Alice Went to the
Petit Trianon

The summer air was golden and warm, wrapping the gardens in a soft haze of sunlight. Butterflies drifted lazily through the roses, bees hummed drunkenly through lavender borders, and birds sang from hidden branches as though the whole world had agreed to be charming for the afternoon.

They were seated at a small table in the country garden, surrounded by wild herbs, jasmine vines, mint, thyme, and overflowing bowls of peonies and garden roses. Priceless porcelain teacups, hand-painted in delicate pastels and trimmed in gold, were filled not with tea, but with something sparkling, dangerous and deliciously alcoholic.

Marie Antoinette lifted her cup with a mischievous smile.

“Tea is terribly dull,” she said.

Alice, now older, wiser, and far less interested in rules, laughed as she lit a cigarette with a white plastic filter. The Queen leaned across the table to borrow the flame.

They ate macarons in impossible colours — blush pink, pistachio green, violet, lemon cream — biting into them between stories, confessions, and laughter so uncontrolled that tears ran down their cheeks.

They spoke as women do when no one is listening.

They discussed lovers in intimate detail. Their vanities. Their talents. Their foolishness. Their kisses. Their promises. Their disappointments. Their absurd confidence.

Nothing was hidden. Nothing was polished.

There, beneath the climbing roses and the French summer sky, they were not icons, not symbols, not myths.

They were simply women.

Raw, funny, clever, sensual, tender, honest women who knew that friendship was its own kind of luxury.

The scent of crushed mint rose from the tablecloth. Orange blossom drifted from nearby trees. Warm earth, tobacco smoke, sugared almond, vanilla, herbs and petals moved through the air with every burst of laughter.

Alice looked around the garden and thought that perhaps the greatest wonderland of all was not fantasy, but a place where women could speak freely, laugh loudly, desire deeply, and be entirely themselves.

And so they stayed until sunset, when the sky turned pink like macaron shells, and the world smelled of flowers, smoke, sweetness and secrets.