"Stop keeping him on a string while you go about perching on fences like a skittish bird. To do anything less would be cruel, Alice, and you are no more capable of cruelty than I am capable of walking on water."
You keep on denying
Who you are and how you're feeling
Baby, we're not buying
Hon we saw you hit the ceiling
Face it like a grown-up
When you gonna own up
That you've got it bad...
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