Bread-and-Butterflies

“I never ate one. I-No, I didn't. I can't remember doing it, did I eat one? But this feels like thousands of them, all the fluttering and the feelings! It can't be just one, unless it's a really, really, really big one.” The Cat was grinning at his worry, perfectly aware of what was happening but reluctant to let him know, because she had just left and if he knew, waiting would be painful. “It-can you hear it?! There it is, there it is! It's a thud followed by another one, and another one, and another, and another, but it goes too fast, so so fast to be my heart.” He placed his hands above his chest, feeling the beating of his heart. “But it's here and then there's those bread-and-butterflies inside my stomach and I don't know how to get them out. Do you think one of them made it to my chest and it's playing in my heart? That could be no good, no good.”

The Cat placed down his cup of tea gently, looking to his hatted friend as he tried desperately to form into words what he was feeling. There were times in which he pondered whether the Hatter really was that clueless or if he simply liked to play with others' perception of him. But upon seeing him there, tea already forgotten, talking about how it felt and the explanations he had for it, the Cat decided it was true, the Hatter was clueless. “Are you sure you did not eat one by accident?” He followed his game, deciding that it was for the best to keep him uninformed of the nature of what he was feeling, for his own good. “Those awful little things can multiply quite easily,” he purred as he reached back for his cup of tea and sipped the hot contents it held.

“No, it can't be that. It can't, right? Hare, can it? Did I eat one? Perhaps I mistook it for one of our own buttered breads, yes, perhaps, but no, I couldn't have done that, could I?” His eyes looked confused, almost to the point of holding a tormented feeling behind them. The metaphorical bread-and-butterflies were haunting him, the meaning behind them troubled him.

“I don't recall. I can't recall. Per-perhaps, perhaps perhaps-I can't recall.” The Hare looked to his friend then back at the teacups he held in each of his hands. He poured the contents down his throat eagerly. “D-do you think he ate one, Dormouse? Dormouse? Dormouse!” One of the tea cups was shattered as the Hare tried to wake up their sleeping friend, who had found a perfectly comfortable spot on one of the English muffins.

She yawned, stretching lazily as she looked up to the Hare and then back to the tea cup that laid shattered on the table. “We need a new set.” The Dormouse cuddled against the English muffin, closing her eyes again, but still she continued speaking. “I don't think you have eaten one, Hatter.” Each word was pronounced slowly, too painfully slowly and the Hare was growing impatient again as he drank another cup of tea.

“You don't even know it! You-you-you've been sleeping the whole time! Sleep, sleep, sleep. Sleep is all you do.” The Hare impatiently threw another teacup, shattering it against the floor.

“I breathe, too. We need a new set.” The Dormouse slowly drifted back to her sleep, ignoring fully the chaos the Hare was wrecking at the answer he had received from his friend.

“I can't have eaten one, see? Dormouse doesn't recall, Hare doesn't recall. I don't recall. I can't recall. Perhaps I was alone when I ate one. Perhaps I just fell asleep and it flew into my mouth, just flew into it.” He smiled sheepishly, hands waving in the air, imitating what he believed to be a bread-and-butterfly's flight. “And I swallowed it.”

There was certain silence that the Cat could simply not recognize, completely unfamiliar to him and he was sure the Hare and even the Dormouse had felt it as it settled on the table. “Now they're gone. The one on my chest too. They're gone. Why are they gone?” The Hatter broke the silence, mortified with the bread-and-butterflies leaving him. “I-did one flutter out my mouth?” He looked erratically behind him, upwards, downwards before him, but there was nothing. “Why are they gone? I didn't want them gone. I wanted to know why they were there. I want-want them back as much as I want Ali-Oh.” Realization, the Cat saw it in the Hatter's eyes as he made a connection between the bread-and-butterflies and Alice, how both of them seemed to have departed almost at the same time. “Oh,” he mouthed again, looking at the Cat with a raised eyebrow. The Cat looked away from him, sighing loudly and closing his eyes in an attempt at ignoring what had just happened. “You knew? You knew! You guddler's scuttish pilgar lickering-” It all went interrupted as the Cat sighed even heavier than before, putting down his teacup and effortlessly vanishing in thin air, only to appear on top Hatter's hat again.

“Are you done? If so, let me explain.” He vanished again as the Hatter tried reaching for him, a smile remained floating in thin air, smiling softly. “Had I told you, waiting would be all too painful and dull.” The smile began to vanish slowly, grinning fully again. “Oh, they'd come back when she comes back physically or, you know, as ghostly as I can turn be, call them dreams or daydreams I suppose; anytime she's there.”

“I knew I hadn't eaten one. I kne-I told you, Cat. I knew I didn't ate them. It wa-was, no, it is because of her. They're there because she's there.” He sat back on his chair, watching eagerly the spot that she had once occupied, next to him. “They exist because of her; it's because of her. She'll come back and they'll still be here.” He grabbed a jar and poured himself some tea, smiling lightly as the Hare broke another teacup so he could tell the discovery to the sleeping Dormouse. “When she comes back, I'll feel them again.”