Frozen Stars Over Wonderland - 17 (Patreon)

There were no arguments when Alessio offered them a place to spend the night at the palace. He sent his guards to fetch their elk as he took them on a tour of the palace proper. It was only three stories tall, fairly short for a palace, but it was long and wide, and its grounds were meticulously maintained. 

Alfre stopped in front of a portrait as they wandered down a hall lined in paintings. It was of a young brunette woman, her face similarly shaped to Alessio’s. She was dressed in a lovely blue dress under a white coat that fell off her shoulder to hang about her elbows. On her lap was a cat that Alfre could swear was grinning at her. 

“Alessio?” she called. “Who is this?”

Alessio wandered over to stand by her, staring up at the portrait with a smile. “Oh, that’s my ancestor, the first queen of Wonderland before it fell apart into the separate kingdoms it is today.”

“What’s her name?” Alfre asked. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the woman in the painting was familiar.

“Her name was Alice, she was Fell like you actually.”

All eyes were on Alessio, wide and disbelieving. 

“Alice…like Alice Liddell?”

“Yes, I believe that was her name before she married my great-great-great-great-great grandfather,” Alessio replied. He turned to Alfre, head tilted in curiosity at the shock in her eyes. “Why? Have you heard of her story? I wouldn’t be surprised. She was the first Fell in Wonderland.”

Alfre looked to her friends. Elias, Spica, even Traveler looked shocked. Whatever Alessio was talking about was not something they’d heard before. 

Alessio continued on, rambling about the various paintings in the hall. Alfre and her friends crowded together behind him, whispering amongst themselves.

“Have you heard about this?” Alfre asked. 

“No, that was never part of the lore of the game,” Traveler said, her voice flat and unwavering. 

“What does this mean?” Elias whispered. “If there’s lore beyond what the game creators wrote…”

“Then that means that this world is either expanding,” Traveler theorized, “Or it always existed along side ours. Alice fell into this world eight generations ago. Who knows how much has changed since then? The world of the original Alice in Wonderland could indeed be the same Wonderland we’ve been playing in.”

“That’s insane!” Spica hissed. 

“Insane like being transported on masse into the world of a video game?” Elias questioned.

“There’s only so much weirdness I can believe, alright,” she shot back. 

“But Alice went home, right?” Izo said. “At the end of the story she went back. And in real life she married and had children. So if she went home, maybe we can.”

Alfre didn’t want to get her hopes up. A lot of time had passed in this world between the time of Alice and the present. Who was to say the way Alice used to get home even still existed? And if it did exist, would everyone want to leave? They were so much more here than they were back home. Yes, she missed her family and friends, but by this point they were probably written off as dead in the real world. Alfre wasn’t sure she wanted to cause that kind of emotional upheaval. There were too many questions and variables.

Best not to get her hopes up.

The winter solstice was almost upon them by the time they returned to the guildhall. And with the solstice came Alfre’s birthday. She had tried to avoid mentioning it to anyone, but somehow they all found out anyway. She discouraged them from getting her gifts, but she couldn’t talk Doremi out of throwing her a party. They held it at the pub, because of course they did. Drinks and food flowed freely from the kitchen and behind the bar. A large, multilayer cake was brought out, positively covered in candles. Alfre was certain there were more than twenty candles on the dumb thing but she didn’t complain. She blew out the candles dutifully, receiving the first (and largest) slice of cake with a grateful smile to Traveler, who had chef as her subclass (something Alfre had been unaware of up to that point). 

The chattering that filled the pub stopped suddenly as the door swung open and Canus stepped into the room. Then the whispers started up. Canus was never seen wandering about the Fell cities. Or even Wonderlander cities for that matter. No, Canus always kept to the Wilds. But there he was, wandering into the pub like he belonged there. Alfre gave him a nonplussed look as he approached her, setting her fork down on her plate. 

“Canus, what are you doing here?” she asked. “Not that I’m not happy to see you.”

“Someone let me know today was your day of birth,” Canus explained. “I am told it is customary to give a gift when a Fell turns one year older.”

“You don’t have to,” Alfre said, waving her unoccupied hand pacifyingly. 

“I wanted to,” he insisted. He reached into his cloak and pulled out a small, thin, silvery whistle. “Here, this is for you.”

“Th-thank you,” Alfre took the tiny pipe gently in her hand, turning it over and watching the way the light played over the metal. “What is it?”

“It’s a Direwolf Pipe,” the wolf god told her. “If you are in trouble, just blow the whistle and one of my wolves will come to your aide.”

“I see,” she murmured. “That’s very kind of you.” She tucked the whistle into the pocket of her direwolf coat. She turned back to gaze up at Canus. “Um…would you like some cake?”

“I still can’t believe he showed up,” Alfre mumbled as she swept crumbs off the tables and onto an already dirty plate. “How did he know there was even going to be a party?”

“Well, uh…” All eyes turned to Izo, who blushed a brilliant red. “I, um, might have seen him one night while I was on guard duty on our way back from Sapfir and told him that your birthday was soon. He asked what Fell did for their birthdays and I said that on our birthdays we tend to receive gifts from our loved ones.”

Ren waggled her brows at Alfre as she whipped down the tables after dusted off. “Does that make Canus one of your loved ones?”

“He’s a friend, I did him a favor, he feels indebted to me,” Alfre huffed. “That’s literally all it is. Quit talkin’ mince.” 

“There’s no need to be shy about it,” Spica cooed. “That item he gave you was very rare. You could only earn it in game by doing all of his dungeons in a twenty-four hour period. Which is pretty much impossible unless your at least level eighty.” 

“You know what would be funny,” Traveler said out of nowhere. “If Lokki was the direwolf that showed up when you blew the whistle.”

“Funny’s not really the word I would use for that,” Silver muttered as he passed by her with a dustpan full of crumbs to toss out into the street.

“Ironic, then?” Traveler amended. 

“That’s closer,” Elias agreed. 

“I doubt Lokki would be the one I get,” Alfre said. “Canus doesn’t plan on keeping him a direwolf for much longer. One of the original wolves is pregnant. If the pups survive to adulthood, he’s gonna turn Lokki back.”

“That will take at least a year, though, if direwolves are anything like normal wolves and dogs.” Ran had joined the conversation now.

“Still, I doubt Canus would send me his least favorite, he likes me, apparently.” 

Spica hummed, obviously entertained by the whole thing. “I suppose the question now is: do you like him?”

Alfre paused in her cleaning. Did she like Canus? Well, kind of. He was nice enough to her, even if their first encounter hadn’t been ideal. He didn’t seem to expect anything of her, which was nice. How many boys had she met that were only decent to her because they wanted something? Too many to remember properly. Canus just wanted to pay her back for catching Lokki for him, even if she hadn’t actually done much catching. But that wasn’t the kind of liking Spica was talking about. 

“Idunno,” she said in response. 

She smacked at Ren when the older girl booed.