Alice

Alice was often injured doing what she loved, which wasn’t itself unusual. What made her unusual was a question of quantity and quality. She liked being the best and she liked doing many things. Getting hurt was just a part of the process, and it had rarely stopped her. She'd broken a few bones and her doctor warned her about carpal tunnel every time she went for a checkup.

None of her injuries had ever been life threatening - simply inconveniences that ended with more disappointment than fear.

Maybe that was why she found it so hard to be afraid right now. There was a deep seated shard of understanding which cut through the pain and the delirium which made one thing incredibly clear to her: she was going to die.

She didn't have many regrets but she did feel bad for her parents. She'd been missing for long enough for there to be police investigations and in time, they would give up hope. But Alice had already made peace with that. The regrets she had were here with her. It was rather ignoble to die before her adventure had even begun.

And very inconsiderate. She liked David and this was pretty rude, even for her.

It really was a pity that she hadn't given too much of a thought to David the ten years they'd known each other. Recently, he dated people and she dated people, so time had never really been on their side. They were friends, but not too close, just in case. They were friends, in that extended group chat kind of way. Same neighborhood, same school.

She could think of worse people to take a trip to another world with. He was caring, good-looking enough and never said anything dumb enough to earn her ire. He was a horrid flirt too, without knowing it, the way he showered her with earnest smiles. Really horrid, the way he could make a girl feel special.

But Alice was the same, of course, only more honest with herself. Or so she hoped. Or maybe they weren't so different after all.

They were different, however, in situations of life and death. When David was caught in crisis, panic was his state of being - but it never stopped him from making decisions. Even now, Alice was collected but she was unhappy to discover that she was paralyzed by inertia. Everything, from the pain in her body to the warnings in her Song had warned her to stop.

This was really a shame, wasn't it?

"I think I'm dying," Alice whispered up at him, as he carried her towards the temple, where she knew nothing could be done for her - where they both knew that nothing could be done for her. She felt a flash of disgust. Her voice sounded weak even to her, to say nothing of what she'd said.

The blues of the sky, the greens of the grassy mountainside and their light grey robes bled together like colors in a kaleidoscope - but those colors were dim and distant.

David bowed his head almost angrily, looking as if that were the last thing he'd believe, even if it happened. Especially if it happened.

"Do you believe in an afterlife?"

David snapped. He inhaled hard, through his nostrils, but he didn't let his anger come through in his words. "You aren't dying. And you're not going to die."

She wanted to believe that.

But if Alice was going to be alright, David would be angry and not gentle. He would have shouted and wrung his hands because she'd injured herself in such an asinine manner. David wouldn't have picked her up like she'd been made of glass and put one leaden foot in front of another, doggedly marching to a place without answers.

"I don't know what's happening to me," she muttered into his arm. Colors were washed out, the patterns in the grass still swirled ominously, clouds still foretold doom and everything still hurt.

"Which is why you shouldn't think you're dying," he promised with a surety that she knew he couldn't possibly have had.

"Got you to carry me after all, didn't I?" Alice said with a smugness she didn't know she was still able to muster. Her words were hollow and rang of untruth - something as forced as David's disagreements with reality. It was just another kind of denial but it made her feel better about this situation she'd gotten herself into.

With some effort, she draped her arms around him, buried her face into his shoulder and closed her eyes, trying to hold onto this small moment.

More regret, and instant, at that. The clashing sounds of the Songs inside of her brought her a heavy spike of pain between her eyes which seemed to echo through her body. She shivered and nestled her face deeper in the crook of his arm, forcing her eyes open.

It got worse again. Her vision was blurry and no matter how she blinked, nothing came into focus. Alice liked to think that the sob that wracked her was born of anger and not a sense of helplessness.

It must have been quite alarming because David had begun moving faster.

"You're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay," David whispered, again and again, hoping he could convince her, convince himself, convince the world if he said it enough.

Alice felt the shadow of the archway over them as David stepped into the courtyard. She could see the temple when she turned towards it, a fuzzy mouth that wanted to consume her. A bout of vertigo struck her. She wasn't sure how she could have felt worse but this was it for sure.

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There was something wrong about where they were going.

As David passed the pillars, Alice searched for the strength to speak. As they approached the doors, she managed to shake her head. "Not inside. Don't go inside."

The panic in her voice stopped him immediately. "But where else?" David asked. He sounded lost and tired and Alice felt almost guilty. Even in death she would be a burden.

"Water," she mumbled, hoping that he'd understand.

There was no water around and they'd not had water since they'd arrived. There was a well outside of the courtyard but it had long dried out.

But Alice didn't want water, not really.

David understood though. He turned around and carried her through the archway again and in less than a minute they were beneath the shade of the mulberry trees.

"I hate mulberries," Alice decided. Nothing audible left her lips.

David laid her down as gently as he could onto the grass as Alice let her arms slip from around his chest. She was surprised. She couldn't feel them anymore after all, just the remaining sense of pain.

David took the fruit off the branches of the tree with his shaking hands and brought them back to Alice but she didn't open her mouth. She wasn't hungry.

She closed her eyes and then heard a sound she didn't quite recognize at first.

It was the quiet swishing, the papery sliding, the crackling fold of leaves being eaten by silkworms. There were more of them now - hundreds of thousands, millions of white worms eating whatever they could.

David tried to feed her more mulberries. She shook her head, closing her eyes. Maybe he thought she simply didn't have the strength to do so, because he gently pushed a mulberry through her lips, squeezing it. He knew better than to feed her any solids.

Alice felt a touch of disdain for herself. Like a silkworm in the darkness, clothed in white, eating anything placed before her. The sound of the silkworms grew to become her world, unending, unyielding. They almost sounded like whispers - stories from another world, stories she'd heard before, stories she'd yet to hear - woven into a single uniform sound.

Her eyes were closed but she could hear David's Song, just loud enough for her to glimpse his sorrow in the sea of sound from the silkworms.

"Difficult it is to meet and just as hard to part. The Eastern winds blow weakly over the wrecked flowers. The spring's silkworm spits until it dies. When the candle becomes ash does its tears dry."

David no longer spoke nor moved. He had retreated into his own song after that, too brave to leave her but unable to watch her die.

That boy who shared the most with her in this world had such a flair for the dramatic.

The whispers of the silkworms grew louder still and Alice was struck by another regret. They were stories. There were so many, so many stories she'd not heard yet. She wished she hadn't given up.

Alice had lived for seventeen years, consuming everything that was placed in front of her and had spit up excellence which she wore like a cloak.

Wasn't it just a little pathetic - that in her first encounter with another Song, she'd given up?

If Alice could frown, she would have because she had the strangest thought right now - that her thoughts weren't fully her own, that her Song wasn't fully her own.

Innumerable Stories had surrounded her, the sound of silkworms in their darkness - but it was just an analogy. In truth, it could have been any mulberry grove in the world and any hatch of silkworms chewing on leaves.

She had named it as her song to David - it was lyrical, it was poetic and he had taken the word and made it his own. Alice had never had a song - just the strands of a million stories woven together, speaking together.

That Scripture that David had chosen that had chosen David was the truth because it was the truth to him. And now, Alice was wounded because she had tried to make it hers as well - she had tried to accept something so unyielding and absolute and had tried to raise it above all else simply because it had come from this unfamiliar world.

That wave of noise rose from within her, turning and roiling in harmony, a single Story told by the sound of silkworms. All good stories taught a lesson. In this one, Alice had opened the door of her mind and body to something that she didn't understand due to an uncompromising hubris. When she'd gotten hurt, she had given up. It was too perfect, too coincidental, too ironic if she'd died because of her hubris.

That was where David lived - a world where reality gave way to symmetry, where every song had a motif it returned to again and again. If Alice chose to live in this world, she could be that silkworm and they could part.

But now that she'd put together this song, she found that she liked it less than the stories she was already fond of. He had said something to her the day the Lightning struck the Library - something she didn't know she disagreed with, something that she didn't know had troubled her all this time.

Time is a flat circle.

That was who David was. But she had a response for him as well if she could have the audacity to borrow from one of her favorite authors.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

And so Alice sat up, because she thought that dying would make for a pretty bad story. She was not a silkworm, after all. That too was just an analogy.

David gave a startled gasp as the sound of those silkworms rose within her and drowned out that half-formed Song she'd eagerly taken from David.

They stared at one another and she could not keep that rapture off of her face from inspiration, from revelation. It was something a boy could easily confuse for love.

"I couldn't remember the rest of the poem," David stammered, sounding almost offended. He had not been crying but the deep frown he must have worn since she'd fallen that first time warred with his hopeful smile.

Alice coughed twice and then spat out an alarming, watery stream of dark red onto the grass beside her. She wouldn't have believed anyone who told her that there was this much liquid in her mouth, so it must have come from somewhere else. She hoped it was just mostly digested mulberries.

Alice tasted blood. "I'm fine," she promised David, who looked horrified yet again. "It's just mulberries, it's just mulberries."

And she was. The Scripture had faded into obscurity in her mind and she could only hear herself - a cacophony of voices like the sound of silkworms in the darkness, weaving and weaving. The sound settled deep in her stomach again before it dispersed and the world became bright and warm and clear once more.

She scooted across the grass to David and slid up his profile as though he were a tree and put the back of her head onto his shoulder.

"I've already survived. Aren't you disappointed that you can't swear vengeance upon the Heavens for taking this beautiful memory from you?" She grinned.

David rolled his eyes and she felt a relieved sigh tear through him.

Alice was really a horrid flirt, the way she could make a boy feel special.