#rcdqueen

He’s not one to waste time with disingenuous gestures and comments, too impatient to play that game and too aware of how there are not enough hours in the day to spend on something so utterly meaningless. When the hands of the clock over the door start creeping towards three in the afternoon, he sets aside the new recipe he’d been refining and turns instead to the intricate order of his expected guest.

Sunlight streaming in through the small window paints the kitchen in a warmth he doesn’t quite feel, fingers tingling with the steam rising from a freshly boiled pot of tea. Strange how it happens though, this sudden turning of the tides. Years of tentative calm before the storm, and without warning nor proper rhyme and reason, the scales have begun to tilt again.

The clock ticks a reminder: fifteen minutes left. He empties the contents of the pot into two identical cups, the scent of citrus and vanilla curling into a pleasant haze that fills the small space with an ephemeral comfort more imagined than real. His thoughts wander once more as he watches how milk and tea bleed together in undefinable patterns, wandering, not so much, towards the ‘How’s or ‘Who’s, but the ‘Why’s.

Why now? Why the players chosen? Why this stage? It all feels rather abrupt, but after all, who can really judge what the machinations of these quarreling would-be-monarchs entail.

Exactly as the minute hand strikes six, his front door darkens with a familiar shadow, and he turns from where he’s set the corner table for afternoon tea.

“Well-well, look who has decided to grace us with her presence after so long.”

It’s early enough that the pub is mostly empty when she walks in, not that he wouldn’t notice her immediately even in a crowded room. Mina has always been a force to be reckoned with in her own way, even before she’d clawed her way to the top of the city, and he’d recognize that domineering gait demanding ‘all eyes on me’ anywhere.

A few of the regulars look up from their drinks to frown at this woman making her way into their midst. Does she look out of place to them? He grins at the idea. If only they knew how at home she can be in the girt and grime of these lower parts of Wonderland, just another of the many angry ghosts that haunt here, looking for an outlet.

          ｉｆ ｙｏｕ ｈａｖｅｎ＇ｔ ｓｐｉｌｌｅｄ ｙｏｕｒ ｏｗｎ ｂｌｏｏｄ，                                     ｉｔ ｉｓｎ＇ｔ ａｎ ａｓｃｅｎｓｉｏｎ

you waste a question on us, little queen. 

go to the police station and they’ll tell you what those official papers say —

he hung himself — were you not paying attention to the news? 

if you’re looking for the real cause of death, well...

they’re one and the same. 

Would it be impolite to laugh? His teeth part scant millimetres, a warning sign, but sense arrests him at the last second. There is no need, after all, for mockery when she comes with such genuine ‘intentions’. All the same, he’s looking forward to how she interprets what comes next.

“Wherever you want them to, my dear Queen.”

“Children are quite a useful species, don’t you think? They’re light on their feet, small enough to fit into the cracks of the city’s heart, and if you have a surplus on your hands, no one thinks to look twice should you put them to good use. Discreetly, of course.”