This was written for the "Habits and Routines" square of my Cliche Bingo. Sorry if anyone got double alerts; it ate my paragraph separations.

Alice makes a point to think six impossible things before she rouses from bed every morning.

They are nonsense things, her impossible thoughts, but they keep her warm and courageous. They keep her Alice, filled with all her Alice thoughts and memories, and so she makes sure to make time for them."One," she whispers in the morning as she wakes, "There is a place called Wonderland."

She smiles every morning. She has not forgotten. This is the second impossible thing she thinks: "I have traveled to Wonderland," followed quickly by the third: "I remember Wonderland."

The fourth makes her heart ache. "There are people I love in Wonderland," she says. Her hands clench in her bedclothes as the thought sends a low, tugging ache through her belly. Oh, yes, there are certainly people she loves in Wonderland.

The vision of green eyes dances before her own every morning at this point and she must put her head to her knees and weep before she can say her fifth. "It was the right thing, to come home." She waits for her tears to dry.

Truth be told, Alice is not sure this one impossible thought will ever be believable. She is happy on this ship. She is glad she came home. She is lying to herself.

The last is a mouthful and Alice must take a deep breath before she recites it. She does so and says, quickly so her breath does not run out, "Six. I will return to Wonderland and Hatter will be waiting for me, with a smile and a new hat made special for me, and he will say, 'Alice, you're late! Naughty girl!' and I will laugh."

Of all the impossible things Alice believes, this is the most impossible of them all. Still, it is not so impossible as to be impossible to believe in, if she borrows a little madness from her Hatter.

She thinks this to herself every morning as she butters hard ship bread. She thinks of this one impossible thing as she stands on the bow with the sea-salt spray in her face. She thinks of it as she curls into her bed, as the first mate begins to pant after her like a dog in heat, may Bayard forgive her for the comparison.

The sea is a lovely thing, but she cannot help but search for the impossible at every turn, in ever choppy blue swell.

"What do you see?" Lord Ascot asks continually.

Alice smiles a small, private smile. "I see the sea, my lord," she says, "And I wonder what it would be like to swim as a fish would." Sometimes it is, "I see the sky, my lord, and wonder how it would be to fly like a gull," and sometimes it is, "I wonder what it would be like to be tall enough to touch the clouds. I've only ever been ten feet tall, you know, and that isn't hardly tall enough at all."

Lord Ascot is kind enough not to call them idle flights of fancy, for which she is grateful. Nothing is impossible, in Wonderland. Here, in her world, there are impossible things that she must believe in very hard for them to become truth.

"Your father was never half so dreamy," Lord Ascot confides.

It is a gentle rebuke Alice chooses to ignore. "Half of my dreaminess would still make him very dreamy indeed, my lord," she says.

"Do you suppose?" He is humoring her now, as one would the mad. All the best people in the world are mad, and this is a truth that Alice has always known, so she supposes there could be worse things, than to be humored like the mad.

Alice turns her face further into the wind and smiles a small, discreet smile as she catches sight of a codfish waving from the waters. She has not seen Absolem since he landed on her shoulder at her first crossing; she hopes he hasn't been eaten by the gulls.

"I know Lord Ascot worries," Alice writes to her mother, "But I am much more Alice than I have ever been. I haven't lost a bit of my muchness, no matter what you may hear."

Indeed, Alice has grown muchier since returning, even more than she was when the Jabberwocky fell to the Vorpal Sword. It isn't everyday that a woman becomes apprentice to a trader. She lives the impossible now and if she finds herself yearning for the more impossible still, that simply means she must believe harder.

She is ready to return to Wonderland. Alice just doesn't know if Wonderland is ready to have her back as of yet. She cannot do anything more than believe in her impossible thoughts, though.

Alice throws herself into belief like others throw themselves into religion.

And so she is not surprised to one day find a doormouse on her ship from China, one who taps her foot and declares, scornfully, "I still don't believe you're the right Alice, but you'd best come along now."

Alice thinks of all the impossible things she believed in before breakfast this morning. "Is Hatter well?" she asks. It would be cruel if half came true and not the other. It would mean that she had more impossible believing to do, and she isn't so sure that she will remember.

Her memories have faded so. Already, Hatter is tattered in her heart, nothing but luminous eyes and ridiculous hair and a dance so glorious it had to be seen to be possible.

Mallymkun rolls her eyes. "You'll just have to ask him, now won't you? Come along, Alice, you're very late."

"I'm forever running late, I'm afraid," Alice tells her. She crouches so to be on Mallymkun's level and offers a smile. "When it is most important I find the world will wait for me."

"Hmph," says Mallymkun. "A right big head you have after slaying the Jabberwocky. A stroke of luck that was. You're just full of it, aren't you?"

"Luck and muchness," says Alice peaceably.

"I suppose," the doormouse says. "You'll come follow me now. I can't stand the site of him moping anymore. Hatter to the White Queen and Tarrant Hightopp mopes as if it's his birthday."

"Unbirthdays are far more exciting."

"Yes, I know. Pay attention now."

There are no holes to fall down out on the open sea. Alice watches as the doormouse jumps overboard, complaining all the while, and finds herself thinking it is impossible that the entrance to Wonderland would be in the dark water.

Everyone knows dark water is death. There aren't even many fish out here. A person cannot swim far enough or deep enough to ever reach Wonderland this way, and that is why Alice climbs atop the railing and flings herself over with a smile on her face.

A rabbit hole is just a rabbit hole, afterall. The sea is just the sea.

She would like to tell Lord Ascot not to worry. She catches sight of his white face, drawn in with shock and horror, as she tumbles into the water, and feels momentarily awful for it. He will find her carefully written notes in her things, if he can bear to look at them, and with them he will expand further than he's ever dreamed.

Alice turns away from the surface, paddling slowly until she can locate Mallymkun.

"Underland is just up this way," says Mallymkun. The doormouse disappears down into the water, which has Alice helplessly sputtering laughter in the salt water.

Down is up and up is down, and she needs to hurry before they come overboard to fetch her. The only way to Wonderland is to take the impossible route, of course, Alice thinks as she swims after the rapidly disappearing tale of a small white mouse in a dress. Nothing at all in Wonderland makes sense.

Her eyes have begun to sting with water and her breath is heaving in her breast when strong arms catch her about the shoulders. She surfaces from the water wet and shaking, to see green eyes and wild hair and those eyebrows, silly impossible things themselves.

"Alice," Hatter says, and pauses, his mouth working.

Alice attempts to remember the difficult apparatus of breathing while he struggles for words. She shivers in his arms, coughs once or perhaps twice, and then reaches up for him. His mouth is still opening and closing, his eyes half-dreamy in the way that means he is lost inside his own head.

That's fine. Alice has a feeling that she'll always be more than enough to combat whatever voices he hears.

"I know," says Alice. She places her hands on his face, fingertips touching the lavender shadows beside his nose, until his eyes clear and he begins to smile like the sun breaking through the mist. "I'm very late. I'm sorry. It's hard to believe in impossible things, sometimes."