Title: All the King's Men
Fandom: Alice in Wonderland
Author: karrenia
Characters: the Mad Hatter on Humpty Dumpty
Rating: General Audiences
Prompt: #27 piece
Word Count: 336
Disclaimer: Alice in Wonderland and the characters who inhabit are the original
creations of Lewis Carroll and whomever owns his estate now; they are not mine.
5/50
"All the King's Men" by Karen
Death does not happen in this realm, it is so far removed from everything that has held true for the inhabitants that it has become something as unreal as the existence of ghosts and goblins and other creatures that go bump in the night. So when it came, well, needless to say, it was quite a shock.
The wall where Humpty Dumpty had spent the majority of his free time was still there, in all its crumbling glory. 'His memorial had been quite well attended', thought the Mad Hatter as he sat on the ground idly pulling on the tall grass and stringing a chain of daisies together to place over the monument stone that had been commissioned in his friend's honor.
"He would have appreciated it." At least I think he would have, if he had been here to see it. White marble veined with black gypsum, quite tasteful, really, and with the poem chiseled into, I saw to that," sniffed the Mad Hatter with a slight twitch in his shoulders that nearly upset his tall pointy hat to the ground. He dropped his daisy chain and stiffly got to his feet, still a bit dry from the day or two it had taken away from his tea party.
Everyone else had already left for their homes after the memorial service had concluded, even the March Hare, the Dormouse, so he was alone with his memories and the wall. "I don't know where you've gone off to, old friend, but I hope for your sake it was somewhere brighter and cheerier than here."
The Mad Hatter thought about that for a moment, and then glancing all around him, he reached up and quickly doffed his tall, pointy hat to his absent friend and bowed his head. Sniffling and trying to avoid breaking down into sobs, the Mad Hatter planted his hat back onto to his head at an awkward angle and set off down the road back to his own home and he did not look back.