Alix in Wonderland

Part 3. The Iron Crab

Alix awoke in a small bed, with the strangest feeling in her head. It felt like it was- empty? She raised her hands to her head and confirmed her worst suspicions, her head was about 3 sizes too small. She was given a brief respite of joy as she saw the gorgeous blanket she was wrapped in. It was a wonderful white, covered in beautiful blue and pink roses. Of course, looking further down the blanket, she fell back into despair seeing her two giant feet poking out from under the covers at the base of the bed, as they were still about 20 sizes too big! It was clear that someone had tried to tuck the blanket in around her, but gave up when they got to her feet!

Alix felt sadness swelling up inside her, but by now she was pretty sick of tears. Pull yourself together, Alix, she admonished herself, you've cried enough tears today, and look at where its gotten you. She paused, as a matter of fact, where was she?

She looked around the room and was soon fascinated. Her eyes wandered from the bed into what must have been the kitchen, although, it mostly blended into the rest of the house. The kitchen was simple with a table, a chair, and few counters attached to the walls. On the table was a decorative tablecloth which had a similarly beautiful design as the blanket covering Alix, however, this white tablecloth was colored in purple roses. Alix had initially enjoyed the roses on the blanket, but the purple roses now actually seemed to be her favorite. On top of the table there was some sort of contraption, but she couldn't quite make out what it was.

As Alix continued to look around the room, things seemed to get stranger. First off, there was no door! How had she gotten in here in the first place? Alix wondered. She scanned the room a number of times looking for maybe a window or a miniature door on the walls, but couldn't find a thing. She then noticed a wall covered in what must've been at least a few hundred numbered metal boxes. Alix started counting the numbers on the boxes, but then saw them start behaving strangely... 1, 2, 3, 5, 11, 15, 21, 25, 31, 35... It felt like a pattern, but Alix couldn't simply make heads or tails of it...

And finally, there was the fireplace, undoubtedly the strangest fireplace Alix had ever seen, but also the most beautiful. The fireplace itself was an indentation in the wall about two feet tall and three feet wide. On both sides of the indentation were two beautiful rock columns, topped by a beautiful rock ceiling. Meanwhile, the floor in front of the fireplace was made of beautiful dark black, glassy obsidian. And then there was the source of the light irradiating from the fireplace, but there was no fire. In fact, there was no bottom to the inside of the fireplace at all. Instead there was just a pool of water, but the ocean water wasn't your average liquid, it was effervescent like a shaken can of soda, creating bubbles that pushed and shoved each other, each playing a game of race, going up and up, Alix imagined, all the way back to the ocean surface. Perhaps calling it a fireplace is slightly inaccurate, Alix thought, I think I'll call it a bubbleplace. Then Alix smiled at her properly naming handiwork.

Suddenly, two cellar doors attached to the floor burst open on the other side of the room. Alix pretended to go back to sleep.

"Ah, I see you're awake, my pretty." A crab came waddling out of the doors. She was a small crab with a metallic, decorated, but still rusty looking shell. She had one small claw and one large, and the large one was gorgeous. It had gold glitter and purple sequins, and silver glitter and a rouge coloring that Alix guessed could have been from lipstick or blush. Alix had to admit it, it looked fantastically (quite) fashionable. The crab carried a large bag with her filled with envelopes, which she carried over to the wall of metal containers with numbers, plopped the bag down, and started sorting.

Alix sat up in the bed, "how did you know I was awake?" she asked.

"It's hard to hide anything with feet that large," the crab said with a ch, ch, ch, ch, which Alix assumed had to be what she could only describe as a crab equivalent laugh. Then she held up her claw, "creatures like us tend to have a sense of each other." Alix didn't fully understand the crab, but was more fascinated by the metal containers the crab was fiddling with than her claw.