Ever After High (Male Reader)

Things Go From Bad To Worse

Cedar Wood was still smooshing berries and mixing them with oil she’d found in Lizzie’s shed. Everything she did was boring.

Kitty Cheshire was still narrating. What was the point? Maddie wasn’t missing anything interesting.

Kitty Cheshire decided to make it interesting.

Kitty: The paint mixed and ready. Cedar Wood begins to snuffle around on the ground like a pig looking for truffles.

Cedar: I do not!

Kitty: Kitty Cheshire disappears.

That part happened. Sometimes this emergency Narrator enjoyed disappearing without reappearing. The in-between-ness felt like bathwater. Like floating. Like being full of soup.

Kitty: Clearly, Kitty Cheshire had been eaten by the Wonderland Grove Ghost that Cedar Wood knew nothing about. Surely Cedar Wood will be eaten next.

Cedar: I can still hear you talking, Kitty.

Kitty: Alas, the only thing left of people after having been eaten by the Grove Ghost is their voice, howling with sadness.

Cedar: Or howling with madness, in this case.

This game was hexcellent. And distracting. And helped Kitty Cheshire forget the Jabberwock for a few seconds and how even its name stood every hair on her head straight up, and sent tremble-wobbles into her knees, and scared her smile stiff, and how, even though she was far too big now, she longed to curl up on her mother’s lap and cry.

Kitty Cheshire regretted thinking those thoughts aloud.

Please come back, Maddie.

Lizzie, you, and Maddie burst through the door, slamming it shut on what looked to Cedar like thousands of uncomfortably friendly pencils.

Kitty: I didn’t think-aloud about the pencils. So that means Maddie is narrating again.

Cedar: You’re safe!

Maddie: What did I miss?

Kitty: Boredom. Talking. Cedar snuffling like a pig.

Cedar: I didn’t do that! Kitty just said I did.

Maddie: That’s dangerous, Kitty. I read a story about it in the narration book. Once upon a time there was a Narrator who narrated things that he didn’t observe, but he was such a powerful and skilled Narrator, the characters actually had to do whatever he said. It was horrible!

Cedar: Like being forced to live out a destiny you don’t want?

Maddie: We should get to work.

She clasped her gloved hands together.

Maddie: Hold the spoon, did Madeline Hatter just say, ‘We should get to work’?

Kitty: That’s nothing. I was involved. I volunteered to help.

She shuddered again.

Y/N: Maddie is correct. We don’t know how time is moving. We must retrieve the sword and carry it to someone who can wield it, perhaps Headmaster Grimm or Madam Baba Yaga. Surely the White Queen could wield it with panache once she returns.

Cedar: So… where’s the book?

Everyone looked at Lizzie. Lizzie sniffed.

Lizzie: A large crab ate it.

Y/N: What?

Lizzie: I didn’t want to alarm you, but one of the flattish stone slabs in the floor of that last hallway was apparently a flattish stone crab. It seized the book from my hand with one of its pinchers and devoured it.