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[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Bored, the demon walked over to the lake to see who was around...


((Crowley really, really wants to do some bastardly things to people. If you'd like him to do something nasty to your character, leave me an OOC note in your reply, otherwise he'll be good. Marginally. No promises, really...))

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[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

Alice had taken refuge outside from those dreaded Lessons and was currently reading Alice's Adventures Under Ground, Lucky curled up beside her and sleeping. Occasionally she would scratch his ears, but she was mostly engrossed in her novel. Well, it had been written for her.

((XD Go crazy. But remember you have to answer to Az. :P))

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

((He won't mind so long as it's funny. :D))

Oh, dear. And here was sweet, innocent Alice. Aziraphale would smite him if he did anything to her. Worth the risk, Crowley decided, as he approached.

"Hey, Allison. Thought you'd be tired of reading by now," said the demon cheerfully.

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

((XDD Go, angel, go))

Alice looked up, about to snap, but stopping at merely a slight frown when she saw who it was. Mr Crowley was a friend of Mr Fell's, and she was expected to be Civil.

"Good day, Mr Crowley," she answered. "My name is Alice, in case you have somehow managed to forget in the rather short period of time between now and the time we last met. And no, I am not tired of reading. One cannot grow tired of a favoured book." Her expression added, unless one is rather, shall we say, stupid. Well, if he'd managed to forget her name...

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Oh, yes. Silly me," smiled Crowley faintly unpleasantly. "Though I would disagree. I believe it's quite possible to tire of even a favoured book." Usually after the five hundredth reading or so...

"And what is this favoured book?"

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

"Ah, but what if it has also been written for you?" Alice pointed out triumphantly as she opened her book to show him the frontispiece. "Alice's Adventures Under Ground," she said aloud (as she was most definitely required to say it, too, despite it being written there). "Later edited and re-named Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." She smiled at the book fondly. She had probably read it far too many times, but it was important to her.

(Later, it would be important to bibliophiles in general and, after a brief stay in America, would make its way to the National Literary Museum in London).

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Vanity seemed to be the day's common thread. But then it tended to be one of the easiest sins to incite. That and lust, which was pretty much built right in.

Crowley was unimpressed, though. He was a key player in the first chapter of the single most popular book in the world. Didn't mean he read it...

"Just because someone wrote it for you doesn't mean to have to like it. So how did that work, anyway? You tell him what happened and he wrote it up? Or did he just make it up to amuse you?"

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

Alice closed her book and rested her hands on it. "Something of a mixture between the two, I suppose," she mused aloud. "He would tell me and my sisters made-up stories to keep us patient while we posed for him, and one day strung them all together. And I went to Wonderland." She said that as if it was nothing uncommon, that White Rabbits and Cheshire-Cats and the like were everyday occurrences.

"I told Mr Dodgson about the Looking-glass world, though," she added. "That's all true."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"You went to Wonderland after he told you about it?" he asked. Crazier than the Mad Hatter, this one, and Crowley wondered how Aziraphale could live with her. "And the Looking-glass world came afterward?"

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

Alice nodded slowly. "I believe that is what I just told you," she said. "First came the stories, then came Wonderland, then came the Looking-glass world. You are familiar with it, I take it? The giant chess game and the Jabberwocky?" Horrid thing, the Jabberwock. She liked the poem, though.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, I read part of it. Seemed rather childish and ridiculous, though, so I don't think I finished it."

But he had liked the Jabberwocky poem...

"Don't you find it odd that you went to Wonderland only after someone you trusted told you that it existed?"

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

"It's nonsense," Alice corrected. Something childish and ridiculous was refreshing in the age of morals.

She thought before answering, and did so slowly. "I suppose so," she conceded. "But no more so that visiting a place a friend has recommended. For example, have you ever been to Wales?"

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"No shit," he replied. "And you enjoy nonsense?" It was probably for the best that she didn't say 'the age of morals' out loud. Crowley would have only laughed derisively. He didn't think much of the Victorian era and was inordinately pleased to have slept through most of it. He blamed it entirely on Aziraphale's unbalanced influence.

"Yes, I've been to Wales. But so have other people. You're the only one who's been to Wonderland. How the hell did Dodgson know it was there?"

[alicereflection.livejournal.com]

Alice cocked her head to the side. "Shit?" she asked. Yet another new word. Which reminded her: she still had yet to learn what this 'fucking' thing was.

"Oh, of course!" she answered enthusiastically. "Nonsense is simple and entertaining and you are not expected to learn anything from it." Not that there was much too learn from nonsense. The Walrus and the Carpenter was hardly an educational piece.

She waved a hand in a manner she had learnt from Mr Fell. "I'm the only one known for going there," she said. There had been others. Poor, insane children (http://www.bunnysneezes.net/page235.html). "As for that, I'm not quite sure. He never named it Wonderland; it only received that name after the publication of my first book."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Bloody hell, you're impossible to curse in front of. Yes, shit. Excrement, faeces, defecation - any of this getting through?" He couldn't remember what they'd called it a hundred and some-odd years ago and Aziraphale would pretend he couldn't.

"I can imagine how learning things might be tiresome," said Crowley, stifling a smile at the familiar gesture. "Your book, huh? That's all right. It's a stupid name. No place is all that wondrous."