Petals For The Hatter’s Bands

Petals For The Hatter’s Bands
 
     “I’ve outgrown all my sweet sixteen dresses. Being eighteen feels so strange. It is even more peculiar than falling down the rabbit hole when I was but a wee lass.”
     “Don’t feel glum my dear. It will feel like a dress tailored just for you in the bat of your eyelashes.”
     “Will I still get to visit you here in this wonderland I have come to call home?”
     “You will see us when you dream.”
     “I hope so. I’d be lost without your tea parties.”        
     The Hatter says, “Let me go pick the berries that release you from maidenhood into the full blossom of womanhood.”
    She replies, “Make your merry way into the mushroom forest and find these magical fruits to untie my bonnet wherewith my hair to fall for your delight.”
     The Hatter gaily wanders among the portobellos until he comes upon a lonely sunflower that smiles down like a beautiful queen who says, “Climb up my stalk and enjoy the breeze from above. The view is lovely too.” So the Hatter ascends the stem into the petaled rays. But the wind sways the flower and he drops onto a mushroom head where he rests his back while gazing at the sky.
     He hears a beseeching Alice calling his name from below the giant plant that is his bed. But his voice doesn’t intrude on the forest quiet. The only people sound is Alice’s plaintive plea.
     Suddenly a light sprinkle of rain falls soft as silken rose petals. His plant mattress grows slippery and he slides down only to find himself on the  
ground and wet as a spring frog.
     Alice exclaims, “There you are! I thought I’d lost you forever or might have to roam these toadstools frantic for hours.”
     “It was only chance that brought me up above and beyond your sight. I would never intentionally hide from you.”
     “I believe you like I trust the darling buds of May to bloom at their appointed time. And among the flowers set forth in this forest, I found the delicacy among berries known as the hybrid, cranblueberry, not seen until my eyes did spy outside of its native fields of Strawlysium.”
     “Did you taste the batch?”
      “I did indeed and my dress feels like changeling garb that was put there by a fairy to hide my lamp under a basket which might blind them if I let it shine as must I will.”
     “Then let us find shelter to enjoy the spring of youth.”
     A grownup Alice leads him into her boudoir where her glacial gaze deepens into fathomless fjords. There she serves him Earl Grey steeped in the Hatter’s very own madness.  
     Under her perfumed spell his hat falls off. Her lace lingers but for the murmur of a dream until it too is but a nostalgic memory. The glaze of her eyes becomes the Cheshire in his grin.
     She marries him in a spontaneous bout of madness undreamed of in her burrowing life.  
     “Am I dreaming now or are we really married?”
     “When you come home from work and lay down to sleep, we will be together all your years. You will never grow old here with me. And I will always have a pot of tea ready to soothe you at the end of your day.”
     “Do I have to be an adult at all?”
     “Only in the waking world. Now don’t feel sad. Take my hand and breathe deep the magic elixir of eternal youth.”      
     She is a looking glass image of Alice who sleeps and dreams under tulips where she gathers their fallen petals to festoon the bands of her Hatter.