After hurtling towards the ground Alice landed with a loud thump on a pile of blocks. She stood up and dusted herself down. The noise of her landing had attracted attention, scurrying quickly towards her feet were little green men shaped liked cards.
‘Stop there you clumsy fool,’ shouted one of the men at Alice. ‘You will disturb the blocks.’
‘No, you can’t move the blocks,’ shouted another one of the green men.
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Alice. ‘I didn’t realise. I’ll try to be very careful.’
‘It is Immutable,’ said the second green man.
‘Immutable,’ repeated the first, ‘unchanging over time.’
‘Tick tock, tick tock, no change on the block,’ sung the second.
‘Or your hashes don’t match up, and it’s easy to see the tinkering that there be,’ sung the first.
‘Well all things change,’ said Alice. ‘I’m changing right now. See?’
The two little men stared at Alice for a long time, to see if they could see her changing.
‘Mmmmmm I think she is highly mutable. Do you agree?’ asked the first little man to the second.
‘Oh yes, not immutable, no good for us. Get off our blocks!’ shouted the second little man at Alice.
‘Well I think you are both very rude,’ said Alice. ‘Is this road made of gold?’
‘Gold? What a bizarre idea!’ scoffed the first man.
‘Where I am from all roads used to be made of gold,’ said Alice, ‘but then they changed it to pyrite.’
‘That sounds a little foolish!’ said the second man.
‘Why is this road so sticky?’ asked Alice.
‘That’s the jam,’’ said the first little man. ‘We used it to stick the blocks together, but it was too sticky and easy to change. The Queen was not happy!’
‘So now we use the hash, a little bit from than block and a little bit from here. It sticks it together nicely. But without the strawberry stickiness,’ explained the second man to Alice as he pointed to the blocks at his feet.
‘Yes, the strawberry jam attracted the hornets. It made the job deadly for small folks like us,’ said the first man to Alice.
‘Oh gosh!’ said Alice, ‘That sounds terrible. You haven’t seen my friend Bob have you? He sent me a message, I heard it but couldn’t decipher what he was saying.’
‘If you can’t understand it you need your key,’ said the first man.
‘My key?’ asked Alice
‘Yes!’ replied the first. ‘You will never understand without the key.’
‘I think I lost it,’ said Alice. ‘But I can’t think where.’
'The first rule is don’t lose your key!’ the two men chanted in unison at Alice. ‘The first rule is don’t lose your key! The first rule is don’t lose your key...’ They continued their chant as Alice walked off following the long chain of blocks.
@opheliafu -watercolors, drawing ink on paper.