Alice chews a gilded swan feather. "It's more cloying than one might think."

"The secret is in not thinking." Dipping his tail in his teacup, the Dormouse makes the fat droplets fall plop-plop onto his pink tongue. "I don't."

"Don't be rude," Alice says. When she frowns her smile goes turvy bonkers.

From atop a chartreuse velvet footstool, the Cat chimes in. "He's not the one with a quill in his teeth."

"Yes, well, neither am I," says Alice.

"Of course. You're not cloying at all." When the Cat smiles, his smiles goes burvy tonkers and even the Dormouse stops licking tea from his tail to laugh. "You're merely a frosted girl cake waiting to be thrown in the pond."

Alice leaps to her feet, feather tight in her fist. "Now you're being rude. You can't go throwing girls in ponds." She stomps her foot.

The Cat tuts under his whiskered breath. "Then it's a good thing you're a cloying cake and not a rude girl, isn't it?"

The Dormouse's tail falls forgotten in the teapot as a pond no bigger than a pond is found under Alice.

A gilded swan feather floats to the lawn.

"Tea?" asks the Cat.