"Anyway, please, both of you, calm down first."
Standing in the battered wedding hall, Li Wei looked at Lavinia and Joe with a headache brewing and held out a hand to soothe them.
Naturally, he couldn't let Lavinia stab Joe to death. So when she drew her knife, Li Wei shot it out of her hand, then came over to deal with the mess before him.
"So, Mr. Li Wei, what are we supposed to do now?"
Looking at Joe, who was hiding behind Li Wei and sniveling, and Lavinia, who stood glaring in front of him, Annie asked the question.
"First, we need to figure out whose nightmare this is."
Li Wei looked at the two of them and quietly sighed. The guests were still standing where they had been, as though everything before them was perfectly normal. As though they were looking not at a ruined building with a battleship rammed through its wall, but at a real church where a wedding was taking place.
"Isn't it Mr. Joe's? He was almost murdered. Surely that counts as a nightmare."
"That depends on your perspective."
Li Wei explained to Annie.
"From Joe's perspective, perhaps. But from Miss Godney's perspective, having the groom try to run away during the wedding ceremony is a nightmare in itself."
"Perhaps, but that still doesn't give her the right to kill someone."
"This is a dream, little girl."
The Cheshire Cat laughed.
"In a dream, you can do whatever you want. Laws, logic, common sense-none of those things can constrain you."
"Exactly."
Li Wei found Annie's materialistic, logical way of thinking downright NPC-like. He was starting to suspect she might not be a real person at all, but a character conjured up in his own dream.
"You can do whatever you want in a