Entry 7-1

A dark garden betwixt forest and flowers.

A silver web glints in a corner of glass. Well, is it glass? More likely it’s stone, but this particular world operates more
strangely than any other. Reality bleeds in from elsewhere, through floating shards that fill the air, projecting colorful
memory into lands of ruin and white. Now there are pillars of amethyst, glowing from a light beneath that fills the entire
floor.

She sits in a fanciful, pale green chair, before a small and pale-green table, her hand atop her suitcase which rests beside
her. She drags her finger down the leather of its top. There are no other people here.

“We should leave, Alice.”

“No other people”—but there is at least one other person. He’s here, holding tea as he often is, having again prepared it
when her eyes were turned away.

She lays her palm on her suitcase.

“You hear that?” she asks.

He tilts his head, listening closely before replying: “I hear nothing.”

Lifting her other arm, she rests her elbow on the table, slouches forward, and props her chin up
with her hand. “That’s right,” she says, “in this one... or these ones... it’s quiet.”

“And what should that matter?” “When was the last!?” she slightly raises her voice, telling him with its tone that she finds
his question absurd. “Silence and a pleasant view... Look at the gardens, Tenniel. This landscape is... handsome.”
She picks up her hand from her suitcase and indicates the dark wilds fading in and out before them, and to the sky-blue
flowers dotting the shade.

“I,” Tenniel starts, gesturing toward himself with his teacup, “am handsome."

Her brow twitches at the gall.

“Shut,” Alice starts, gesturing toward him with her hand, “up."

“Terribly rude. Awfully rude,” he notes. She shakes her head, grumbles, and leans back in her seat. Precisely how long
has she been stuck in this world, unable to travel to any others?

Forever, the ward Tenniel has been with her, steadfast in his claims of “I cannot be apart from you."

However, that largely proves itself to be a pain. She looks at him now. A black and orange butterfly flutters past his eyes,
and after it passes he looks into his cup. Then, he tosses the cup’s contents to the ground, having not drunk even a sip of
it. A very, very usual habit—in fact, consistent Tenniel behavior.

He opens his mouth, not to lap the dregs, but to speak. “We really should go,” says Alice, preempting him. “That’s what
you want to say, isn’t it?” “If you understand, let us take care,” he says.

And she listens to him. He never seems, she thinks, entirely without reason. So she stands and follows him to the white
horizon. The memory fades around them as they pass. It melts and drips, all, into nothing. All except the butterfly, which
flies along at her shoulder. For now, Tenniel watches it again.
But it will fade, too—

All memories do.

Entry 7-2
So, what is this place? And what is “real”?

This is true: she once walked between worlds.

She still does. For her, this is an aspect of life as normal as eating or drinking, not that she has had need of either since
finding this latest realm. In the past, before Arcaea, it was countless how many new places she’d seen, how many strange
plants and people she had found.

Fantastic creatures, magic too, everything one could ever imagine: she has seen it, and recorded it.
For... an “inter-dimensional” encyclopedia? Whatever it was (it seems to have been lost).
The nature of the work keeps her profession fresh, certainly, but... This world really is terribly unique. The memories of
further worlds dance into this one, and not as mere images, either. You can hear the other places... smell the foreign
nature... taste from these memories, and touch them as if they’re real. Therefore it begs the question: what is real? In a
world such as Arcaea, she feels that is a very important question to ask.

If... it can be experienced fully, but only for a limited time, is it an illusion or is it valid?
Well-traveled though she is, nothing in her memory tells of a world like this. What is the purpose of it? So she asks her
companion: without flare, without context. “So... what is reality, Tenniel? How can we know that here is real?”

“It’s real,” he says, as he casts tea from his cup, “because every sense of yours ‘knows’ that it’s real.
Why do you wonder about artifice or illusion? Why do you question even what you can touch with your own hands, Alice?
That should be enough.”

“Fine,” she replies with finality. It is worthless when he gets like this.

“If that is over with, look there,” he says, and he points to the ground. They had wandered into memory
of a campfire, and Tenniel’s tea had doused the flame. “How the devil does that work?” he asked.

“You’re asking me?” replies Alice, incredulous.

“I’ve ruined their party...” mutters her companion.

“The memory will fade soon, so there’s nothing to be glum over, Tenniel.” “What we see is real, Alice. And when you stop
looking at something, does it cease to be? Of course it doesn’t. That fire has ceased by my hand, though.”

“You need to stop spilling tea everywhere.”

“I will leave an apology.”

“No one will see it! No one is here!”

Tenniel smirks while whipping out a pad and pen. She groans, and tries not to smile herself as he writes. It’s a moment
that reminds her why she never questions his company. But, it’s a moment rare of late. “Of late”, she thinks...

In the beginning... was it different?

She ponders for a little while, but new scenery distracts her as they walk. She forgets to wonder.

And the day goes on.

Entry 7-3
Never does he really “lie”.

He knows what he knows, just as well as one knows to draw breath—though he doesn’t need to breathe.

Or that one knows to feed, though he needs no food; to drink, though he needs no water.

Or, to remain at her side and shelter her, though...

...There is a raw and almost perfectly unshakable comfort in reality. What exists is what you see and sense. Knowing that
what you see and sense is real means that is the truth.
Having truth puts the mind at ease. Without it, with unknowns, you open yourself to fear. Or to, perhaps, what is worse:
truths you do not need to hear.

Truths that will damage you. To know you aren’t capable of everything you wish to be capable of.
To know that there is an end, that it is inevitable. That truth, and truths like it, can make a person truly suffer.

But, he does not lie. It’s true that “he” has always watched over her.

It’s true that “he” has always given her freedom, and guided her into places that were exciting, new...
different.

That was real. That is.

He wants nothing more than her smile.

But with heaviness inside where a heart should be, he knows that she is seeking something more: beyond what can be
seen.

“...You hid that?” he asks, as she presents him a flower from the garden-memory they had left.

“You know, I love its color... pale...” she reveals, gazing upon it fondly. “It’s like the skies we see in other
worlds,” she asserts. “What’s its name?”

He knows. “I don’t know,” he says. “It will vanish, surely, as everything does. There is no need to keep it, Alice.”

“...Perhaps no need, but I like it,” Alice tells him, and he already knew this. “I think that it won’t disappear.”

His gaze drifts away. With no rhyme or reason, he dumps his tea. He also knows this very well:

She is right: it won’t. And that concerns him most of all. He tells her, “Do as you like... Alice.”

And she playfully fires back, “I will!” as she slips the flower behind her ear. With pompousness, she
declares: ”You can’t decide how I live!”

Tenniel taps his chest and gazes at nothing.

How unfortunate...

She is entirely right about that as well.

Entry 7-4
The world shifts and blends fantastically, fascinating her always. Tenniel, however, never seems very
thrilled by it.
Therefore, as they leave the scene of a horrific fire spurred by flying machines, the last burning wisps of
tragic memory trailing behind them, Alice confronts him with a question: “Have you no passion at all,
Tenniel?”

To this, he smirks and says, “I never suffer, no.”

To this, she looks at him dully.

He must have something in that tied up chest of his. With that in mind, she tries to catch any sparkle in
his eye, any breath cut short, any sort of pleased look—as he looks upon pleasant things. One day—if time can be so
divided in a world where night never comes—they come across the memory of
an old workshop.

There, she decides to hatch a little plan. In a rare moment of Tenniel’s distraction, she hides away from him,
carefully, behind a door. When he realizes he’s lost her, he glances back, forth, and there mutters, “Alice...?
Well, you must be nearby. Never mind it, never mind it...”

From her hiding place she watches him step past dusty tables and stools... until he reaches an easel, upon
which is a canvas. He checks the surroundings, finds a piece of charcoal, and sits at the stool before the
blank sheet. And, he sketches. The ticklish joy from “teasing” him begins to fade, and she instead observes
him steadily.

That’s right...

When she first woke up in this world...

Tenniel would often change their hats. He would tease her and be sure to always ask what she wanted to
do. He also recited things—poetry, prose—very often. He oriented her, when she was so disoriented by waking
in a caged world. He was sillier, delightful. But... rather quickly... he stopped all of that.

The Tenniel she knew now wore a mask. It had almost become his new face, and so she’d forgotten...

He did like art, didn’t he? He used to remark on it whenever they found memories of galleries...

Now he sketches his surroundings, adding to them a teacup sitting on the floor before the canvas instead
of a stool. An invention of his own, not a part of the scene.

She remarks from behind the door, “That’s very nice, Tenniel.”

He slows to nothing, and rests the charcoal back where he found it. He glances over his shoulder.

“It’s only an imitation,” he says. “But you imagined that,” she says, pointing toward the sketch, “the cup.”

“...It is imagined, yes,” he admits. “...But I believe you likely have a better imagination than me, Alice.”

He smiles, again.

And she replies, “Don’t let it bother you, Brother. Your technique is impressive, and comparing it to my
flawless mind is—”

And they stop, and meet one another’s eyes, as they both realize what it is that she just said.

Entry 7-5
“...‘Comparing it to your flawless mind,’ what?” he asks.

“...Tenniel...” she addresses him.

“My name is no verb. Where precisely is this comparison going?” he teases.

But, Alice insists. “Tenniel!” She shouts, stomping into the room. “You know why it is that I called you that,
don’t you!?”

“It is my name,” he replies.

“‘Brother’?” she answers, baffled.

“Tenniel,” he confirms with a smile. “Not that!!” she yells, balling her fists and stomping again—now once in place. “Are
we... family!?”

“I like t—” Tenniel begins, turning ‘round on his stool. He looks self-satisfied, and obnoxious, but before
he can say what it is he’s thinking, he thinks on it again. He holds his tongue, and grimaces as he turns his
eyes away.

“You’re shutting up, then?” she accuses him. “I knew I was right...! I noticed it... Only lately you’ve been
like this.”

“Handsome?” he tries. “No, that’s always—”

“Tenniel, I am being quite serious,” Alice tells him coldly, cutting him off.

“Quite seriously,” says Tenniel, “I would like to end this conversation.” “Because it worries you? Mysteriously? Why?” Alice
persists. She steps further into the room, angrily
telling him, “‘Brother’, I called you, and I said it quite sincerely. What could that be for? You’re not
unaware, Tenniel. Not unknowing. You’re very obvious in that regard. Now, I insist! I insist that you tell me!”

“I would rather not,” he growls.

“Tenniel!”

“Just leave it alone!”

“I’m a grown woman. I can handle unpleasant words or truths!”

“It isn’t that simple!”

“You aren’t my parent!”

“He may as well have been!” With a foot forward, the glowering Alice stops, her eyes set on Tenniel who is standing now.
She processes
what he told her, and asks, only, “...What?”

“Ah... oh... dear me, I said it,” Tenniel speaks in a near whisper. His eyes shine a moment, and he bends
his head so the brim of his cap might hide them. “No, Alice... I am not your brother. But I remember him.”

“...Go on,” Alice bids, resolute.

And her companion fishes from his vest: a shining shard. A piece of Arcaea.

“A memory?” she asks. And Tenniel replies:

“Yours.”

Alice is silent. She looks at the shard between his fingertips and waits. “I don’t understand this world,” he says, “but I know
that memories project into this place because of you.
None do the same for me. I believe... given what recollection I was born with... Well, though it was rather...
scattered, from the myriad of shards around you where you were first sleeping, I strongly remembered ‘him’.
I ‘felt’ as him, though my head is... certainly a bit strange.”

He smiles before going on to say, “What I knew made me wish for nothing but your ignorance.”
“...I will be fine, Tenniel,” Alice speaks to assure him.

A light falls from his face to the floor, scattering in a minuscule splash. He tells her, with a fluttering voice, “I
might say that you aren’t.” Nonetheless, he extends the shard to her.

She takes it.

In the glass, she sees a curtain waving before a window. Daylight.

She feels a hand falling down on her hat. Tenniel’s sleeve obscures his face. “If you look there,” he says, “I know you will
understand. Also, Alice...”

She grips the shard before answering, “Yes?”

“I am surely just an imitation, but would you—” he stops. “Would you...”

“Yes?” she prompts him.

“...Take care,” he says, “and stay safe, Alice?”

“That doesn’t follow... You’re an imitation, you said... ‘An imitation, but’...?” “...Hmph,” he makes a light and dismissive
sound as he takes his hand from her hat. Or rather, he takes
her hat from her head, and replaces it with his own. Turning before she can glare at him, he tells her,
“I’m an imitation, but listen to me just this once. That’s what I was going to say and nothing else,” he lies.

She does not push, and instead looks into the glass, activating it.

But, as color swirls around her she hears the young man say—

“Right, an imitation can’t ever have their wishes heard.”

But before she can ask him what he means, she enters a familiar place.

Entry 7-6
She finds herself in something unremarkable, and even a little dull. It is a hospital room with white walls
and ceiling. To be precise: a patient’s room—a quiet room, with monarch butterflies fluttering outside the
open window. And, to her surprise, in the moment she recognizes the place, memories she hadn’t realized
she’d lost rush into her skull.

That there was a park outside.

That the nurses were friendly and kind.
That the weather always seemed perfect.
That she nearly always lived here.

She feels overwhelmed, trying to sort it all, but before she can even begin she hears footsteps behind and
turns. There is a person there, at the door, with a hydrangea in hand, presently dressed in a thin and open,
hooded sweatshirt. He wears a T-shirt beneath that, looser slacks over his legs, simple and comfortable
shoes... and his face. She knows his face. This man is a man who looks like Tenniel.
“His” name, however, is... “...Cedric.”

From the bed by the window, a weak voice calls out.

The young man passes her by, politely nodding as he goes, and he moves to the waking patient. She
doesn’t have to see the golden hair, the thin frame, nor the kind face to know: of course, it is her.
This is her memory. Her name is Alice.

Cedric puts the flower he bought in a vase. A true bouquet of them sits beside her original self.
He pulls over a chair and sits down beside her. He has no tea in his hands, nor does he ask for any.
“Cedric...” the girl repeats, groggily, as she sits up in bed. “I thought you were at the studio today.”

“No, not there. And I work on my own time, Alice,” says Tenn—... Cedric. It sounds like him. “How are you? You’re
alright?”

They both look at her, and smile.

The words had just come out of her without thinking. Well, she could barely think, for what it was worth.
A new world of truth, here to process, and it seems that as an observer in a place of one part of this
memory she merely recited what was said at the time automatically.

“Have you been writing?” asks Cedric.

“Have you been drawing?” asks the sickly girl, grinning in light mockery.

“‘Have I been drawing’,” he echoes, looking to the ceiling and then rolling his eyes.

“You came here!” she fires back with a laugh. “I swear, I thought you were busy!” “Three pages I finished,” he answers
with pride and a smile.

“Good!”

“And you’ve got no pages?”

“I’ve written! I’ve written plenty!”

“Then let’s see it, then. I’ve this other book, too...”

“‘Lright!”

The girl reaches to a cupboard beside the bed. She keeps her notebooks and utensils there, as well as a
tablet she could probably use more often. The young man fishes out a tome from his bag. Right... it never
had been traveling, had it? It was always written stories... told tales... dreams.

They begin to share. Laughter, teasing. Four days.

In four days, all of this ended. They both believed that, if not forever, she had at least three hundred and
sixty-five. She didn’t get to see him in the end. In the early morning she felt a pain and faded.
Then, nothing. She remembered hearing them yelling to call. That was it.

Tenniel knew this.

The memory is long. She feels it. It encompasses these last days, but she doesn’t want to see it.

Strong though she is, facing such a thing terrifies her. No part of it can change. Her health was always failing, they were
always alone, and he couldn’t be there: the end. Dreams and stories... can’t become real by wishing.

She leaves the memory while they’re smiling. She doesn’t remember if it was their last time together.
She doesn’t want to know. You will die. You have died.

Standing in the memory of the workshop, this is what Alice remembers.

“Tenn—” she starts, looking up.

But Tenniel is gone.

And there, the memory fades. She can guess... As he’d said, he was only an imitation, and with the truth revealed, his
time was up. Alice stands in the void of Arcaea, staring forward with unseeing eyes.

And everything screams at her at once.

This “plane” is false. This “body”: a shell. The “memories” were distorted.
Her “life” was not hers; her life ended with no arc, no culmination, no brother beside her.

You are alone, Alice.

And you died alone. Alice eventually finds herself on her knees, her gloved fingers dug through the earth.

She feels very cold. She wants to cry, but tears wouldn’t come.

She feels...

She feels.

“It’s real,

“because every sense of you ‘knows’ that it’s real.”

Tenniel’s words reflect in her head. She looks at her hand, and she sees it.

She pulls her glove taught, and she feels it.

She takes the flower from her hair and hears it. Smells it. She opens her mouth over the petals.

What is reality? Is it what you see? What you taste? What you touch?

If that is so...

“Alice” is dead, and Alice is alive.

And if Tenniel was a memory, then he must remain as well.

In reality, she knows herself to be a wanderer of worlds.

She made it here, didn’t she? Regardless of the “truth”.

And if that is so... there is a way out. She’ll find it.

The way back: to the one who cared for her the most in life.

And for the other...

If she cannot find him again on her journey, she knows a fragment of him will be there with her,
remaining in her heart. Perhaps she’ll start making and never drinking tea. The thought... makes her
smile and laugh once again.

Alice decides then and there, feet on the ground and holding the shard of “truth” between her fingers:
even if she may always look forward, to the horizon that marks a new way...

...she will never, ever, forget what brought her there.